You’ve Got Data… Now What? Everything You Need to Know About Data Storytelling
Stories are just data with a soul……
Data is only useful if you can get value out of it. Numbers have stories, translating to incredible amounts of potential value — but only if you have a way to uncover these insights. This is the basis of data storytelling.
“The ability to take data — to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it — that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades.”
The rate that businesses collect data today is phenomenal. You can now collect data on every aspect of your business and, in fact, your life. Now that businesses have access to more and more data, they’re desperately looking for skilled data analysts.
Despite the surgence of solutions, such as BI tools, dashboards, and spreadsheets over the recent decades, businesses still are unable to fully take advantage of the opportunities hidden in their data.
Dashboards and spreadsheets only tell you what is happening. But, they do not tell you why
What is Data Storytelling?
Data storytelling is a simple name for a process that’s a lot more complex than it sounds. In a nutshell, it is the translation of data analysis to easily-understood insights to influence action or business decision-making.
For nearly a decade, data-driven decision-making and digital business have been on an upward trajectory. By 2018, the US alone was short of 1.5 million analytics-savvy managers and over 140,000 big data analysts. Data storytelling is a skill of data science and data analytics, working to connect decision-makers with the sophisticated analytics of big data.
Data storytellers have made their way into the workplace, and they come in the form of economists, statisticians, and even journalists, with advanced degrees in data manipulation. People in these professions already know how to either tell stories or derive meanings from numbers. In some fields, they are able to take data and convert them into actual news stories — pretty neat, huh?
Why Is Data Storytelling So Important?
Most data analysts and business decision-makers don’t glean out the full potential of data at their disposal. Storytelling with data is still a little-used skill in the corporate environment, to many organizations’ detriment.
Here are five reasons to take data storytelling seriously from now on:
1. Stories Provide Meaning
We use stories and narratives to give data and numbers context, helping us to interpret better and gain better insights. These are the things that make data meaningful, relevant and interesting.
People want insights that solve their problems, expand their knowledge and help them navigate various aspects of their lives. By using data storytelling, you can offer real service to your clients by giving them answers they relate to.
2. Stories Are Easy to Understand
The goal of data analysis is to change the way someone takes action or makes a decision. The analyst attempts to inspire trust, persuade, and initiate change with their analytics. For this to happen, you don’t need impressive or high-level analytics; you need understandable insights.
3. Data Analytics Is Complex
The average professional, even a high-level manager, has trouble understanding the details of data analytics. However, numbers can be very compelling when served properly. Stories incorporating analytics and data are more compelling than the ones appealing to emotion or personal experience.
Data storytelling is the last — but possibly most important — mile in the analysis journey. It explains the why of data and enables stakeholders to understand data in the language they speak. It is the reason why companies that use business intelligence make better, more informed decisions five times faster.
4. Shorthand Data Presentation
There is so much data available today, which means analysis and preparation can take up loads of time. However, business decision-makers seldom have the time to comb through mountains of data — this would be boring, tedious, and time-consuming. Instead, they need shorthand representations of insights.
5. Stories Improve Message Retention
Blending the narrative with visuals and data targets both sides of the brain, which cements your message in the receiver’s mind. The narrative/story explains the data, and the data validates the narrative. This gives you the best of logical and emotional communication.
6. Stories are Flexible
You can tell different stories depending on your audience and objectives, and organizations often explore the different kinds in time. The most important thing is for data analysts to move from reporting stories to correlation, causation, explanations, predictions, and depth stories/, among others.
What makes up a good data story?
A good data story leverages three major components:
Data, narrative, and visuals.
The data component is simple, we must have the accurate data, to reach correct insights. The visual component enables us to spot trends and patterns in datasets, which are not easily seen in the rows and columns of spreadsheets.
Data storytelling is about communicating your insights effectively, giving your data a voice
The narrative components which concern the simple language used to describe the data can be seen as giving a voice to the data. Each data point is a character in a story — a protagonist — with its own story to tell. Combined together, narrative, data, and visuals can create data stories which drive change in businesses.
Data Storytelling is not a new concept. Companies have been attempting it for many years now and have seen the success.
Here are some examples of how Spotify, Slack and Uber have all utilized the power of data storytelling to communicate with their customers.
Spotify
In recent years, Spotify, a music app, has sent annual recap stories to their customers in the format of an email. These short stories pull interesting statistics for each user such as the number of minutes they’ve listened to music on their app. This is an engaging way of communicating the value of their service instead of simply sending them an invoice or simple thanks for using us.
Slack
Slack, a communications tool replacing the traditional and outdated train of emails, is utilizing storytelling to create a different dialogue with customers each month at the time of invoicing.
In place of sending an email with the invoice top and center, Slack sends a visual story communicating the key ways its customer has utilized their service. This high-impact dialogue is shifting the conversation with customers.
Uber
Like Spotify, Uber has used data storytelling to communicate annually with its customers.
In place of an annual recap email showing the total amount of money you have spent with Uber, they have shifted the conversation to show how much value the service has delivered to their riders. Showcasing personalised statistics of your experience with the app, you immediately can see how much impact they’ve made to your everyday life.
Final Thoughts: Data Is NOT Scary
Data storytelling is the future and all businesses need to embrace it sooner rather than later. Businesses today have more access to data than ever before but all this is useless if you can’t draw better insights and make better decisions.
Buyers are exposed to the same content formats, so businesses that present unique stories or unique experiences will have the edge in the consumer’s mind. Start learning how to analyze data and how storytelling with data works. Use it to mold interactive and visual experiences that are meaningful to your audience.
By Mahima Rathod
November 2020
