written by Davis Jameson from Businessisfun.net
How many times have you heard the phrase “picture this” when someone is telling you a story or explaining an event or even a concept to you? Then they proceed to paint a picture for you in a way your mind’s eye can see. That’s because our brains are wired to receive information through visual cues. We were learning about our world and how it works long before we could read, both as individuals and as a species.
That’s what data visualization really comes down to. Taking data and making it easier for our brains to make sense of, to turn ideas and concepts, facts and figures into a clear and recognizable visual.
Why Visualizing Data Is a Great Communication Tool
Visualizing data means converting that information into graphs, charts, diagrams, and infographics. This can make it much easier to convey information to investors, create marketing campaigns, keep staff informed and even help your customers make better purchasing decisions.
Using visual tools means you can reach a broader audience, not just those people familiar with the subject matter or who look at data regularly and can interpret it easily. With differentiating colors, lines, and shapes, visual communication becomes, in a way, an interpreter, translating the data into a familiar visual language.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t know how to create graphs and charts yourself. You can either hire a freelancer to do that for you, or you can take advantage of online software and tools that are easy to follow to create them yourself.
Who Are Your Communicating With?
If your audience is an investor, visual data can help convey your business’s strengths and opportunities for growth. By clearly being able to identify trends using bar charts and graphs, it can be easier to point out where your business currently stands and where the market trends forecast it being in the future. Investors have a lot of options on where to put their money and making your pitch easier to envision increases the likelihood of them agreeing to work with you.
If your audience is your potential customer base, then infographics are an excellent way of providing them with easy-to-follow and understandable information. There is so much online information that consumers can easily feel overloaded with facts. Few consumers want to wade through a lot of data points. But if it’s presented with infographics, they are not only more likely to take the time to understand it but to purchase your goods or services since they can feel confident they know what to expect. There are online tools that can help you create your own infographics in under an hour! You simply choose a template you like, then personalize it with
fonts, colors, and designs that fit your style.
Machine Learning
It sounds kind of scary, like the plot of a futuristic thriller. But machine learning is here now and, in fact, has been here for a while. It’s a branch of artificial intelligence that is built on the theory that machines can learn from data, analyze that data, and then make decisions based on what they’ve discovered.
Once you’ve acquired the data that machine learning has analyzed and made an informed decision about, you can then make that data more accessible by creating visuals to communicate it. Hence, together, machine learning and data visualization can take complex patterns and systems it’s discovered and turn them into a more comprehensible format.
There can be times when the business challenges you’re dealing with seem too big. In those cases, try breaking them down into smaller, more digestible pieces. That will help you analyze the different components of the problem and make it easier to find solutions.
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data visualization can sound overwhelming, like something you’ll never be able to master. But there is no escaping it, it’s the wave of the future for businesses. You can find a lot of resources online to help guide you through it all until, finally, you’ll wonder how you ever ran your business without it!
Project manager and marketing specialist Brasianna Unykue works with small businesses to develop content, websites, and strategies. Reach out to learn more about growing your business.