Community Discussion - Are data AND storytelling the missing ingredients for successful content marketing efforts?
-
Data is an important element of content marketing. Storytelling, too, gets readers' attention and has been shown to be instrumental in prospects and customers forming strong connections to brands. But using data and storytelling helps produce some of the strongest content there is to be shared, says Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré in her latest YouMoz article, Here’s How to Combine Storytelling and Data to Produce Persuasive Content.
What are your thoughts? Think data and storytelling work best separately? Read the post are share your thoughts below.
RS
-
Data is the cinnamon of content marketing. It enhances your dish with a nice cinnamon flavor, but you probably don't want a big heaping spoonful of uncut cinnamon or the next thing you know you've launched a viral video meme. Or something like that.
A story without data maybe is a nice story, but it's also toothless. The internet is littered with baseless opinions and we don't really need more of that. You can make an opinion insightful, however, when you back it up with facts, sources, numbers. Prove a product works laying out a success by the numbers. I want to see stories that know when to lean into the data, the kind of story that chews your face off and then drops the mic.
Make an assertion, express an opinion, back it up with facts, but never forget that the numbers are there to support the story, and not the other way around.
Cinnamon... face chewing... it must getting close to lunch time.
-
I am one of those who believe Data and Storytelling both have their own powers and if you are using both you should know how much will be too much for the audience.
I mean (let’s take the EGOL’s example here) if you are addressing to the donors obviously good storytelling will rock but data carefully included with storytelling will only help. Similarly, if you are talking to accountants the numbers and data will work more but if carefully crafted storytelling will attach to it, it will only offer benefits.
And obviously promotion. Without it you will be a loose no matter how great your story is or how good your numbers and data are.
Just a thought!
-
I think that the potential audience is also a factor.
If you are appealing to potential donors or advocates, then a story will be powerful call to action. On the other hand, if you are appealing to accountants or engineers, they will need data before taking action.
-
Excellent point, Donna. I do think data and storytelling form a formidable team, but their impact is certainly limited without the benefit of promotion.
RS
-
The missing ingredient is promotion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Reviving a (very) old blog - is it worth shifting the content onto a new blog?
I look after a few ecommerce sites, one of them doesn't currently have a blog, we are setting up a wordpress blog now for the site. Going way back in time the site did have a blog which was on a separate Typepad domain. What I'm wondering is whether it is worth redirecting this whole blog to the new blog section of the site and copying some of the content over to the new blog as historical posts? I don't think it will be possible to redirect each individual post to a new one so it will just be a straight redirect of the old blog domain to the new one with the same (most of anyway) content. Do you think it is worth doing this for the value of this content which is relevant but dated (many of the links are now expired)? Doing this will take some time to do so it's not 'free' content we'd be getting We have a lot of new content planned out so we won't be short of content, just would be nice to have some historical content on there too Thanks
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
Be brutily honest - What do you think of this old content?
My website reports on news relating to certain web hosting providers, and being hit by the latest phantom update a little I am looking back a little more harshly on some of my content with especially the older articles needing alot of work (I know some areas on the site need work), and there are some articles I am just not sure about. I have listed a few OLD articles below https://www.besthostnews.com/the-power-of-shared-web-hosting-by-bluehost/ https://www.besthostnews.com/siteground-sponsors-wordcamp-london/ https://www.besthostnews.com/free-ebook-guide-to-starting-a-website-on-a-budget-a-small-orange/ These are 3 old articles that I have previously updated several months ago, but are they good enough. Due to the nature of the site sometimes I will report on certain news \ features that a web host releases, and sometimes there is very little to write about. These are probably a good example where I feel there is a struggle to write enough or the quality is perhaps lower than something that has more information to report on. I would appreciate some harsh critical view points \ and perhaps suggestions on how to improve my writing style for these kind of generic style posts.
Content Development | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Reposting My Original Content
I wanted to know how I should repost my original content from my blog to other sites, obviously quality ones and legacy style content. I don't want get hit with any duplicate content or spam type penalties, but want to further spread some of my content from my blog to get it noticed and drive traffic and leads. Do I submit the posts as is, then put a link to the original source and if so, how many sites can i safely repost the same piece of content too? I am not trying to do anything sneaky, just want it to spread my best content to a good amount high authority sites. I already do social bookmarking and Facebook, twitter etc.
Content Development | | photoseo10 -
What makes high quality content?
Content is becoming more and more important in rankings and I was wondering what exactly Google defines a good content. Any ideas?
Content Development | | EJDekkers0 -
Content Marketing Strategy for a Solar Panel Shop
Hi everybody Everybody's talking about content marketing strategies these days and the videos from MozCon has definitely been a great inspiration for me. I have a customer who sells solar panels (wiki) here in Denmark and they are more or less hooked on the idea of investing long term. And this is where I wanna ask you guys for ideas to this strategy. I'm open to anything from overall guidelines to specific ideas on content. I hope you will chip in, thanks a lot 🙂
Content Development | | loevgaard0 -
What is the best way to get around duplicate content when you are advertising exactly the same content on two different sites?
I am currently trying to improve exposure for an online degrees website but the content for the degree program pages is exactly the same as the company's main website. What would you suggest for getting around the duplicate content issue as a lot of the curriculum content will obviously be the same for each module, etc? Thanks
Content Development | | BeattieGroup0 -
Wordpress hacked. Entire content wiped out
Someone hacked my Wordpress site, wiped out all my content and changed my login status to a subscriber. Years of hard work gone, I can't log in to fix anything. Is there anything I can do. Is there a way to prevent this from happening ever again. Is there a way to catch these people?
Content Development | | ArenaS0 -
Sourcing content and images for Office Interior Design Blog
Im currently building a blog on Wordpress, and I will be blogging about Office Interior Designs. When I look at my competition they have some great blog posts about office interior designs and I have no idea about how they get: a) The ideas to blog about, how do they find out about these office interior designs b) how they get the content for them, how do they know what to write about each one, do they need permission etc, c) if i am interested in doing a blog on the same office interior design as them, how can I get information )and permission from the company that done the office interior design) on the office interior design so i can blog about it and also how do i get the images and stuff. an example is http://www.officedesignblog.com/invensys-rail-office-concept/726/ I would like to cover this aswell, as i think my future readers would like to know about this. how did they get the images, and the information about the project so they could write a blog post about it? And how would I go about doing the same thing?
Content Development | | CompleteOffice1