An eye-catching unique content is the best way to get the attention of readers and journalists. Data journalism is the best way to develop content that stands apart in the crowd.
When you use statistics and facts in your content, it makes sure that your content is engaging, newsworthy, interesting and shareable. And the content that is shared more will definitely get more clicks to your site.
Be the content source
It can be quite a stressful task to create your own article content. But it is a good idea to create your own data. Because each time anyone will use your data and cite back to you, you will get a better link profile.
Tools such as Google Trends and Google Consumer Survey will give you statistics for all the trending topics from where you can develop your content.
Choose your topic
It is your work to figure out what topic to choose so that you can create unique content with the data you have. Decide first what will your content be based on.
You will have to figure out whether you will use your data to form your content topic or your create your data based on the topic selected. You may either use data that you already have or select a topic that is already there in your mind.
You can research on Google trends or BuzzSumo to choose a topic.
Collect your data
You will first have to find data to create your own. There are many trusted resources for your data. Remember that long lengthy content does not guarantee success. Quality is always better than quantity. Traditionally, more content means more leads, but that is not always true. One single good piece of content is enough to get leads.
Conduct Survey
Surveys are an outstanding way to gather fresh data on any topic. You can collect statistics on any subject you want to focus on. Before conducting a survey, analyze your question twice.
Make sure your question is relevant to the content you want to create. Including a number of demographic questions is a good choice. This way you can cross-reference to the people who respond to your questions with details.
Ask the community
You can prepare a questionnaire or ask a set of questions to your followers or community. If you are a big brand and have an online forum, it also is a great place to ask questions to your followers. You can initiate a conversation related to a topic from your niche and observe the user responses.
Many businesses also have a database wherein all the customer details are saved. You can use this database to send out a set of questions to your customers. You can send out forms to these users and reward them with some discounts in return of filling the form.
You can also take advantage of the follower base on your major social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. Create polls on these platforms to gather some valuable data.
Use your own business data
You might be using some analytics tool to measure the success of your website or marketing strategies. The data from these tools can be used to create content for your content marketing strategy.
You can take help from Google Analytics. This tool will also present data to your based on different demographics such as age, gender, and location of the customers. Similarly, you can get data about where your users come from, what do they buy, what is the device and OS they use, and much more.
The theme for your Content
Once you have collected your data, use it to figure out what will be your point of view for the content. This will help you to create a more newsworthy and shareable content.
If you have a huge spreadsheet of data and statistics, you can highlight the major focus points that support your content topic. Create informative charts and graphs in support of your content with the help of these data.
Data visualization
The visual representation of any data is the key to any content success. Visual data make your content shareable and engaging. A designer would be of great help in data visualization. If your budget does not allow to hire a designer, you can do it yourself with some easy and free data visualization tools.
Once you have the visual with you, develop content around your visual and make it come to life. Always keep in mind the way you want your readers to perceive your content. Also, your content should be mobile and tablet responsive.
If you do not have enough time to collect the data on your own, that’s not a problem. There are many tools and data sources available for this. For example, take data on the same topic from two different years at 10 years apart. Create data by comparing and contrasting these two different sets of data. You can also take the hint from someone else’s data, analyze it and present it in your own way and words. You can find some interesting ideas and suggestions from the following data sources:
- Pew Research Center
- Wikipedia
- Google Scholar
- The Office for National Statistics
- Reddit’s Data is Beautiful subreddit
Or you can simply search on Google “[keyword] market research” or “[keyword] data sets” to get a broad range of information.
Benefits of data-driven content
- Great content will definitely result in an increase and improvement in your keyword ranking.
- Data-driven content is always a hit because it is exactly focused on what people want.