Author: Jeff Cassman

According to Dell, data is the new crude oil of modern society. It’s mined, it’s processed, and it’s valuable—when you know what to do with it.

Data visualization turns raw data into accessible charts, graphs, and maps to help you share it, learn from it, and make data-driven decisions. But game-changing campaigns are only possible if visuals present information in the right way. Get it wrong, and the message is lost.

In this article, you’ll see eight of the best data visualization examples to inspire your internal and external marketing efforts. 

You’ll learn when to use them, what to avoid so you don’t overwhelm or confuse your audience, and five tips for creating these visualizations yourself. 

4 data visualization examples to engage customers and shareholders

You’re not going to stop anyone from scrolling past a standard line chart or two-tone bar chart that looks like it was whipped up in a hurry. 

This isn’t going to increase engagement, no matter what your findings indicate:

These graphs are outdated, boring, and, in the worst case, overwhelming. Many well-intentioned data visualizations take too much work to figure out what you’re looking at, and end up falling flat.

Your customers, followers, shareholders, and partners want to be impressed.

With the right tools, you can nail customer engagement with a highly visual, shareable data visualization. In a 2021 survey of marketers, Venngage reported that data visuals were among the best-performing visual content (along with original graphics and video content).

Let’s explore four audience-hooking data visualizations (that aren’t spreadsheets or pie charts) and why they work.

1. The median age of population radial graph

This could have been a standard bar chart. 

However, Visual Capitalist chose to upgrade its data visualization and display its findings in a well-designed radial histogram. 

This graph would be extremely long as a typical bar chart. It would be difficult to display and comprehend relationships on a large slide presentation, let alone on a smaller screen. 

The ring shape also makes it easier to gain a basic understanding at a glance: European median ages are the highest, while Africa’s median age is the lowest.

From there, you can zoom in to get exact figures, and three short captions add key information.

Similar data visuals to display weighted comparisons include sunburst diagrams, bubble charts, heatmaps, and pictograms.

Best practices for using radial histograms:

• If you’re including a lot of data, like this example, go with high-resolution or interactive designs. It’s much easier to see the information on a smaller screen this way.
• Avoid using stacked bar charts in a radial histogram as it distorts the proportions you’ll see (we’ll cover stacked bar charts later).
• Start…

Continue reading here

Finding out some hashtag mistakes that are hurting your TikTok growth is essential. Nothing sucks like using the wrong hashtags on the content you spent hours shooting and editing. 

We all love how Tiktok doles out helpful features for entrepreneurs and its users to market their brands and gain massive visibility. And as I mentioned in this video, hashtags are one of those fantastic features that help business owners as yourself get discovered. 

Thanks to hashtags, your videos could go viral and garner many views and, potentially, followers. On the other hand, it’s easy to misuse hashtags and hurt your growth on TikTok. In this post, I will share some TikTok hashtag mistakes that may hurt your growth on the platform. 

6 Common TikTok Hashtags Mistakes

1. Using irrelevant hashtags

Hashtags are unique growth features on TikTok, but not all trending hashtags are essential to your brand or business. You are looking for a significant reach, but targeting irrelevant hashtags will drive you to external audiences and negatively impact your growth. 

Irrelevant hashtags will bring audiences not interested in your offer, leading to a high bounce rate and hurting your needed growth. One commonly used irrelevant hashtag I always tell my students to avoid is the #FYP. This hashtag has no use at all in marketing your videos. 

A simple hack is to run deep checks on your competitor’s community and see what hashtags work for them and other strategies helping their growth. In social media marketing, it is alright to snitch in and glean actionable hacks, as far as they are helpful. 

2. Failing to use hashtags popular in your industry

Popular hashtags are always the most used hashtags on TikTok. Marketers often tend to limit their content to only trendy hashtags, undermining the impact of community-centered hashtags. So, ensure you use hashtags that other entrepreneurs in your niche use to reach your target audience. In my case, I often use #consultingbusiness #femalebusinesscoach and #tiktokupdates. 

3. Using too many hashtags 

Just because multiple hashtags look great doesn’t mean they always work that well. Using too many hashtags breeds confusion and misdirection and hinders your ideal audience from finding you. As a rule, using 4 to 5 trending, niche-based, and community-based hashtags is fine. Additionally, ensure that the hashtags are related to your content/brand before using them on your video(s).

4. Using only trending hashtags

Why limit yourself to trends? It’s easy to think you have to use only trending hashtags, especially when you’re new on TikTok. Even though trending hashtags may bring some traffic to your profile, it may limit the chances of your desired brand audience finding you. Instead, use a mix of trending hashtags and more hashtags that relate to your brand.

DOWNLOAD: The TikTok Ad Set Up Guide. Learn how…

Continue reading here

Most businesses out there are product-focused, i.e. they have a product to sell.

This is how it works:

• Offer a service or create a product
• Find people to sell it to
• Make a lot of money
• Quit selling “offline” or quit their day job

It sounds good (in theory). The problem is that this is like pushing a huge rock uphill. Trying to force a product on a market that hasn’t asked for it can be a long, long process – which nonetheless can be successful, of course. The world hadn’t known they needed computers when they got into the market. But let’s face it. Cases like that are very few. 

There’s another model that a lot of companies are using very successfully, but you just might not know it. It’s called building a “customer-centric” business.

An customer-centric business includes the following typical steps:

• Determine what a market needs
• Build a product that covers that need (or adjust your own product to better fit that need)

These are two fundamental steps but there are many routes you can take to build it up:

• Build a true bond with your “audience”
• Learn what they really need
• Sell products/services that they’ve asked for
• Continue delivering way more value than you “take”
• Provide high value education to a small set of people
• Delight those people and grow your platform (website/blog, youtube channel, email list, podcast subscribers)

Get the Digital Marketing Blueprint…

With a Customer Value Journey that strategically builds a relationship with new prospects and converts them into loyal, repeat customers. Click here

So how to understand what your target audience needs?

Market research can be as expensive and extensive as your budget allows. There are lots of companies offering you a detailed niche analysis, surveying, numbers and stats. This is what corporations are investing into on a regular basis.

The good news is, the Internet offers lots of opportunities to research your target niche for free or on a tight budget and keep it in-house.

The Internet made customer centricity possible for any small business. Here are a few ideas:

On-site analytics

On-site analytics is a traditional way for website owners to evaluate their traffic, its sources and entry pages. But it is also a great way to understand your target audience better. Google Analytics provides detailed demographic information – from gender and age to your customers’ locations (like popular cities people tend to access your site from).

As I am writing this, I am surprised my readers tend to access my site from London – sounds like I need to be doing a better job addressing UK audience’s needs:

Surveying your current (or potential) customers

Asking your customers what they need from your product or service, which features they like best and which of those are not set up the way they…

Continue reading here