How to Use Data in Content Creation

Creating content that works requires you to make informed decisions and to make these informed decisions, you need to focus on data-driven marketing and how it can help you collect, analyze, and apply data to your content.

If you’re running out of content ideas and unsure how to use data in your content, let’s dive into the content creation process.

Use of Data in Content Creation

As a marketer, you need to use data at three stages: before creating content (to determine the type of content you create, who you’re creating for), during content creation (to shape narratives, give scale, etc.), and after content creation (to analyze how well your content has performed).

How to Use Data in Content Creation

1.) Using Data Before Content Creation

Insights from data can help you know what type of content to create, who to create it for, and the best format to present such content.

Here are some specific ways to use data before you start creating.

Conduct Keyword Research

Before creating any piece of content, the first step is to know the topics you want to talk about or the keywords you want to target.

Since one of the primary goals of content creation is to engage with an audience, it’s crucial to uncover the queries they’re searching for online. Keyword research is how you get valuable insights into these queries.

While conducting keyword research, it’s crucial to analyze the intent behind a search — whether it’s informational, navigational, transactional, or something else.

Identify Your Audience

Your best pieces of content can have mediocre results if you don’t put them in front of the right people. Data can help you identify the right people.

Using data, you can remove assumptions about your audience and who reads your content.

Data can tell you things about your target audience, like their age range, interests, emotional triggers, and social media platform where they hang out.

You can use Google Analytics, customer surveys, or some other social media analytics tool to uncover data insights about your audience.

Choose the Right Content Format

After uncovering who your audience is and what they search for online, you can also use data to discover their most preferred content format.

What the data shows will determine where to spend most of your content creation efforts to generate the highest return on investment.

2.) Using Data During Content Creation

You should think about how to responsibly frame the data in a way that will advance your narrative.

By putting data into context and using it to strengthen your point, you can give readers a post that will stay with them long after they’ve left the page. Here are some specific ways to consider when using data in your posts.

Demonstrate Change

There is no more powerful narrative technique than using data to demonstrate change over time. Showing a striking change trend (whether it be deterioration or dramatic improvement) not only brings weight to the discussion but can also evoke an emotional response from your readers.

Show Discrepancy

Isolated on its own, data can fall flat. But put a set of data into context to highlight discrepancies, and you have a strong narrative. By showing discrepancies between perception and reality or between two sets of data, you can highlight gaps that lead to clear calls to action.

Show Connection or Correlation

Using data to show the connection between two or more different things helps readers make better decisions concerning future actions.

Give Scale

Scale can help you add context to your posts. What data do you have that can lend itself to this type of visualization?

3.) Using Data After Content Creation

Optimize Published Content

One excellent way to use data “post-content creation” is to find opportunities for content refreshing. Data from a tool like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can show you content that has been consistently losing traffic over time, allowing you to identify content needing an update or refresh.

You can also run a content audit to identify the best performers from the existing content that can be leveraged or repurposed for other marketing channels.

Analyze Audience Engagement

There are a ton of metrics you can track after publishing a piece of content to see how your audience interacts or engages with said content. For instance, you can use Google Analytics to check how long readers stay on specific pieces.

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