“The most valuable commodity I know of is information.”

Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (1987)

From serving daily catered lunches to offering free laundry services for employees, tech companies, in particular, are known for their competitive perks.

At Parse.ly, we understand the importance of fostering a company culture that attracts and retains awesome employees (we’re hiring, by the way!). But we also know that true company culture transcends a list of employee perks, and extends to the way that companies conduct business.

Many of the media companies we work with encourage a data-driven culture that makes it easy for their employees to make informed content decisions. The more they dig into Parse.ly’s metrics, the better they understand the potential of data-informed decision-making.

“Parse.ly is like a candy bar I should really put down — but I just can’t stop checking on it, then digging into individual post performance, and constantly finding out cool stuff.”

Melissa Ward, senior content/managing editor, Target Marketing, NAPCO Media

Are you curious how to get your team on board with using data to help them make daily decisions about their content strategy? Check out these tips, adapted from Parse.ly’s recently distributed Analyst Cheat Sheet, for getting your entire company to fall in love with data:

Democratize data! Gone are the days where only certain teams have access to data in your organization. Everyone needs a way to access data, incorporate it into their daily workflow, and to participate in data conversations.

Avoid Excel. Let’s be honest, not many people are reading that Excel file you sent out filled with “important” data. For data to become a priority at your organization, you need to make it accessible to your team by finding ways to make it the starting point for conversations.

Talk about data. Hold office hours or walk around the newsroom and talk to people about what they would like to know more about. You may find people are interested in questions that analytics could answer, but don’t even realize it!

Write about data. Host an internal blog or send a weekly newsletter that highlights digestible updates with explainers. If you can tie in analytics to everyday discussions about goals or plans, people will start getting used to incorporating data into their workflow.

Audit your current data sources. Look at any tools or systems other teams use to gather data. Are they synced with the work you’re doing, or are they making things more confusing? Make sure that there isn’t duplicated work happening, or worse, two conflicting measurement methods.

For more tips on incorporating data into your newsroom, download our Analyst Cheat Sheet today.