Data Collection and Utilization Best Practices (Part 1)

Posted on May 16, 2023

At Pride Surveys, our mission is driven by our commitment to work with our community partners and education coalitions to provide research, resources, and data surrounding and focusing on the current issues that affect today’s youth and adolescents. Data collection and proper utilization are essential for informing parents, students, educators, and community coalitions about encouraging student mental, emotional, and physical health.

Over the next few months, we will present a series of blogs to help you showcase and display critical data effectively in different settings. With the immense amounts of data that researchers and organizations compose, finding ways to showcase and present data in an interesting way that drives home the need for change, reform, or advocacy can be challenging.

This month, we begin with social media. Whether you’re fundraising for a cause or part of a coalition, in today’s digital age, social media is one of the most powerful tools for raising awareness and fundraising for various causes. However, with the vast amount of online information, it’s important to present data effectively to capture your audience’s attention and convey your message clearly.

Some effective ways to present data on social media and how it can be used to raise awareness and funds for a community coalition include the following:

1. Choose the Right Platform

The first step in presenting data effectively on social media is to choose the right platform. Each platform has unique features and audiences, so it’s essential to tailor your message and data to fit the platform. For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience with your data points, Instagram and TikTok would be better suited for your message, especially if you’re attempting to drive home a topic like the dangers of alcohol or tobacco use in teens. On the other hand, if you’re targeting professionals or are attempting to showcase information from a coalition, LinkedIn or Twitter would be the best choice.

2. Data Visualization

Otherwise known as infographics. Think of it as the art piece of data distribution as it is the graphical representation of data using graphs, maps, charts, and other visual elements that readers can easily absorb. In a world where the average person does not read a post for more than 30 seconds, it’s a type of visual display that attracts people’s eyes and keeps them absorbed in the most critical messages.

3. Videos

Video is the dominant way to get your message across on social media right now, and not necessarily by choice. It’s simply that social media platforms recognize that people will stay on their platforms longer if the content is in video form, so they allow videos to be displayed online much more often. Therefore, it’s crucial that you utilize the video possibilities to explain a complicated research or data point. From there, you can include captions to help drive the point home.

4. Keep Data Simple

When it comes to presenting data, simplicity is vital. Pick out one to two strong data points from the data collection and run with those. Avoid using complex jargon and technical terms that may confuse your audience, especially if you’re trying to get the attention of adolescents and teens! For example, say, “Over 95% of students at your school have never smoked cigarettes,” rather than getting bogged down in cigarettes vs. vaping vs. marijuana vaping and just flavorings compared to cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. While interesting, this level of complexity can confuse the message you want to convey.

5. Trivia and Did You Know? 

As mentioned above, keeping information simple and sharing it as a trivia lesson or a #DidYouKnow post will also help keep your audience’s attention. They won’t have to spend much time with this content but will still learn the significant points.

6. Make It Shareable

Make data easy to share by including share buttons on your posts and creating visually appealing and attention-grabbing content. Encourage followers to share the posts and tag their friends to spread the word. Even more effective is to partner with another person online, ideally an influencer in a similar field, who would be happy to share the data on their stories or platforms.

7. Content Curation

It’s important to share others’ data collection from your social media community, not just your own. If you want to display your data, include additional data you’ve seen other organizations post about and see if they’ll share yours too. Also, find other organizations that are talking about the same things and comment on their posts so their readers can see what your organization is doing as well.

Presenting data effectively on social media can be a powerful tool for raising awareness and funds for your coalition. If you would like more information on data collection, effectively presenting data on social media, general behavioral stress, depression, addiction, or other mental health-related issues in your communities, we offer many options to fit various needs. If your community or school requires data collection to determine the mental, physical, or emotional health issues that may be occurring, please reach out to the Pride Surveys team.

Resources

https://gosalesandmarketing.com/creative-ways-share-data-social-media/

https://insightrix.com/6-creative-present-research-data/

https://whatagraph.com/blog/articles/social-media-data-visualization

https://hbr.org/2020/02/present-your-data-like-a-pro