Five Ways To Create Engaging Data-Driven Stories (/blog/how-to-write-

data-driven-stories-5-core-narratives/)
By Steve Rayson (http://buzzsumo.com/blog/author/steverayson/) on September 19, 2016

Data-driven storytelling is poised to be the next big trend in content marketing. Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2015/09/data-is-
the-next-big-thing-in-content-marketing), October 2015.

Data-enhanced storytelling is rapidly reshaping both content and advertising. Adweek (http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-
branding/how-data-enhanced-storytelling-rapidly-reshaping-both-content-and-advertising-169154), January, 2016.

There is a growing interest in data driven stories. A new breed of journalists are uncovering and telling data-driven stories facilitated
byaccess to large datasets andeasy to use data analysis tools. Content marketers and SEO teams are also drawn to data-driven stories by
evidence thatresearch and data based articles attract more links.

In this post below we explore the ve core narratives fortelling stories with data, namely:

1. Trends. For example, how smartphone ownership is increasing or decreasing.

2. Rank order or league tables. For example, the politicians gettingthe most social media coverageor which areas have the highest
crime rates.

3. Comparisons. For example, how one company is performing relative to another.

4. Surprising or counterintuitive data. Data that challenges or conrms something that people believe to be true, or data that is
simply surprising.

5. Relationships. For example, correlations, potentially through to causation and prediction.

What are data driven stories?

Wikipedia denes data driven journalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-driven_journalism) as analyzing and ltering large data sets
for the purpose of creating a news story. The process is one of uncovering insights from the analysis of large data sets to reveal stories
that may be hidden in data. In this way data driven journalism allows journalists to reveal untold stories or nd new angles on stories.
Data driven journalism typically follows a process of nding data, ltering data, analysis and visualisation, and nally telling the story.
Visualisations in the form of charts and images is often a core part of the story telling. The Financial Times for example, currently runs a
column called Chart that tells a story (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6fddf0cc-3aab-11e5-8613-07d16aad2152.html#axzz3zwdgk000) the
premise beingthat they nd a single chart which tells a story.

Five Core Data-Driven Narratives

1. Trends
Trends, rising or falling, form the core narrative of many data-driven stories trends. A good example of asite that uses trend data to tell
stories is the Financial Times. Here are two recent trends it has highlighted to tell stories about low global interest rates and the burden of
an ageing population.

On interest rates the long term trends on bond yields are not encouraging for those that want to see higher rates. The chart tells a story
about a long term shift over 30 years andhow rates continue to fall as central banks try to grow the economy. The interesting question is
what happens when interest rates hit zero. In Germany, Japan and Switzerland we now have negative interest rates.

We have probably all know thatthe population is ageing. The FT chart belowtells a story aboutthe potential economic impact of these
changes by showing the number of people over the age of 65 as a percentage of the working population.
Typically trendstories focus on how something is rising or falling over time. However, even a attening trend can be a major story. One
storyhas been how Twitter is failing to grow its active users. This story can be told through very clearly through the chart and headline
below.

Twitter Fails To Grow Active Users

(Active users in millions)

Once you see a trend the obvious next question is why, why is it increasing or falling, or in Twitters case attening.Thus the trend is not
the whole story, it prompts further areas for investigation.

2. Comparisons
A common data-driven narrative is comparisons. For example, we can take a dierent angle onTwitters failure to grow its active users
bycomparing how it is performing relative to Facebook. This has been a story angletaken by a number of publications. Below is an
examplechart used to show how Facebook is outperforming Twitter.
 Active Users: Facebook Continues to Outperform Twitter

(Active users millions)

Comparisons and trends are used in extensively in telling political stories. For example, this image from the Hungton Post
(http://elections.hungtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton) shows the the story of the current US political
presidential campaign using opinion poll data.

3. Rank order or league tables

Rank order or league tables are another common narrative suited to data. Here is an example from Forbes of the worlds most valuable
brands.

We have provided some content marketing examples below from our own BuzzSumo data.

This rst table below shows the sites with the most shares of articles about content marketing in the 12 months to February 2016.

Wecould write a story on the top content marketing sites by using the data in this table.

This second table shows the authors with the highest average shares of articles on content marketing. Brian Sutter
(https://twitter.com/smallbizbrian)s articles on Forbes have helped make him the author with the highest average shares. All credit though
to Lindsay Kolowich (https://twitter.com/lkolo25) for a really consistent level of shares for her content marketing articles on Hubspot.

4. Relationships
Exploring relationships between data is a complex area, particularly when you want to see if one factor hasa particular impact on other
factors or can predict another factor. However, with advances in machine learning it is an area where we will see a lot more data driven
stories.

A simpleapproach to exploring relationships is to look at the correlation of two sets of data. It is important to remember that correlation is
not the same as causation but it can highlight areas for further research.

For example, we did a piece of research with Moz where we looked at the relationship between social shares and links
(http://buzzsumo.com/blog/50-of-content-gets-8-shares-or-less-why-content-fails-and-how-to-x-it/). We took a data set of 1m posts and
usedthe Pearson correlation co-ecient, a measure of the linear correlation between two variables. The results can range from between 1
(a total positive correlation) to 0 (where there is no correlation) to 1 (a total negative correlation). The overall correlations for our sample
were eectively zero, for example the correlation between total shares and referring domain links was just 0.021.

Our researchimplies that people share and link to content for dierent reasons. Thedata also suggests that research and data posts
achieve relatively high levels of links, which is a great reason for writing data driven stories. OurMoz article itself becamean example of
how data driven posts attract links, the post currently hasover 550 referring domain links as we can see below.

One of the most famous examples of exploring data relationships was highlighted in the lm Moneyball. In exploring baseball data it
wasfound that some surprising factors were strongly correlated with a teams win percentage. One of these wasOPS (on-base plus
slugging). This adds together a players on-base percentage, the percentage of time a player gets on base and the average number of
bases a player reaches when they come to the plate (slugging). The data found a very strong correlation between the OPS and the win
percentage as we can see below.

TheOPS was the factormost strongly correlated with winning, more so than home run totals and batting averages. Hence, teams started
looking for players with the highest OPS scores.

You can also explore relationships in more depth by building predictive linear regression models. I particularly like the models that predict
the quality of wine by using factors such as average summer temperatures and rainfall levels.

There are an increasing range of tools which will allow you to apply advanced techniques such as machine learning. Machine learning uses
algorithmsthat can learnfrom data and make predictions. In essence youbuild a modelfrom example data inputs that enable the
algorithms to make data-driven predictions. This is a growing eld where we will see a lot more activity. Machine learning is something we
are exploring and looking to apply at BuzzSumo.
If you can uncover surprising relationships, you can then start to make steps into predictions based on the data. That can create a whole
other set of fascinating posts. The work of Nate Silver in predicting sports and election results at vethirtyeight.com
(http://vethirtyeight.com)makes for compelling reading. Its the result of his deep analysis of a huge array of available data on election
results.

5. Surprising or counter intuitive data

Some of the best stories from data researchemerge when the data reveals something that is surprising or even counter-intuitive. I
personally liked the research which found that 5 glasses of champagne a day can help prevent Alzheimers disease.

For this article I decided tolook for surprising data about the US to use as an example. ThedataI personally found most surprising was on
incarceration.

America Imprisons More People Than Any Other Country

The chart above shows US incarceration rates relative to other OECD countries. However, the US also has higher incarceration rates than
China or Russia and higher numbers of people incarcerated.

This data intrigued me so I did some more research and found that incarceration rates in the US were very similar to other countries until
1980, when it increased signicantly. See the chart below.
This chart begs the question why did incarceration rates increase so rapidly after 1980? You will need to do your own research but articles I
have read suggest that privatisation of prisons and a dierent approach to incarceration for drug crimes may be responsible. This type of
relationship analysis is at the core of the hugely successful Freakonomics (http://freakonomics.com/) books.

Data driven stories are hard work

There is a misconception that using data is a quick and easy way to create stories. The Guardian says that data driven stories are 80%
perspiration, 10% great idea and 10% output. This resonates with our own experience.

The process involves analysing a lot of data without knowing if you will nd any signicant insights that tell a story. A signicant amount
oftime isspent gathering, ltering and cleaning the data, running dierent forms of analysis, exploring potential implications and testing
theories with further datasets. At BuzzSumo we have analyzed datasets of millions of articles looking for insights and sometimes we can
spend days and weeks without discovering anything of value or a story of interest. Those are not our best weeks.

The best data driven stories are original

In our view one of the great strengths of data based stories is that they can tell original stories. They can reveal trends, correlations or
counter-intuitive surprises that make people look afresh at an issue. Original research does not mean you necessarily need original data.
The data sets that Peter Brand had access to in the famous MoneyBall story were widely available, it was the research and analysis that
was unique. These days there are thousands of datasets widely available and an increasing range of tools to help analyse the data. These
includeTableau, R, Google Fusion Tables and IBM Watson.

It is clearly advantageous if you have access to an original or unique data set. At BuzzSumo our core business is crawling and collecting
very large datasets but most companies also have access to unique data. For example, most businesses have data that is important to
their performance and their industry. This can be sales data, market intelligence or simply an understanding of issues through data from
your support desk. Data that you might consider commonplace could contain insights that are helpful to your audience.

Data-driven story telling tips

Here are some tips on writing data-driven stories based on ourour experience, it would be great to get your tips and feedback.

1. Start with a story idea

If you start with an idea for a story you can then look for data which conrms your ideas or alternatively debunks the ideas. Focus on a
story that is interesting to your audience.

For us a great story might be Why how to posts get 50% more shares. Of course the data may not support this headline but it gives a
clear direction of the data we would need and the type of story we want to tell. There is a danger of bias in operating this way and you
need to honestly reect on whether your data supports your conclusions.

2. Check your facts

If you have made a mistake or have inaccurate datayou will soon get called out when you publish the post. Data posts often get the most
scrutiny on the internet, so check and double check your data, and that it supports your story.

3. Focus on one or two key statistics from your research

You may have a mass of data but highlight the key statistics that people will remember. An example from our own experience was 50% of
content gets 8 shares or less.

4. Use visuals and tables

Data driven stories are inherently suitable forcharts and graphics. Try to hone down your story to one key chart or image, which is the
oneyou want people to share and remember. Trends in particular work well as line charts as outlined above.

In addition to charts use tables to highlight data and bring out key data using callouts, so they stand out from the rest of your text.
Numbers can get lost all too easily in a block of text.

5. Make it human

If you can it is good to bring the data back to a human level and in a form people can relate to. Maybe it is a story about you, a client or a
colleague that relates to the data. As the freakonomics authors said, economics is great at predicting human behaviour based on data sets,
it just focuses on boring problems that most people dont care about. Their breakthrough was focusing on things people care about.

6. Make it insightful and helpful

In terms of your story would someone have made a dierent decision if they had your data? What can they do dierent which will improve
their performance based on your analysis? If you can do this, you have apowerful story, as it means that your insights can help people
make better decisions. Youre predicting their future nobody can resist reading about that.

Note: This is an updated post with new examples that we rst published in February 2016.

(http://app.buzzsumo.com/users/register)
https://francovalentino.com Franco Valentino
Steve, insightful article thanks. My favorite types of articles are the ones with surprising or counter-intuitive data. There is a research paper by
Murray S. Davis that shed light on what makes a topic seem more interesting or compelling. Synposis here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/interest.htm (http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/interest.htm)

Steve Rayson
Thanks, I will take a look.

Nick Szabo
This article made me look up predictable linear regression. Gotta love the internet.

Steve Rayson
Some great free tools and courses. I can recommend Edx courses on data analytics which covers linear regression etc.

SunShine
Excellent article. Years back, I began wondering how we, as humans, would begin to deal with the growing body of statistics, knowledge, data
growing at increasingly exponential rates online. I see that others were wondering the same thing and, most importantly, how to connect it and
make good use of it. I appreciate the mentions of the data crunching tools provided here. Now to nd the time to dig into them.

Steve Rayson
Thanks, I do recommend looking at some of the free courses such as Edxs course the Analytics Edge, which takes you through using R,
the open source data analysis tool.

SunShine
Excellent. Im doing this. Thanks for the share.

Dollar Flipper
This is a great post. I think another part is to understand your audience.

I did a whole post about a bubble that occurred with re-selling mugs on eBay (http://ippingadollar.com/dragon-ball-z-mug-ebay-bubble-data-
analysis/ (http://ippingadollar.com/dragon-ball-z-mug-ebay-bubble-data-analysis/)). Half of my readers thought it was an awesome post, and
another half thought it was over the top.

I guess I didnt realize that my usual data breakout is just a table with simple addition/subtraction. Nothing with graphs, averages, or standard
deviations.

I think younger generations are more comfortable with data analysis since the tools are so much simpler than what was available during
previous generations (no more slide rules required!).

http://www.horizonpeakconsulting.com Jessica Mehring

Another winning article from the BuzzSumo team! As a content writer who often writes data-driven white papers and e-books, this post hit
home and I came away with some great ideas!

http://buzzsumo.com James Blackwell

Thanks Jessica

http://www.mmarley.com Matthew Marley

Awesome post guys!

andrew_davis
Really like this post. Its like creating online documentaries

Susan Moeller
Thanks!

https://dataddict.wordpress.com Marcos Ortiz

Time to invest time to learn more about the powerful combination of R + ggplot2 for Data-Driven Journalism. Great post, Steve.

http://sartorialmess.com/ Sartorial Mess

Great blog! I love Infogr.am for my data visualizations!

Craig Gibson
Not sure if theyve already been shared here, but these two resource lists have pretty much everything youll need. Endless hours of fun.

http://ksj.mit.edu/data-journalism-tools/ (http://ksj.mit.edu/data-journalism-tools/)
http://gijn.org/resources/data-journalism/ (http://gijn.org/resources/data-journalism/)
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