Data Storytelling Courses

Everything you need to know

What is Data Storytelling?

Storytelling with data is the art of distilling actionable insights from data and then harnessing the power of storytelling to communicate those insights clearly and impactfully to drive impactful and strategic decision-making.

Let’s take a look at the different components of data-driven storytelling.

Data

Data in its raw form is cold, lifeless and (for the most part) utterly uninteresting. Data is useless unless we can make sense of it and use it to drive value.

Therefore, we are increasingly being challenged to transform data into insights. Transforming data is the process of analytics, and is a crucial part of data storytelling jobs. However, you don’t need to be an analyst or data scientist to leverage data storytelling!

Our role as data storytellers is to curate the insights that we have discovered from analysing our data, and partition the most valuable and actionable insights from our data storytelling discoveries.

To ensure that our insights are actionable, we need to understand:

Who our data storytelling audience is
What motivates our data storytelling audience
We can then consider how our audience would leverage our insights and whether it will be valuable and feasible to implement the proposed changes and solutions.

Our goal is to arrive at a clear understanding of our most important, actionable insights, and why our data storytelling audience should care about them. Once this is crystalized, we are ready to bring our insights to life by storytelling with data.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a compelling communication medium. Humans have been telling each other stories for thousands of years. Oral storytelling traditions pervade every human culture across time and space and have served as the primary means of transmitting knowledge and wisdom between generations until the invention of writing.

Meanwhile, the need to communicate complex insights derived from data is a very novel phenomenon. Therefore, we want to leverage our natural affinity for storytelling to impart our insights from data. In traditional storytelling, we bring our story to life with imagery, either through illustrations, or through words that evoke images in our audience’s mind. In data storytelling, our imagery is expressed primarily through charts, as well through tables and simple text.

A well-designed data visualization is an extremely efficient tool for transmitting information about complicated patterns and trends. The role of the data storyteller is to select the right chart type for any given scenario, to strip out any redundant or distracting components, and then to add annotations, to focus the audience’s attention on the parts of the chart that tell the compelling story.

Visualizations are then enhanced with clear, concise, attention-grabbing titles that highlight the key insights to tell the audience why they should care about it.

Finally, data storytellers need to weave together multiple actionable insights, each supported by visuals and titles. Our goal is to have a narrative structure where all our insights flow together to tell an overarching story that drives action with our audience..

Now that you know the answer to ‘What is Data Storytelling?’, choose your course and start telling compelling stories with data today!

Why is Data Storytelling important?

Data storytelling is rapidly growing in importance because data is rapidly increasing in importance.

Data is all around us – and more and more of us have access to software that helps us ‘analyze data’. But access to data and software does not make you a master of storytelling with data.

What has not kept pace, is the capacity for human beings to understand this burgeoning complexity. As the volume and complexity of our data grows, the complexity of our reports and presentations has grown in lockstep with it, resulting in data-heavy reports and presentations that confuse and alienate the very people relying on them to make decisions.

Compelling data-driven storytelling enables us to slice through this morass of bloated slides and reports, arriving at clear, crisp insights that are then harnessed to make better decisions.

Discover StoryIQ’s market leading Data Storytelling courses and how learning this increasingly in demand skill set can elevate your career.

Online courses in Data Storytelling

Learning data storytelling techniques is essential for many jobs and professions. Those who take data storytelling training, set themselves apart from the pack, as they can communicate effectively with data.

When tasked with analyzing data to identify trends or insights, whether it’s to an audience of coworkers, stakeholders, clients or customers, you will need to know how to communicate with data most effectively.

Explore data storytelling courses with StoryIQ to enhance your career with this in-demand skill-set. 

Data Storytelling for Business course.  In this data storytelling training, you will learn how to create visually stunning data stories that push your ideas and recommendations forward. 

The purpose of Data Storytelling for Business is to teach you how to communicate with data clearly – by connecting with your audience through story and visualization best practices – so that your data, presentations and reports lead your stakeholders to make better quality decisions.

All StoryIQ courses use realistic datasets to simulate real-life business conditions. Get started with an introductory course today.

Jobs in Data Storytelling

Data storytelling skills are required for many jobs and professions. Whether you’re applying for a sales position, marketing, c-suite, healthcare and many more, having expertise in data storytelling will benefit your CV and be a massive boost in future-proofing your career..

Data Storyteller is not a job title as a fundamental skill set expected in the modern workforce. 

The Philippine Institute for Development Studies noted that while there is an increasing demand for data science and analytics skills, this skillset is particularly underdeveloped among the Philippine workforce. The PIDS has defined data visualization and presentation as a crucial competency necessary to be proficient in a data-centered role.

Many roles involve harnessing data to make decisions or recommendations, if not directly, then adjacently. Learning and practicing how to connect with others via data and how to tell data’s stories will set you apart from the pack.

Explore data storytelling courses with StoryIQ to get started on your journey into this exciting field.