Are your Customers Screaming At You With A Cryptic Code?

When I was in fourth grade, I sat in the back right corner of the classroom. Day in and day out, trembling at the thought that I would be called on during math.

My palms would sweat, my heart raced and I even thought I felt some hair stand up on the back of my neck. Math was SO NOT my thing, and it was perpetuated with the beliefs of everyone around me. Nikki can’t do math, therefore a mathematical brain was never fostered within me.

Plot Twist!

I’m hyper-analytical. I fricken LOVE the story that numbers can tell. I may not enjoy calculating the numbers, but once they are all laid out in the open, I feel like all the numbers come together on the page to tell a story, in A Beautiful Mind sort of way.

Maybe you are like this too. Maybe your disdain for numbers really is only about mental calculation and, in fact, you are actually good at distilling the story at which your numbers are telling you.

Numbers don’t have to be scary. They can actually be quite beautiful in a unique way by stringing events together that culminate in a story. The story your customers are collectively trying to tell you.

Without being tapped into this cryptic customer code, you are essentially flying blind in your content creation (and all of your other business efforts).

Data is the way you get to know who your collective customer is and what they want. This is your magic sauce, amulet, wand etc. It’s precisely the thing that takes you from Katherine Kane to Batwoman or from Clark Kent to Superman.

Remember, your story is not made up of just the last ten minutes of your life, just like your data story cannot be told by looking at only one piece. A story is about the whole, big picture view of your business world. Telling a data story is about taking all the pieces, stringing them together and choosing one moment to distill to tell the story.

For example. I wanted to write my ‘About Me’ page. Now, I know I have lived many many hours on this planet. I could not possibly tell my entire life story here on one page. So I had to choose the parts that were most relevant to you. I could not MAKE THAT CHOICE though if I did not know the entire story to begin with.

You must know all your numbers and imagine getting inside your customer’s head in order to be able to tell the story that’s most relevant to what you need to know right now.

3 Things to remember when looking at your data:

  1. Likes don’t mean shit.

They are not the proper way to see what your customers are telling you. They’re called ‘vanity metrics’ for a reason. they’re shallow and insignificant. Don’t be that yourself by allowing them into your consciousness.

  1. One post does not make a story.

I am hereby granting you permission to stop worrying about every single post you write. This one post does not tell your entire story, or in rather, your entire self-worth. You’re worthy because you are human. So don’t let the likes get to you.

  1. Hire someone like me to look at your data for you.

Sometimes it’s hard to distill your own picture. You are too close and it’s too personal to get down to the nitty gritty truth. I hire someone to look at my numbers for this exact reason. Click here to get started with me.

 

 

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