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
-
How much should I pay for one hour of content creation work?
Hi I have recently been looking for some new content creators to work with. And I recently asked a blogger that I know of how much he would charge for some content creations. I told him that I'm looking for some good compelling content that is about 400 to 500 words. And he told me that he would charge $180 an hour. I sorta feel like that's a bit to much, but I don't want to jump to conclusions without any advice from you all. I'm very well versed in my SEO and do most of the work for my site. But I think a fresh touch would really be helpful.
Content Development | | LittleDog1 -
Any recommended affordable content writer or services?
Any recommended affordable high quality content writer for Ayurveda health products website?
Content Development | | JordanBrown0 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
How can we dynamically populate content on our website based on a visitor's web history?
Recently, I have tried looking into options that would allow us to dynamically populate content (specifically images to be used at CTAs on our blog in wordpress) to different users based on their web history on our website. We would want to be able to dynamically populate images based on the number of visits in the past 60 days and the inferred industry based on pages hit. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything as a standalone tool - I believe HubSpot may have something like this but it is rolled into their blogging platform. Does anyone know of one?
Content Development | | SMPoulton0 -
Ecommerce site content upgrade timescale.
I have been upgrading my sites content and structure and I have been wondering how long I should wait for a traffic increase before I should think it has been a failure and try a new plan of attack?
Content Development | | mark_baird0 -
Syndicating content with rel=author tag in it
If I have an article with my rel=author tag attached to it, and then I syndicate that article to another web site, should I keep the rel=author tag in that synbdicated article? Basically, what I'm worried about is that there will be 2 duplicate articles with my author tag on 2 different web sites. (I intend to put a canonical tag in the syndicated article so there is no duplicate content penalty) What is the best practice for this?
Content Development | | greggseo0 -
Content
I'm curious what people are paying when they outsource content writing. I'm thinking about outsourcing some writing. I'm looking for the best quality content on the web, nothing medicore or average! What do you guys pay?
Content Development | | PeterM220 -
Emailing content to posterous
Posterous is setup to syndicate my content to my personal WP blog. After reading information on SEOmoz, I realize that Duplicate Content is not a good thing. Should I stop this process? Note: The way it works is I email a post to posterous and it posts it there and on my WP Blog and create a FB post and a Tweet.
Content Development | | CMCD0