What are the essential data skills for brand storytelling, and how can you develop them?

1 Data literacy

Data literacy is the ability to read, understand, analyze, and communicate with data. It involves knowing how to ask the right questions, find the relevant data sources, interpret the results, and present them in a clear and engaging way. Data literacy is a foundational skill for brand storytelling, as it helps you to validate your assumptions, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and tailor your content to your goals and audience. To improve your data literacy, you can take online courses, read books and blogs, watch videos and podcasts, and practice with real-world data sets.

3 Data storytelling

Data storytelling is a skill that combines data, narrative, and visuals to create stories that inform, persuade, and inspire. This technique can help you connect with your audience, convey your brand values and vision, and drive action and change. Additionally, it can differentiate your brand from the competition by showcasing unique data assets, insights, and solutions. To improve your data storytelling skills, you can follow a simple framework proposed by Brent Dykes. This includes starting with context to set the stage and explain why the problem matters, building the narrative with data to support your argument and address objections, and ending with the impact to summarize key takeaways and call for actions. Furthermore, you can use techniques such as storytelling arcs, hooks, metaphors, analogies, and emotions to make your stories more engaging and persuasive.

4 Data ethics

Data ethics is the branch of ethics that deals with the responsible and ethical use of data, especially in relation to privacy, security, consent, and fairness. Data ethics is a crucial skill for brand storytelling, as it helps you to respect your audience's rights and preferences, protect your brand's reputation and trust, and comply with the laws and regulations. To improve your data ethics skills, you can learn the basic concepts and frameworks of data ethics, such as the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable), follow the industry standards and best practices, such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and consult with experts and stakeholders when in doubt.

5 Data culture

Data culture is the mindset and attitude that values and promotes the use of data in decision-making, learning, and innovation. Data culture is a vital skill for brand storytelling, as it helps you to foster a data-driven and collaborative environment, where you can collect, share, and use data to improve your brand performance and outcomes. To improve your data culture skills, you can adopt a data-driven mindset, where you are curious, skeptical, and open to feedback, embrace a data-driven approach, where you define, measure, and test your hypotheses and assumptions, and create a data-driven community, where you encourage, support, and celebrate the use of data among your team and stakeholders.

These are some of the essential data skills for brand storytelling, and how you can develop them. By mastering these skills, you can leverage the power of data to tell better and more effective stories that resonate with your audience and achieve your brand goals.