Communicate analytics effectively with these writing tips
Writing was never a strong skill of mine. For instance, I recall attending one university’s admissions tour, and the tour guide boasted, “We don’t require any writing or English classes to graduate.” And I immediately thought, “What a selling point!” I was a numbers person after all.
Fast forward to now, as a data scientist at Atlassian, I feel like I write all the time. And I (dare I say?) enjoy it. It really is fun to summarize analyses in a succinct writeup. And more importantly, I’ve learned that effective writing can make you a better analyst. A well-communicated analysis will more likely drive change than a sophisticated analysis that no one understands. An analyst’s job requires communicating the impact of their work clearly.
This communication medium will vary depending on which company you work for. Some companies rely on slides and presentations, but at Atlassian, we primarily use our product Confluence to produce blogs and pages. And we use it A LOT. New hires are asked to share an intro blog. Many teams send monthly newsletters to share goals and celebrate achievements. Teammates publish personal blogs on topics ranging from environmental sustainability to OKRs. We’ve already internally published more than 869,684 pages this year alone!
So yes, we write a lot. But writing a lot doesn’t always translate to writing effectively. I still struggle to deliver my message. I’m prone to too much detail, too many long sentences, too many sentences where I list things…oh wait, I’m doing it again. (I’m also a huge fan of putting thoughts in parentheses).
So what makes a good analysis writeup? To answer this question, I turned to one of my senior managers — Jess Vetorino — who writes excellent blogs. Jess has been with Atlassian for close to eight years and has learned a thing or two about writing engaging content. I hope some of these tips can help you write influential analytics writeups.
An organized structure keeps your message clear
Your readers are busy; tell them what they need to know in a TLDR
Your TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) should have a short section at the top of the page explaining the critical takeaway(s). It should explain the blog’s purpose. Why should the reader care? Use a couple of the hardest-hitting data points to backup the takeaway. Avoid technical jargon in the TLDR. This should be a non-technical overview to reach the widest audience. Without doing this, you’ll lose all the non-technical readers right away. And it should only be a few sentences. Remember: most people only take a few seconds to decide whether a blog is worth reading.
Frame the problem (20% or 1–3 paragraphs)
Paint the scene for your readers. This introduction should answer the following: what were you trying to achieve? Why is this work important?
This section requires a delicate balance of providing enough context without overwhelming your audience with too much information. Use links to other content for details if needed.
You can also use a few tricks in this section to draw the reader in.
- Tell the story of a real person. It can be more effective to share a user’s story than to present a bunch of summary metrics.
- Have fun with it. I’d guess that most readers stop here if the blog doesn’t hook them after the first 20%.
Explain your methodology (30% of the Blog or 2–6 paragraphs)
Don’t dive right in here. Start with the basics. Explain the high-level attributes and metrics. Use a table or a chart — you don’t need both. If you feel like your plot needs a table, it’s not a good visualization — remove it and use the table.
Talk through your process: pretend you’re explaining every step in your journey to a non-technical person. Zoom out and think about the main steps you took to get to your findings and the MAJOR milestones that changed the course of your journey. You can start with bullet points and then fill in the paragraphs.
Highlight the key results — (40% of the Blog or 2–6 paragraphs)
Share LESS data — I know we’re analysts, and data is cool, but non-technical readers don’t need to see the data split 1000 ways. Keep things SIMPLE and assume that if someone wants a different view or more detail, they’ll ask for it. If you feel like you need to share all the details, put them on a separate page and link that page.
When sharing numbers, round. Nobody needs to know that the number was 62,456 vs. 62K, and 62K is much easier to read.
Visualizations are great. Make sure to annotate any visualizations.
Conclude — 10% of the Blog
Always end with a call to action or next steps. Is there a dashboard? A new table to share? A second phase of the analysis? A change that needs to happen in the business? Let people know what you’re doing with what you’ve learned.
And thank the people who helped you. 🙏
Remember: shorter is better.
Shorter is better. This is probably my number one piece of advice. When I write a blog, I start with a brain dump. This usually takes a week or two. After the brain dump, I spend another week on visualizations. I shorten the blog in the final week. These are a few things I improve:
- Remove redundancy
- Shorten sentences as much as possible
- Cut down any excess analysis or visualizations
Good formatting and flair can better engage your readers
Themes
Themes are great! They can make it much more fun to read and write.
Visuals
A visual of the problem ALWAYS helps — don’t get too technical here — think Infographic over actual graph unless you’ve got a clear chart that shows the problem (like a surprising drop or spike in something).
White space
USE WHITE SPACE — don’t smush everything together. It makes it hard to read, and white space subconsciously gives readers a stopping point. This is why books don’t start a new chapter until the next page. Think about the satisfaction you feel when you finish a chapter — your pages should have chapters.
If your company has some illustration libraries, then pull illustrations from there. It makes your blog feel official and familiar.
Emojis or gifs
There are so many emojis out there waiting for you. Some of my favorite basics are:
✅ to identify something positive
❌ to identify something negative
💡 to identify an idea
🕷 to identify a bug
You can also throw in a 👏 or 🎈 to celebrate something exciting. My rule of thumb is one emoji per paragraph at MOST — there is a fine line between using emojis and using ALL the emojis. All the emojis make it tough to read the actual words on the page.
Keep the conversation going after you publish
You aren’t finished writing a blog when you publish. You need to SHARE and ENGAGE. After sharing your page, a timely response to comments/questions is SO IMPORTANT. I try to respond to every comment within 24 hours for the first few weeks. This keeps the sharing and conversation going.
I hope you gleaned a new tip for your future analytics writing. Got other suggestions or feedback? Leave a comment! If you’re interested in a career at Atlassian, check out our careers page.
