5 Best Practices for Telling Great Data Stories

Data stories can bring facts to life. They can help you make sense and order out of a disparate collection of facts. They make it easier to remember key points and can paint a vivid picture of what the future can look like. Stories also create interactivity—people put themselves into stories and can relate to the situation.

Simple strategies can help you to use storytelling to gain your audience’s attention and commitment. Learn how to make your data presentations and reports more interesting, more dynamic and more effective. And see how easily and quickly you can build effective stories from the hidden insights locked in your data.

Tell data stories with your presentations:

1. Think of Your Analysis as a Story - Use a Story Structure
2. Be Authentic... Your Story will Flow
3. Be Visual - Think of Yourself as a Film Editor
4. Make it Easy for Your Audience and You
5. Invite and Direct Discussion

Don’t be afraid to tell data stories. Being factual, detail-oriented and data-driven is critical in today’s metric-centric world but it does not have to mean being boring and lengthy. In fact, by finding the real stories in your data and following the best practices above, you can get people to focus on your message—and thus on what’s important.