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In God We Trust. All Others Bring Data

Bouke Vlierhuis
4 min readOct 8, 2021

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How do you create content that resonates with your customers? By watching how they respond to your content. And how do you do that? By collecting data. Do you work with people who tell you what the customer thinks, without backing this up with data? Then you need to ask some critical questions. Because in God we trust, all others bring data.

In face-to-face conversation, we can instinctively tell whether the other person is interested in what we are saying. Are they asking questions? Are they looking straight at us? Are they nodding? If so, we continue the conversation because the other person appears to be interested.

Are they looking away, do they stop asking questions or do they try to change the subject? Then it’s time to let them go or at least change the subject.

How to create ‘killer content’

In an online conversation, you don’t get these kinds of signals. You need to find other ways to find out what interests people. These days, that’s not terribly difficult. Website data, social media and Google paint a detailed picture of your users’ behavior. A well-organized data process and a good dose of creativity can turn this data into killer content. And this is important, because in our overcrowded and incredibly fragmented media landscape the battle for attention is intense.

Therefore, you should be obsessed with finding out what interests your audience.

Here comes the HiPPO

So why do we so often fail to do that? Why do so many companies create stuff that no one wants to read or see? Why do designers design blue websites, just because the CEO likes blue?

Like almost everything, this has to do with traditions and human nature.

As human beings, and especially as experienced professionals, we are used to relying on our own judgment. Because, well, we’re experienced professionals. We know what we’re doing. Right? We’re not trained to question our own judgements.

The other thing is that, traditionally, teams make decisions by sitting together and exchanging views. And if we can’t agree, the voice of the person with the most authority prevails. If you’re lucky, this is the person with the most knowledge of the subject. Usually, though, it’s the ‘HiPPO’ that leads the project: the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

The only person not present in these excruciating meetings, is the actual person we expect to read or view our content… Fortunately (for them), they get a final say. Because they get to simply ignore our content when it’s published.

Data is the voice of the customer

So, how do you get the customer/reader/viewer at the table in your meeting? Data. Data is the missing voice of the customer in internal discussions. By backing up ideas and positions with data — and demanding others do so — you get to have a discussion, based on facts. Data settles arguments and takes a lot of opinions, emotions and group dynamics out of the conversation.

But this requires humility from everyone involved. Because often, you will come up with some brilliant insight and then fail to find any data to support it. This means your idea will be discarded. Not fun. And sometimes you will publish a brilliant piece of content and the data will tell you it crashed and burned… No matter how hard you try to keep your ego out of the creative process, as a content creator, that always hurts.

No one wants to be the whiner

Asking others for data isn’t always fun either. Social instincts tell us not to seek confrontation. Certainly not with the boss. No one wants to be the nag who ruins a great idea. This means challenging each other to come up with proof takes some getting used to for everyone. Here, the boss should be the one setting a good example, allowing themselves to be overruled by the data. Also, the need to do better should be felt by everyone. I believe this is what the IT consultants I speak to daily mean when they mention the ‘data mindset’: the way of thinking that gives data and validation a central function in all your work processes.

Learn as quickly as possible

But what if you don’t have any data? I’m glad you asked, because this is my favorite bit!

If you’re missing data, try to come up with experiments to learn as much as you can about your target audience, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Clients often ask me what content I think they should create. I always answer: ‘No idea. Let’s go test some stuff.’

And then we’ll create something that we think might work, promote it and check the data. Sometimes we get it right the first time. Sometimes we create something that nobody wants to read and we have to go back to the drawing board a couple of times.

But failure too is data.

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