Monday, November 7, 2016

Why Data Journalism Is the Secret to Engagement

why-data-journalism-is-the-secret-to-engagement


Image via Unsplash



Data is everywhere, and nowadays, it is readily available and easily accessible for marketers to utilize in their content strategy. While many refer to a data-driven content strategy when looking at ways to better understand their audience and leverage influencers, a data-driven approach can also mean creating content based in data journalism.


As the efficacy of outbound marketing and traditional advertising continue to decline (even as their costs remain high), brands are turning to inbound tactics like content marketing as they evolve from advertisers to branded publishers. Data journalism is one of the newer trends among content marketers, which utilizes data analysis to extract compelling stories, often through easy-to-digest visuals like infographics and videos.


Since ideation can be one of the most challenging and intimidating aspects of content marketing, a data-driven, journalistic approach offers a fresh source of inspiration. Helping to satiate the internet's nearly insatiable curiosity, this research-based approach in content creation establishes authority through thought leadership for brands. (highlight to tweet)


Data journalism can fit into any content strategy in any vertical. My team at Fractl utilizes this data-driven approach in nearly every client content marketing campaign we produce. In order to avoid comparing apples to oranges when it came to campaign performance metrics across different industries, we set out to delineate vertical benchmarks by sifting through nearly 350 of our own client campaigns across various industries in a recent study. Besides finding the average media placement and social share count rate for each vertical, we also were able to further pinpoint which verticals saw the most success with various data sources and strategies.


content-by-vertical


Two Approaches for Content Engagement Across 15 Verticals


Establishing your brand as an industry leader through authoritative content is becoming increasingly important as brands make that switch from advertisers to publishers. Generating high levels of engagement and a loyal following is important regardless of your vertical, but we found two approaches to vertical content strategy exist, depending on campaign goals.


Tangential Strategy and Traditional Virality


Tangential relevance to your brand (but still specific relevance to the brand's vertical) helps with content creation in terms of diversity and frequency. For this approach, consider the details defining the brand and its target audience, then brainstorm topics and ideas that broadly or horizontally relate back to the brand's vertical. When searching for the mass appeal that generates a lot of engagement from general audiences, this tangential approach in content strategy is a great option to consider-especially when working with a vertical that doesn't typically see viral-level engagement.


Ideally, creating broadly relevant content that appeals to a socially-engaged audience's motivations for sharing will help generate those social shares and media mentions. Take, for example, a UK brand in the online pharmacy and healthcare market. With the goal of creating a viral hit, our creative team thought of a highly relatable, highly emotional topic that tied back to the services offered by the brand: body image and eating disorders. By illustrating the “ideal” women in 18 countries around the world, unique visuals grabbed the attention of a broad audience, generating 3.5 million views from a single media placement-plus 900,000 social shares from over 600 other media stories.


Niche Strategy and Perceived Virality


As more and more content floods the internet, it becomes more challenging to get noticed in a sea of mediocrity. Your brand is forced to compete with not only direct competitors but quite literally everyone. A more targeted approach through a niche content strategy allows even the smallest brands to earn exposure through perceived virality, leading to stronger word-of-mouth marketing, growing brand awareness, less competition, and most importantly, more qualified leads.


Creating and promoting content that connects with a specific, niche audience within your brand's vertical involves researching audience personas, including where they seek out information, what publishers they read, and what motivates them to engage with content. Our B2B client Alexa's campaign performance is a prime example of how creating niche content fellow marketers found valuable led to engagement far above the Business & Finance vertical benchmark. While their content calendar wouldn't appeal to someone outside of the industry, it helps brands and marketers take their PR outreach to the next level-and earned Alexa over 150 media mentions in authoritative industry publications.


Insights on Data Sources for Different Verticals


Data journalism is the core of each campaign we analyzed, all utilizing various research methods and sources to help create content geared towards the brand's specific vertical and target audience. Sourcing the data can be broken down into two methods: data curation and original research. But what method is best for your vertical? Here are some insights we've learned along the way.


Data Curation


To avoid bias and establish authority, curating hard data from reputable sources (i.e., open source government databases) or scraping social media networks for specific information allows content marketers to utilize existing data but add value by simplifying the information and pulling key findings. Similar to curation for content like blog or social posts, it's crucial that campaign data curation includes creating new content. Otherwise, it just becomes noise.


With higher-than-average media mentions and social shares, Drugs & Alcohol; Politics, Crime, & Safety; Automotive; and Education verticals successfully utilized data curation more than the other eleven verticals. Here are a couple of our creative team's go-to sources paired with examples of client campaigns demonstrating each source's potential for success.



  • Government Data: One vertical that utilizes official government data sources well is Drugs & Alcohol, as it improves the promotional viability of the campaign. Specifically, publishers covering these topics need authoritative and verifiable sources to protect their own credibility. For example, a campaign examining the drug use in America versus Europe gathered data from several reputable international government sources including SAMHSA and EMCDDA. The authoritative “.gov” data sources mixed with the international scope of this campaign led to a huge amount of national and international press coverage-over 550 media mentions, to be exact.

  • Social Media: On the other end of the spectrum, scraping social media networks for data is another source geared towards entertainment. It's worth noting that campaigns for 10 out of 14 verticals specifically using curated social media data saw higher-than-vertical-average media placements. Most notably, more than half of the top performing campaigns falling under the Automotive vertical curated data from the social networks. A scrape of four years worth of Instagram posts with hashtags of various car brands revealed the most-selfied cars on the internet. By appealing to a very broad audience and curating data from a widely used platform, this campaign earned over 150 media mentions plus nearly 9,000 social shares.



Original Data


A second method requires additional resources by creating content based on original data, usually taken from proprietary brand internal data or from primary research. The latter allows for a lot of creativity; research methods range from surveys to surface swabs, leading to a plethora of new data for a campaign.


Business & Finance; Fashion; Home & Garden; Travel; and Technology verticals saw success with original data more than the other verticals with higher-than-average levels of engagement. Here are two examples of our creative team's favorites research methods for acquiring this original data:



  • Field Research: Some of the best data requires a field trip to find it. Going out into the field to collect data ranging from video footage to bacteria swabs offers a proprietary edge, especially when it comes to media promotions. For example, to demonstrate the severity of distracted drivers on one of the country's busiest highways, 20 minutes of original footage was broken down into stills to pinpoint the number of distracted drivers. This time-consuming analysis paid off by earning nearly 200 media mentions. In another example, collecting and comparing surface swabs of bacteria in different hotel classes to reveal the truth about hotel hygiene led to some interesting discoveries that made headlines across the internet with close to 700 media mentions.

  • Surveys and interviews offer insights not only for brands looking to better understand their consumers, but also for curious internet browsers. Nowadays, running a massive survey with participants fitting specific requirements (demographic, geographic, etc.) has never been easier with tools like SurveyMonkey and MTurk. For example, by surveying smartphone users performing a list of specific commands, then ranking the three most popular smartphone assistants on accuracy and satisfaction, Comparing Cortana earned over 340 media mentions thanks to the tech pride and brand loyalty of smartphone users.


A data-driven, research-based approach requires content strategists to do their due diligence to correctly source and analyze the data. Presenting key findings from huge data sets must be done without an agenda to avoid bias. Transparency in the methodology while scrutinizing fact-checking are crucial aspects of ethical journalism.


Whether it's through a tangential or niche vertical strategy, content should ultimately provide value to an audience through education or entertainment to break through the noise. Data journalism is quickly gaining popularity, becoming an invaluable resource to content marketers in every vertical, thanks in part to its ability to educate and entertain.


Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.



       


Why Data Journalism Is the Secret to Engagement

from Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting http://ift.tt/2fLf0To

via
rgh–

30 comments:

  1. Thank you for this useful article!

    This a nice topic to think over! I'm a freelance writer at https://uk.edubirdie.com/research-papers-writing, and now I have a couple of ideas how to improve my content and marketing strategy in general.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Topthesis
    We appreciate your interest in Topthesis.com, the premier academic writing service on the web. We have been serving students starting from high school through graduate programs for over 13 years. And quite honestly, we are the best in the business. Our mission is to assist students at every academic level with their writing assignments, providing unique and original works, based upon customer specifics and delivered in an efficient, safe manner. Our secondary but equally important goal is customer satisfaction. We will continue to work for each customer until he or she is totally satisfied with our work. Over the years, we have refined our policies and procedures so that order, payment and delivery processes have become easier, more efficient, and completely confidential.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you don’t mind, note that your handset must be completely operational at the hour of program actuation so as to enlist boost mobile phone insurance.
    Boost Mobile Insurance
    boost mobile phone insurance

    ReplyDelete
  4. It’s time to get an antique pendant set and you can explore that extraordinary look in real-time. It’s important to get familiar with the prices and thus you can choose the one that meets your requirement.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A huge number of telephones are lost or taken every year. In the event that it transpires, there are steps you can take to locate a lost telephone or if nothing else keep your own data from falling into an inappropriate hand lost phone.
    how to track with IMEI number.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is a 16 digit number that is explicit to your handset which the Police can use to follow your telephone, regardless of whether the criminals have changed the SIM card IMEI number tracking.
    mobile security from theft
    how to locate lost iPhone

    ReplyDelete
  7. We are one-of-its-kind cloud-based unified B2B platform that provides supplier , buyer & business collaboration through verified vendor base across multiple spend categories with Offering more than 70% qualified leads over competitive market players. Supplier4Buyer stands distinguished amidst market players by structured customer service & opportunity for product promotions.
    brass metal | Car Washers | Color Sensors | Computer Speakers | Construction Equipments



    ReplyDelete
  8. We are one-of-its-kind cloud-based unified B2B platform that provides supplier , buyer & business collaboration through verified vendor base across multiple spend categories with Offering more than 70% qualified leads over competitive market players. Supplier4Buyer stands distinguished amidst market players by structured customer service & opportunity for product promotions.ECG Machine | Electrical Appliances | Energy Meters | Engineering Services | Fans and Blowers

    ReplyDelete
  9. We are one-of-its-kind cloud-based unified B2B platform that provides supplier , buyer & business collaboration through verified vendor base across multiple spend categories with Offering more than 70% qualified leads over competitive market players. Supplier4Buyer stands distinguished amidst market players by structured customer service & opportunity for product promotions.ECG Machine | Electrical Appliances | Energy Meters | Engineering Services | Fans and Blowers

    ReplyDelete
  10. We are one-of-its-kind cloud-based unified B2B platform that provides supplier , buyer & business collaboration through verified vendor base across multiple spend categories with Offering more than 70% qualified leads over competitive market players. Supplier4Buyer stands distinguished amidst market players by structured customer service & opportunity for product promotions.Hydraulic Valves | ID Card Printer | ip cameras | Lab Equipment | Laptop Adapters



    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This is a 16 digit number that is explicit to your handset which the Police can use to follow your telephone, regardless of whether the criminals have changed the SIM card MEI number tracking.
    mobile security from theft, how to locate lost iPhone

    ReplyDelete
  13. Supplier4buyer.com is India's largest online marketplace that assists manufacturers, suppliers & exporters to trade with each other at a common, reliable & transparent platform. Get here quality products, trade leads, manufacturers, suppliers, exporters & international buyers.
    b2b portal buyer registration

    ReplyDelete
  14. We are one-of-its-kind cloud-based unified B2B platform that provides supplier , buyer & business collaboration through verified vendor base across multiple spend categories with Offering more than 70% qualified leads over competitive market players. Supplier4Buyer stands distinguished amidst market players by structured customer service & opportunity for product promotions.Gun Spray Painting | Glass Door Lock

    ReplyDelete
  15. Meteorite earrings - from a Moon Dust Necklace to a Silver Star meteorite Necklace we can offer you an amazing selection of stunning jewellery
    Meteorite cufflinks, Meteorite jewellery UK

    ReplyDelete
  16. are you in need of the Automotive Powertrain and component spare OEM manufacturers? wanna know where you can find the suppliers of Automotive Powertrain and component spare? suggest you to check on our website www.Supplier4Buyer.com for the verified suppliers in the same field.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "Does your printer need repair or services? Are you facing problems within the installation of a newly purchased printer?
    Printer Repairing Services

    ReplyDelete
  18. Looking to Buy Moonrock weed online, Buy weed online, Moon Rock Online come to us we are on sale | United States
    moonrocks for sale
    moonrock buds
    cheap weed

    ReplyDelete
  19. Supplier4buyer, B2B Marketplace For Manufacturers helps you to find the Digital ECG Machine manufacturers & OEM manufacturers India. As the India - Largest searchable B2B Marketplace, you can easily find the contact details and address of companies manufacturing and supplying Digital. Commonly demanded in hospitals, the offered machines are commonly used for checking the heart activity. Having the right measurement, the offered machine is greatly demanded across the India. They are simple and easy to operate and needs low maintenance with high performance level. Contact the team for more information.

    ReplyDelete
  20. We are offering our dedicated Top Dissertation Writing services for over a decade, ensuring to deliver the best quality academic writing dissertation drafts. We have successfully assisted thousands of customers to get better results in their academic fields.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Looking ahead for Silver Jellyfish Necklace then we (jurassicjewellery.co.uk) are continually right here to offer the ones in addition to according to your desires inside your budget. Nevertheless, shopping for your jewelry from a relied on organization is extraordinarily crucial as jewelry isn't always handiest an accessory, alternatively it's also an funding and as a result it's far crucial which you do now no longer buy a few cheap, doubtful piece of jewelry at a large price.
    Fossil Earrings Uk | Meteorite Necklace Pendant | Shark Tooth Necklace

    ReplyDelete
  22. Great post about data management. This post helped me a lot in clearing my concepts. Now it's time to avail Chukka Boots for more information.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I appreciated the writer to spending time and energy on it its such an informative article and its clear all the doubts regarding these issues. keep sharing. Now it's time to avail stafford taxi for more information.

    ReplyDelete
  24. College is an exciting place to be. It is associated with tight schedules as a result of the numerous classes, homework and extracurricular activities. Being in college also requires that you make several alterations in your lifestyle. Online research paper Writing Service UK

    ReplyDelete
  25. A a great deal of pupils fight with essay writing. If you are just one of them, you should dread your essay composing jobs. Submitting well-researched as well as well-written essays is crucial for preserving great qualities. However, research paper writing service

    ReplyDelete
  26. Your DIY corner tablespace should not be overdone to ensure you are serious when studying. You should seek for comfort and peace and ease of movement, which means you might also want to ditch the conventional chair and table set up and go for a comfortable, best research paper writing service

    ReplyDelete
  27. "Interested in buying term papers? You've found the ideal source! Our platform offers a wide selection of top-quality term papers available for purchase. buy term papers

    ReplyDelete
  28. Unleash the power of words with data-driven narratives! Seeking professional book writers skilled in the art of data journalism? Dive into a world where information transforms into captivating stories.

    ReplyDelete