Finding the Insights in Your Data

Whether you’re looking at conversions, site traffic, SEO, script lift or average time spent, chances are you have a wealth of options when it comes to evaluating how your content is doing.

That’s because content marketers have never had more data at their fingertips. In fact, a 2019 Salesforce study estimated that the average marketing organization uses 14 different data sources, with that number growing an estimated 20% year over year. That’s a dizzying amount of data.

But if the past decade has been about attaching as much data as possible to branded content, then the present (and future) needs to be about graduating from data points to insights - in figuring out how to distill a truly compelling (and actionable) story from all the numbers. 

‍

Data Points vs. Insights 

So, what is the actual difference between a data point and an insight? Those terms are often used interchangeably, but they’re two distinct things. A data point might look like an insight but doesn’t genuinely allow for action that way a true insight does.

‍

What is the difference?

Insights communicate something compelling

• They also allow you to tell a three-dimensional story about your content performance. If your brand/client is laser-focused on site traffic, they might have dismissed that first article as a non-performer…which isn’t true. Both of these articles are performing, just in different ways.

Insights are clearly actionable.

• Maybe you introduce a cadence of creative refreshes that serves updated housing market insights every quarter, because realistically this information will be outdated within a few months.

Insights are not only useful in a single context 

• Let’s say you’re a publisher working with a brand, you should be able to take this story all the way to your client’s content marketing team and its value would hold true, if not increase.

Great insights are the opening sentences of a story…

• A story we can then tell not only about your content, your products, your partnership and your audiences.

They should be natural to build on. 

• I.e. would we see even greater engagement if we had geographically specific market insights?

‍

‍

How Do You Translate Your Data into Insights?

I’m going to share a simple checklist that will help ensure you’re truly communicating insights. 

‍

The Insights Checklist

Is this an observation or an insight?

• Are we just re-stating what the data shows us?

Is it actionable?

• Can we/they take this insight and easily and meaningfully act on it?

Is it repeatable? 

• Do we think this insight would hold up to future testing?

So what?

• Does this matter? Is this interesting? Is this useful?

‍

Potential Pitfalls

• Not cross-checking for correlation vs. causation 
• Misalignment with partnership or production goals
• Not challenging your assumptions

‍

Using Insights to Facilitate Repeat Investment 

Here are three ways you can use insights and insights-led storytelling to fuel those conversations.

‍

BUILDING ON INSIGHTS

• The best insights naturally lead to more questions. If they are interesting enough and compelling enough, you can’t help but want to learn more. 

ACCOUNTING FOR MARKET/CONSUMER SHIFTS

• There’s no real finish line when it comes to content insights. Ultimately we’re measuring human behavior and human beings are whimsical and evolving and subject to so many different influences. Our priorities and content consumption habits are always changing. 

ENSURING STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

• Depending on the volume of content being analyzed, you might come up with an emerging insight that’s interesting but you can’t fully be sure of. It would be logical to test that further. Perhaps the next campaign is 6 articles and half of them have embedded videos. 

‍