Tell your stories with... numbers! Craft data-focused content to keep your company blog's readers “hooked”! And no, it's no “utopia”: you can turn raw data into alluring content.
It all depends on whether you manage to masterfully “exploit” it, on how you harness it!
Speaking of it, here are 4 avenues to “spice” up your data and turn it into blog content that resonates with your readers and captivates:
1. Relate Your Data to Your Target Audience
Serving your readers nothing but a big chunk of “raw” data will only get them an instant... “indigestion”! Not even 1% of them will go all the way to the end of your blog post.
And why should they? Data is “machine talk”, not human talk!
In other words: you'll need to dig deep though your “raw” data and select the “relatable” one only!
The one that will your readers will instantly resonate with.
So, before you go on and dig deep into your heavy load of data, how about trying to set up a couple of criteria that you could select and group them by? These can be:
- geographical
- economical
- social
- cultural criteria
More often than not, it's the geographical criterion that prevails. And, in this respect, it's precisely those “enviable” data-driven pieces of content that already earned lots of traffic that make the best examples!
And how do you get to craft your own geographical data-based piece of content that will act like a magnet for your readers/potential customers? Here are 2 handy approaches for you to adopt:
- harness your Google Adwords data and craft a blog post that all your potential customers, living in different regions of your country, could easily relate to
- use the Google Keyword Planner and target the city of your company's headquarters and, based on the generated data, run a comparison to other cities in your country
It's a proven fact: once they'll see their city's, their state's or their country's names listed in your blog post, included in a comparison with other cities, states and countries, your readers will instinctively grow curious about your data-focused content!
We're all emotionally connected to a certain location on this globe and whenever we read/hear its name, an inner bell rings!
And it's the same thing with all the other aforementioned criteria that sets us apart and define us (the cultural, biological, economical ones and so on).
2. Show Off Your First Party Data
You're sitting on a “gold mine”, no doubt about that!
That's right, you have huge first party data resources that you could show off to your readers in the form of enticing pieces of content! They're right there, at your fingertips! You just need to "strategically exploit" it, to turn raw data into alluring content.
And no, there's no such thing as “I do not have an impressive user data or unique data-generating sources to go to. I haven't piled up any data that my readers could possibly be fascinated with”.
Dig deeper! Any online business owner has at least an active Google Analytics account.
See? There's a start! Now keep digging!
When it comes to making that “raw” data fascinating, that's:
- part knowing precisely what data to hand pick (the one that your readers would resonate with, remember?)
- part placing it in the right context
That's all!
And speaking of sources of first party data, here are 3 unique data generators that our team here, at our web development agency in Toronto, recommends to you:
- Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Search Console data: they all contain unique, valuable user data that only you and your team have access to. Tap into these great resources of data, run your selection, add a sparkle of creativity, too, and turn it into the perfect “fuel” for that future viral post on your company blog!
- survey data: can't underestimate the power of user surveys! Leverage the collected results by turning them into interesting insights. For example, how about correlating personality-related answers with the type of products that your questioned customers usually shop on your e-commerce store? Wouldn't this personality traits-shopping preferences association make an attention-grabbing type of content for your readers?
- sales data: here's another insufficiently exploited “data gold mine”! Turn into interesting content that data revealing to you during which season(s) of the year or at what hours of the day your sales are at their highest. Are there certain events (holiday?) that this “peak” coincides with! Extra tip: use Google Correlate, such a handy tool that will point out to you exactly which keywords are relevant precisely to that sales data that you will have collected!
Take it from there: turn raw data into alluring content!
3. Do Share Your Data Set
An avenue that so many ignore! Don't be one of them!
Be smarter than that majority of webmasters/online business owners and, once you've crafted that data-driven piece of content that's going to “write history” on the web, remember to add your data set, too.
You never know when a big player in your market (and not just in your market, it could by an authority in any other related industry; take a news publication for instance) picks it up and uses it, turning it into a valuable links generator for you!
4. Add the Surprise Factor: A Sure Way to Turn Raw Data Into Alluring Content
Isn't this a hard nut to crack? How could you intrigue and, even so more, “fascinate” your readers with... numbers? With data?
You get creative and spice those numbers a bit, that's how!
Here's a tried “recipe” that you could follow for crafting intriguing content out of numbers:
- you “frame it” in a rightly chosen context, one that will shade a new light on your data, making it stand out
- you provide an unexpected perspective (an historical perspective, for instance)
- you use comparison: nothing adds more meaning to “raw” data, nothing makes it more “intriguing” than getting it compared to other periods of time, to other locations where your products might have been used or other age groups of customers that might have bought one of your items etc.
Contextualize it and compare it! This is the (not so) secret “recipe” to follow whenever you want to turn raw data into alluring content!
Wrapping up:
- harness precisely that data that relates to your target readers/customers (so, don't start digging through your whole data resource without this selection criterion in mind!)
- put your numbers in a context
- come up with comparisons that will add intriguing perspectives to your provided data
Now go ahead and turn raw data into alluring content for your company blog, removing “writer's block” from your vocabulary for good!
