When I worked in the newsroom covering the city council beat, I used to pour over reams of reports. You’d find weird things buried right at the back of these documents. One of those stories was the incredibly high number of traffic fines the city was issuing each month. I reached out to the authorities and was quickly invited to a raid. It was wild. Some of the worst offenders managed to evade capture; others were caught hiding under the bed and taken off to pay their dues.
The story generated weeks-long debate: residents accused the city of issuing the fines as part of a scheme to get paid higher bonuses. Still, others who felt they were actually law-abiding said they were easy targets for fine-hungry cops. At its peak, the issue topped public discourse. And it all stemmed from a set of numbers. See, I never would have generated this gem if I hadn’t poured over the data. And if you’re not including stone-cold data in your business blog, you’re risking your credibility.
Please don’t roll your eyes if you’re like, I’m not a numbers person! Firstly, there’s no such thing. Crazy, right! I always subscribed to the not a numbers person fallacy until my husband shared this research with me. But ok, you may not still care because you just don’t like figures and they bore you. Thing is data and analytics is broad and rich. You can dive deep into research studies, surveys and your own findings.
Ok, now that we addressed that, let’s move on…
Do you know how many blogs there are out there?
There are over 1.5 billion websites on the web, according to Internet Live Stats. It’s estimated that only 200 million are active, but even that equals A LOT of content.
So, how does your blog break through the noise to connect with customers?
Data can help set you apart. It’s easy to churn out a samey-same 500-word blog post filled with opinion and subjective things. A researched, data-driven post is less common. It’s harder and that’s why it’s so rare.
In an episode of its Skill Up podcast, HubSpot suggests the production of data is one way to attract links, which is great for SEO-building.
But that doesn’t mean including any piece of data into your blog will do the trick. And when you to it wrong, it can also be harmful.
I spend my days trawling the web to research articles both myself and clients. In this article, I’m going to share some of the most common data blunders I find.
Not Linking out to the Data Source
One of my biggest bug-bears is articles don’t link to figures. During my research, I’ll find an awesome stat. But there’s no link. Even worse, there’s not even a mention of the source of the data. The web was literally made for linking documents. It’s what is so awesome about blogging online: you can point your reader to the source of your research, and they’re free to perform additional research on their own time.
Not only that, but in an era where you can’t trust everything you read, adding a link to your source acts as an extra badge of credibility.
In this post, HubSpot provides “internet-friendly” ways to link out to data sources.
Linking out to Secondary Source
We’re not done with links just yet.
Sometimes, I think this scenario is almost more frustrating that the first one. (Yes, I’m an overthinker who probably dwells on this stuff more than I should.)
So, now instead of no link at all, you get a link. And then it’s like a weird Alice of Wonderland rabbit hole. But instead of a cool internet rabbit hole where you learn more about the physiology of zombies, this one is frustrating. Zero reward. It’s a link inside a link and you never end up at the primary citation.
This one’s just lazy. Don’t make your reader do too much work to get the source.
Using data out of context
Why does this all matter?
Let’s get back to the point of using data in the first place. You want your content to be more authorative. You’re giving your readers another reason to trust what you’re saying, to listen to your point of view. But here’s the thing, when you use data out of context you stand the risk of misleading your readers. If you include a stat about 70% of businesses finding success with a particular type of marketing stack, but that study only focussed on enterprises, you need to make that clear in your post. A good rule of thumb is to only include stats and research relevant to your readers.
The neat thing about this approach is that your readers and customers now have valuable information that’s relevant to them. They may have been unsure about a particular strategy, but now you’ve gone and done the heavy lifting and summarised the key findings for them. Now they can study the research and feel more confident they’re making an informed decision.
If you’re ready to start using data in your blog posts, I wrote an article listing great resources for research and figures.
