In marketing, good e-book design isn’t just about making something pretty; it’s about enhancing your viewer’s experience with your content. When you turn a boring cover into a stunning calling card, or a cluttered layout into a visual treat, or a confusing data set into an elegant visualization, you make it that much easier to grab—and, most importantly, keep—your audience’s attention.

We love it when we see brands from all industries up their e-book game by applying A+ design, and we think seeing others’ good work can inspire you too. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the most standout examples of e-book design we’ve seen lately.  

7 Excellent Examples of E-Book Design

If you’re facing an e-book design project and need a little inspiration, we have just what you need. Here are seven great takes on e-book design from both B2B and B2C brands. 

1) The Secret Sauce by LinkedIn

Why we love it: A great cover

We’re suckers for a bold visual, and this e-book cover hits the mark for several reasons. 

1. It’s a clever theme, demonstrating that LinkedIn has the literal secret sauce (bonus points for making it the only bottle with a label).
2. Its clean photography really pops, especially compared to most of the boring covers in the B2B space. 
3. It reflects LinkedIn’s brand identity via their signature bright blue (a visual differentiator). 

When you’re looking to make an impact, a visually arresting cover is the way to do it in an instant.

Note: While a cover is incredibly important, maintaining a design aesthetic throughout all of your content is equally as important. LinkedIn decided to promote the e-book by creating an infographic, which also carries the same visual theme. A+ all around.

Tip: Make sure your e-book design reflects your brand identity. To make it easier for content creators to replicate, find out how to craft a strong brand’s style guide.

2) Your Field Guide to Foraging Intent Data by Terminus

Why we love it: A clever theme

Gathering data is a crucial part of a marketer’s job, but you can feel like you’re lost in the weeds. Terminus does an excellent job of translating this metaphor into an exciting adventure guide. From the people and animals to the maps and trails, this interactive e-book is a perfect example of how a little creativity can drastically enhance a viewer’s experience. By giving it this unique twist, learning how to gather data feels like an exciting adventure—not a dull chore.

Tip: It’s easy to come up with obvious visual metaphors (e.g., lightbulb = idea), but challenge yourself to come up with a visual theme that is both relevant and interesting.

3) Break Free of Boring B2B by Ceros

Why we love it: Unusual imagery

This is a perfect example of super creative e-book design for a subject that can be notoriously, well, boring. This interactive e-book is an explosion of color, pattern, and surprising imagery that is totally unexpected. From a screaming bear to a soda-drinking cat, it takes Internet meme aesthetic to a whole new level while delving into the ins and outs of B2B content marketing. We love an eye-catching interactive, and this brings the best of animation and information together in one easy-to-navigate package.

Tip: Since you don’t have to be literal in your metaphors, think about the real message you’re trying to deliver. Ceros wanted to prove that B2B doesn’t have to be boring, so they created a totally surprising and whimsical e-book design to prove just that.

4) STFU Already by Unbabel

Why we love it: Bold palette and typography

Not all e-books have to be interactive adventures. Unbabel’s thoroughly entertaining PDF e-book proves you can make a big impression without a ton of bells and whistles. Its bright and bold color palette, playful illustrations, and beautiful typography make the subject matter that much more interesting. Whereas they could have taken the technical route, espousing their software benefits in a boring brochure, this technicolor approach generates excitement and curiosity about their offering. F yeah, Unbabel.

Tip: Bold colors can help you stand out from your competition, especially when you use them for your cover. If you’re not sure what fits your message, find out how to curate the right color palette for your brand. 

5) How EU Banks Can Ensure EPI’s Success by Feedzai

Why we love it: Pops of personality

Any time a brand can transcend their product offering and show us who they are, it’s a win for brand storytelling. Feedzai is a perfect example of this. For an e-book about financial safety, which may seem rather droll, they do a good job of adding personality via people-centric illustrations (which feature a balance of genders and more than one skin tone—thank you).

Tip: Depicting diversity is crucial. Be mindful of who you’re representing through imagery (be it illustration or photography).

6) How to Successfully Negotiate a Higher Salary in 4 Easy Steps by Her First 100K

Why we love it: Simplicity with style

Good e-book design doesn’t mean you have to design a custom font, create hand-drawn illustrations, or conduct a 5-day photoshoot to get the best images. This guide makes great use of photography, typography, layout, and negative space to deliver the information in a straightforward, cohesive package. If you wanted proof that strong design can elevate even the simplest e-book, this is it.

Tip: If you don’t have a ton of design resources, simple typography treatments and callouts can do a lot to make content easily digestible.

7) Einstein’s Guide to AI Use Cases by Salesforce

Alright, so this one isn’t technically an e-book, but it is a clever piece of lead generation. You answer a few questions about what type of work you do, and this interactive guides you to the most relevant case study for you. This is a very clever way to create a personalized, guided experience through strong design. The Einstein character animation, the simple and clean navigation, and the brand colors make this a clearly branded experience.

Tip: Simple interactivity can make all of your content more engaging, whether it’s an e-book, guide, or questionnaire. If you’re curious to learn more, find out how to brainstorm great interactive content ideas. 

How to Nail Your Own E-book Design

We want to see better e-book design in the world, so we’re always happy to share the tips we’ve learned from our own projects. If you’re looking for more tips to improve your e-books…

• Learn more about why design can make or break your e-book. 
• Follow our step-by-step guide to create an effective e-book from scratch. 
• Try these helpful tips to improve your e-book design.
• Get even more inspired by these 50+ examples of great e-books.

And if you need a partner to help bring your next e-book to life, here are 12 tips to find a good content agency. You can always hit us up too.

Blend’s digital platform streamlines the journey from application to close—for every banking product. For this project, Blend was specifically interested in a report that would explore the state of the industry as it relates to the application process for deposit accounts, the keys to a good process, and how institutions can best serve their customers.

However, this wasn’t a standard data design project. Before we could bring the data to life, we needed to get it. So we crafted custom criteria to outline the key factors you need to create a successful application experience and audited a list of 100 financial institutions (including banks and credit unions) to score each. Of course, the challenge with all data storytelling is identifying the most relevant information (aka the real story). Because the primary goal of the report was to help readers improve their own application practices, we focused on identifying industry trends and the most interesting insights to turn into relevant takeaways for the reader.

The result was a high-value piece of content that establishes Blend’s authority and expertise in the industry, and positions the brand as a trusted resource to their customers—a content marketing win-win.

Content takes time, money, and resources to produce, which is why we believe you should get as much mileage as possible from anything you create—especially with cornerstone content like e-books. Unfortunately, marketers are usually sitting on an archive of great content that’s just gathering dust, either because it never had much traffic to begin with or because it’s been forgotten. This is a huge waste.

You can get a lot more from your existing assets by using them to create fresh content. This approach is called a divisible content strategy, and not only is it economical but it expands your reach, takes less work, and helps you promote other content, helping strengthen your entire content ecosystem. 

One of the best ways to breathe new life into old content is to create infographics. Things like e-books, reports, guides, research, and surveys are filled with valuable information and interesting data insights that can be used to tell many different types of stories—and infographics can help bring those stories to life in unique ways.

5 Ways to Create Infographics

If you’re not sure what types of infographics to make from your e-books, here are some of our favorite ways to extract stories and come up with new ideas.

1) Expand on a Topic

E-books and reports are full of valuable information, but they can only cover so much on a given topic. By exploring a related subject or doing a deeper dive into a single topic, you can create an interesting infographic that educates your reader—and encourages them to learn more by checking out the original e-book. Pro tip: Comb through the sidebars or callouts in your e-books or reports—those are often great subjects to explore.

Example: To promote their What DDoS Attacks Really Cost Businesses survey, we helped Incapsula create an infographic on the anatomy of a DDOS attack. While the survey covered how the issue affects businesses, it didn’t precisely explain how these attacks happen. Creating this infographic allowed Incapsula to further educate people while promoting the survey.  

2) Create a How-To

People are always eager to learn something, and if you can provide them with practical information that makes their lives easier, they will love you for it. Turning your best tips and tutorials from e-books or other cornerstone content into compelling infographics is a great way to provide value—in a highly shareable format.  

Example: We partnered with LinkedIn to create a fun infographic that offered tips on how to create a great marketing machine. The infographic was used to promote the brand’s e-book, The Marketing Skills Handbook, which included many more great tips.

3) Summarize a Chapter or Topic

Infographics are an effective form of storytelling because they help people process information visually, making them a great way to communicate concepts that may be complex or challenging to explain. Also, not everyone has the time to dive into an e-book or research report. Creating a condensed infographic version that includes the most important, interesting, or relevant information provides a great service.

Example: Education company Course Hero is dedicated to helping people learn online, so we partnered with them to create a series of infographics that summarize famous works of literature. These infographics are useful study materials for busy students, helping them learn in less time.  

4) Find a News Angle

Newsjacking can be a great tactic to give older content new relevance, as long as it’s done appropriately. (Follow these tips to make sure you do it the right way.) Think about the trending topics in your industry or in the larger media landscape. Do you have data that might shed light on an industry trend? Is there a social tie-in that might make your content more interesting?

Example: To promote their Definitive Guide to Digital Advertising, we helped Marketo create an infographic on the “Mad Men” of the millenium, showing the major trends that define today’s marketing landscape—contrasted with those of the Mad Men era. Thanks to the popularity of the show, it was an interesting, unique, and relevant angle that helped Marketo join the conversation in an organic way. It was also picked up by Ad Week, helping Marketo expand their reach.

5) Tell a Surprising Story

Data and research often contain interesting, unique, or surprising insights and discoveries that tell a very interesting story. Turning that type of information into a compelling infographic is an easy way to repurpose content and get more attention.

Example: We helped High Five craft an infographic based on their 2015 Workplace Culture and Communication Report. The story revealed the negative effect that tech has on the workplace—a surprising take that is relevant to people in all industries.

How to Make a Truly Great Infographic

Coming up with a strong infographic idea is just the first step. Once you’re ready to start creating that infographic, you must follow best practices at every stage of the process. To ensure your infographic is as successful as possible, follow these tips to nail everything from copywriting to promotion.

• Find out how to craft a compelling infographic narrative.
• Avoid the 15 most common infographic design mistakes.
• Optimize your infographic for SEO to get the most traffic.
• Use this tactic to get publishers to feature your infographics.
• Try these 19 tips to drastically improve your infographic marketing.

If you need a little help getting everything done, find out what to look for in an infographic design company. Or let us know what you’re struggling with. We’d love to chat.

Providing people with high-quality, comprehensive content is a great way to build relationships, increase leads, improve SEO, and more. That’s why e-books are such a valuable tool for marketers. The problem is they are also one of the more difficult pieces of content to produce. From copywriting to e-book design, it can take a lot of time and energy to create something of quality. But there are always ways to work smarter, not harder. And we’re always on the hunt for the best tools, tips, and tricks to make your life easier. So let’s talk about one of the easiest ways to create quality e-books in less time: e-book templates. If you are a brand that produces a lot of e-books (or wants to), templates will change your life.

The Benefits of Custom E-Book Templates

When some people hear the word “template,” they think of a ‘90s PowerPoint slide. But well-designed templates don’t turn your content into a boring brochure. They are an efficient way to create content that is:

• On-brand: An e-book design template is designed around your visual language, including fonts, colors, logos, etc. You don’t have to get approval from an art director, and you can be confident that you’re producing something that always reflects your brand.
• Consistent: If you look through your archive, you will probably notice your e-book design reflects a range of styles and design aesthetics. This is problematic if you’re trying to build an instantly identifiable brand (and who isn’t?). Whether you’re working with a freelancer, an agency, or an in-house designer, templates ensure that everything you do will have a cohesive feel.
• Easy to replicate: Building an e-book design from scratch takes a ton of time. But you can reduce that time tremendously with a comprehensive template. You just pick and choose the elements you need, then plug your content in. This makes it easy for novice designers (or even marketers) to create something of quality with a quick turnaround.
• Economical: If you don’t have to create a brand-new design every time, you can reduce costs while increasing your output. That gives you a higher ROI for every e-book you create.

So, how do you create these magical templates?

How to Build E-Book Templates 

We know marketing teams are usually overloaded, especially designers. But remember that a little bit of work up front can save you a ton of time down the road—and make designers’ lives a lot easier. If your team doesn’t have the time, you might consider using a content agency (or baking templates into an engagement you already have). But if you’re going to DIY it, here’s the simple 3-step process to create an intuitive visual design system that anyone can use.

1) Go Through Your Existing E-Books

You might only have a handful of e-books, or you might have a huge archive (in which case you can choose, say, 10). Go through each to identify the common elements that you will need to build into your e-book design template. The goal is to build something that works for any e-book subject, so it should be comprehensive and scalable.

This might include things like:

• Cover design
• Data visualization (charts and graphs)
• Illustrations
• Diagrams
• Sidebars
• Callouts and pullquotes
• Images/captions
• Chapter breaks
• Headers/subheads
• Iconography

Identify the most common design elements in your e-books. 

Make sure to poll your team about what they might also need. You can also look at brands whose content you admire. (Here are 5 great e-book design examples you can learn from.)

2) Build Your Design System

Once you know what your design should include, start building those elements. At this stage, you’re building your visual system, such as:

• Grid system
• Typography (heirarchy, headers, bodycopy, bullets, hyperlink style)
• Color palettes
• Graphic elements
• Data visualization styles
• Photography style
• Illustration style
• Layouts

Everything should adhere to your visual language. Don’t have one? Here’s how to make one, as well as everything it should include.

3) Create Your Template

To turn your visual system into a practical guide, build out your design files, providing mockups of actual pages that reflect best practices. (If you already have an e-book design that works well, you might adapt it to the guidelines.) Examples:

The important thing is to offer clear explanations and visual examples of everything. Whoever picks it up, whether a freelancer or in-house designer, should be able to understand it and replicate it without asking questions.  

You might also include any relevant design tips. (And make sure you avoid these 30 common e-book design mistakes.)

Once you put your e-book design templates to work, you’ll see how much easier they are to produce, and you’ll be grateful you put the work in. 

Remember, too, that you can also make the most of your work by repurposing your e-books after their first run. (Try these 9 tips to do that, and check out this roundup of 101+ resources and tools to make better e-books.)

Look for More Ways Template Can Improve Content Creation

There are always ways to improve how you do things, so think about how templates might help in other areas of content marketing, including:

• Infographic templates
• Interactive templates
• Social templates
• Reporting templates
• Ad templates

We know that not everyone has the resources to tackle design templates, though. If you need a little help or someone to help lighten your content load, holler at us.  

If you don’t have video in your content mix, you’re missing out. It’s simpler to make than ever, and people really want to see it. (A 2014 Levels Beyond survey found that 51% of millennials would rather watch a video than read.) Now is definitely the time to dive in.

But we know you might be a little intimidated (or overwhelmed) to start, and you probably have a lot of questions. We’re here to help.

Our new interactive e-book, The Content Marketer’s Guide to Brand Video, covers everything (seriously, everything) you’ve ever wanted to know about brand video but were too shy to ask, including:

• Why are humans biologically wired for video?
• How can brands use video to deliver a strong message?
• What makes a truly great brand video?
• How do you measure the ROI of video?
• What does it take to produce video?
• How should you act on set?

It’s all there, plus great data, pro tips, and great examples of brand video. We also made it interactive so you can skip to the stuff you want to know—and bookmark it when you want to come back. Click below to check it out now. 

And if there’s anything we didn’t answer, we’d be happy to chat.

How’s your latest e-book doing? How’s your oldest e-book doing? Have downloads dipped? It’s frustrating, we know, but sometimes a few quick tweaks to your e-book design can really improve your readers’ experience, making them more eager to consume your content and connect with your brand. If the content in your e-book is gold, but people are tapping out before they get to page 2, consider how a makeover might help.

Does Your E-book Design Need a Makeover?

Design integrity has a lot to do with how content quality is perceived. First, print out your latest e-book. Take a critical look at what’s in front of you:

• What catches your eye?
• How does it flow?
• What do you feel when you look at it?

These gut reactions and first impressions are what your reader probably experiences, too. We hate to see you give off the wrong impression, so we’re here to help. All it takes is a little creativity to turn a blah design into something beautiful. Here are 6 ways to do it.

1) Choose a Theme

The problem: Your design is totally generic or all over the place, mixing clashing styles, imagery, and visual metaphors right and left.

The fix: E-books are awesome because they give you a nice creative canvas to tell your story. The best, most effective e-books deliver a single story, and use every element of design to support it. Choose a single theme or concept to ground the design, then use your creativity to bring it to life.

2) Rehab Your Cover

The problem: The cover is the first thing people see, but too often marketers miss the mark. The most common mistakes: too cluttered, no imagery, irrelevant imagery, boring typography, generic design.

The fix: Let your content be the guide. Use high-quality imagery to catch the reader’s eye and draw them in. The cover should match the content theme and infuse a little brand personality into it. There should also be an intuitive grid-based layout and logical header hierarchy so that everything is clear at a glance.

3) Add Personality with Imagery

The problem: Your e-book looks like a PowerPoint: generic templates, boring iconography, etc.

The fix: Consider both the tone of the content and your brand personality. The images you use should help cultivate a feeling that supports your message. Is your e-book about employee collaboration? Let’s see people working together. Is it about increasing revenue? Let’s see some tasteful data visualization.

4) Condense and Trim Down Copy

The problem: Someone got a little carried away in trying to build suspense, so you have to flip through 5 pages of “teaser” content before you get to the meat of a section. Conversely, they packed so much in that you’re facing a cluttered mess on each page.

The fix: Know two things: Negative space is your friend, and pages should be used economically. While chapter breaks may deserve their own page, condense content to deliver the message efficiently. Oftentimes this means trimming down content on a page. Removing an extraneous pullquote or sidebar can make a huge difference. Also look for opportunities to let design do the heavy lifting. A paragraph explaining a process can be visualized in a single diagram. A stat in a callout can be turned into a chart. These are great ways to break up the text. 5) Kill the Visual Junk

The problem: Some designers hear the word “visualize” and go nuts, packing every page with illustrations, photos, charts, or iconography.

The fix: Look critically at every visual element. Ask yourself:

• Does this enhance the story? Things like illustrations are often added arbitrarily without much thought.
• Can it be condensed? Data visualization can sometimes make things even more confusing if, say, you’re trying to compare three bar charts when a single grouped bar chart would do it better.
• Does it make sense? This is especially true for icons, which can be far too abstract to represent anything meaningful.

If the answer isn’t yes, say bye.

In addition visual elements, colors can sometimes overwhelm. A helpful tip: Use 1-2 main colors and 2-3 accent colors.

6) Tame Your Typography

The problem: There are so many fonts and sizes it looks like a teenager’s notebook.

The fix: Limit the number of type styles (the combination of kerning, leading, point size, etc.) to create consistency and harmony. Also, don’t use more than 2 typefaces, and do follow a grid. For more of our tips on great e-book design, here are a few posts you might like:

• Learn about the elements of great e-book design.
• Avoid these 8 design mistakes in your visual communication.
• Find out how to design the most common charts and graphs.
• Learn everything you need to know about visual content marketing.

If you need an expert to help you out, let’s chat.

Content marketing is all about diversity: high-value evergreen content that informs, mixed with high-impact, real-time content to bring awareness to your brand. But content marketers are often pulled in every direction, tasked with creating a high volume of content to fill each bucket while ensuring that every piece feeds long-term brand goals.

With limited resources and ever-increasing demands, how do you create content that is economical and impactful? Enter microcontent—an effective approach to content creation that requires little effort and provides maximum value.

In this e-book you’ll learn:

1. What microcontent is: Learn about the different formats to get an idea of what you might want to experiment with.
2. Why microcontent supports your content strategy: From long-term goals to day-to-day publishing, learn how microcontent helps support your efforts
3. How to create effective microcontent: Whether you’re just starting to create content or have an enormous archive, find out how to produce a high volume of content with minimal effort.

DOWNLOAD THE E-BOOK

How do you get the most results from your content marketing? With a killer content marketing strategy. Of course, in a real-time world, it can be hard to plan ahead. When news stories break or a product launch gets postponed, you have to adapt your content while keeping your long-term goals in mind. And no matter what you publish, you also have to keep everyone from your sales team to your social following happy. It often feels like you’re serving two masters—or five or six. But with the right planning, you can create a long-term strategy that saves your energy and your sanity.

A well-crafted, long-term strategy has built-in flexibility and a solid foundation, letting you fill in your content needs as you go—even if (and when) your larger goals change. It means you can stay agile enough to react to the latest trending hashtag while scheduling production for your next evergreen infographic. (Trust us, we did it last week.)

Want to know how? Check out our new e-book, How to Build a Long-Term Content Strategy in a Real-Time World. We cover everything you need to know to create a strategy that works for you, including: 

• Why a long-term strategy saves you time, energy, and money
• How to identify your objectives
• What type of content will serve your objectives
• How to map content to your objectives
• How to effectively schedule content

Check out the e-book, and let us know your tips for creating a content strategy.

NEED HELP WITH YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY OR CONTENT CREATION? LET’S CHAT.

Though content marketing is the new frontier, marketers are still facing the age-old question: How do you get your brand’s content in front of an audience? Thanks to the proliferation of new media, with the right distribution strategy, you can reach more consumers than ever before.

Still, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Sure, you can create content, but how do you know if it’s serving your marketing goals? Once it’s created, where do you publish? And how do you optimize content for maximum results? Over the last few years, we’ve heard these concerns from all corners of the content marketing globe. And, in many ways, things have only become more confusing as more platforms pop up.

Because we’re in the business of making confusing things easy to understand, we thought it was time to help make sense of it all. At Column Five, we’ve assembled a pro Communications team to help some of the world’s biggest brands reach the right audience. We’ve also made friends over at Onboardly, a PR agency that specializes in content marketing for startups. Our brands have learned plenty over the years (both the easy way and the hard way), so we joined forces to create the new e-book, The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution.

Whether you’re a PR pro or DIY content marketer, this e-book covers everything you need to know about content distribution, including all our insider tips and tricks. Want to make the most of your content? Download the e-book to learn about:

Crafting a killer content strategy: Get tips for strategic ideation to make sure your content serves your objectives.

Content formats and types: Curate your content marketing mix to include a variety of formats primed for different platforms.

Tips for making media contacts: Learn how to cultivate relationships with journalists and social influencers to expand your content’s reach.

Choosing the right distribution channels: Learn about how each channel can serve your goals and identify which channels to target.

Measuring your ROI: Find out which metrics help track your content’s success at every stage of the sales funnel.

Good content deserves to be shared. With a little bit of structure, planning and foresight, your content can make a major impact.

• Find out how to get the most mileage from your content by Maximizing Your Publishing with Microcontent.
• Learn everything you need to know about visual content in The Ultimate Guide to Visual Content Marketing.

Outlook for the future.

If creating “good” content is your marketing strategy, you’re already losing the game. Good content is quickly becoming invisible content. Why? Because we live in a world where creating good content has never been easier. AI-powered tools and streamlined workflows allow us to produce in minutes what would have taken hours (or even days) a few years ago. Everyone can create good content, so audiences not only expect it but they consider it table stakes. They want something more. They want truly great content that really stands out. 

Are you giving it to them? 

Content: The Key to a Winning Brand

Brands have been generating a steady stream of content for years, but with the advent of AI, that stream has become a tsunami. A lot of it is bad, but more and more of it is actually good. It’s comprehensive. It’s easy to understand. It’s perfectly decent. 

But the truth is if it doesn’t stop scrolls or turn heads, it’s just white noise. 

Remember: Brand is the last remaining competitive advantage. Your content is often your audience’s first introduction to your brand, helping inform their perception of you. So it’s your content that directly influences whether they trust you, rely on you, or feel confident spending their money with you. 

Yes, your product/service matters. But your customer experience matters more. And that is directly affected by your content. If that content doesn’t strike them as unique, interesting, or valuable, it won’t stand out and—unfortunately—your brand will be entirely forgettable. 

Why Marketers Fall into the Good Content Trap

In this landscape, the savvy brands—those with adequate resources, the right partners, and the space and support to do truly great work—are going to thrive. But too many marketers are hampered by a range of problems that make it hard to break out of the “good enough” content rut. 

The most common we’ve observed in our clients:

• Resource constraints: According to the Content Marketing Institute, 49% of B2B marketers expect their budget to stay the same or decrease. Marketing teams that were once specialists are being forced to become generalists, spinning plates, racing deadlines, and struggling to do more with less. As a result, they often don’t have the resources or time to put in the work to create best-in-class content.
• A checklist mentality: A lot of organizations view content as a tedious marketing task, a commodity to be produced, or just another box to check. This mindset makes it incredibly hard to create an enduring brand that wins. They just continue pushing unoriginal content out the door and hoping it’ll move the needle. (In all likelihood, it leaves them fighting for scraps in a crushingly competitive market.) 
• Organizational challenges: In some organizations, it can be difficult to get buy-in from senior leadership who are either deeply risk averse or simply don’t understand the true value of content. (Or, worse, they think that AI-generated content is the simple solve.) This is one of the most significant challenges to overcome, especially when these people are the budget gatekeepers. 

No matter what the immediate barriers are, it doesn’t change the fact that content is the most important tool you have to engage your audience. And it is more important than ever, especially as B2B buyer behavior has shifted. These buyers are far more independent. They want more self-serve options (which means more content). And they’re incredibly close to making up their mind by the time they even reach out.

According to The APAC B2B Buyer Journey Research Report, 73% of the buyer’s journey has occurred before prospects engage with sellers. 

That means B2B buyers have already done 73% of the work on their own—researching, reading, comparing, etc. And guess what? A simple Google search isn’t the only way they’re going to find or assess you. Critical business decisions now happen in private Slack groups, on LinkedIn, and through AI chat tools. You need to think about how your content shows up across these channels—and how it compares to your competition.

Luckily, there is one thing that will actually make your content better and help you outshine everybody.

The Secret to Make Good Content Marketing Great

If you want to make the shift from good to great, add one thing to your content: experience. 

Anyone can create expert content (especially with AI). You can spit out lengthy guides about any topic all day long. But these pieces of thought leadership are rarely unique. They tend to sound like the same recycled piece that everyone else is publishing. There’s one thing that AI and your competitors can’t imitate, though, and that’s your experience. 

People are desperate to hear from real people’s experience (especially in a world of AI-generated fluff), so the more you can couple your expertise with your personal experience, the more people will trust you. 

There are so many ways that you can infuse this into your content, including:

• Personal lessons (wins and failures)
• Insider tips and insights
• Employee/expert spotlights
• Behind-the-scenes content
• Experiments/results
• Frameworks/processes
• Case studies and examples
• Client testimonials 
• Proprietary data 
• Polls (ask others to share their personal experiences)

And remember that experience can come from multiple individuals/teams in your company. There are probably plenty of in-house experts whose insights might be interesting to your audience; you just need to tap them for those gems. (To do this, see our tips to turn those coworkers into great content creators.)

Yes, sourcing this expert insight can be more time-consuming. But it is well worth it. 

On that note, it’s also worthwhile to reassess your entire content strategy and hone in on what’s working and what’s not. Some key questions to ask: 

• Does your content strategy align with your brand’s larger goals? If you don’t have a clear throughline, it doesn’t matter how great your content is. It won’t get you any closer to your larger goals. (Find out more about how to align your brand and content strategy.) 

• Are you focusing on quantity over quality? You should focus exclusively on what moves the needle. That means you might need to do less—but better. Create a stringent system to vet ideas and make sure they’ll resonate with your audience. When you’re ideating new content ideas, this means saying no more often than yes. But that’s OK. That’s how you raise the bar and make your content stand out. (Find out more about why we’ve been encouraging brands to make less content.) 

• Are you investing the right resources in content creation? You may be underinvesting or overinvesting, depending on the type of content you’re creating. This is why it’s important to be critical about the things you’re creating. For example, we once sunk a lot of resources into a fancy, lengthy interactive e-book, but we soon realized our audience preferred a simple, easy-to-reference downloadable PDF. We ended up translating the content into that preferred format, but we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and energy if we thought more about our audience’s needs vs. our own desires. 

• Do you have the right team and tools in place? Yes, AI tools can help increase your productivity and eliminate pesky tasks, but you still need human oversight—especially in content creation. Make sure you have the right infrastructure to effectively ideate and produce high-quality content. 

• Are you measuring what matters, not just what’s easy to track? It’s easy to fill your reports with vanity metrics that look great and tell you nothing. Focus on meaningful measurement that gives you genuine insights to shape your strategy. 

• Is your content truly differentiated, or just following the crowd? It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to marketing content. But just because you’re used to creating a particular type of content, or using a particular format, doesn’t mean it’s best for your audience. Try new things and track how they perform. You might be surprised to see what actually resonates. (You can also use our free template to conduct a proper content audit, which will help you spot gaps and opportunities to create more effective content.) 

You might not be able to makeover your content strategy overnight, but thoughtful, incremental changes will help you drastically improve the quality over time—and that is the most significant thing you can do to position your brand successfully. 

If there’s anything you take away from this, remember: Creating exceptional content isn’t just about standing out; it’s about survival. Yes, platforms come and go. Algorithms evolve. Workflows adjust. But the fundamental principle remains the same. The brands that win are the ones that can create undeniable content—content that earns attention naturally, builds genuine trust, and makes the brand the obvious choice.

A great data story starts with great data. That means it’s comprehensive, complete, and credible. But where do you find it? The best free data sources come from all sorts of places. You may have some in-house. You may come across some in an interesting study. Or you may need to start from scratch. Luckily, you can always turn to your dear friend, the Internet, to find fantastic, free data from a ton of solid sources.

We’ve used public data to create all sorts of content, from infographics to interactives, so we know what a goldmine it is. We also know that finding it can be a challenge. That’s why we’ve created this roundup—to make your search a lot easier. Here, you’ll find over 100 free data sources from reputable organizations around the world. And to make your search even easier, they’re organized by category so you can find the data you need as fast as possible. We hope it helps.

Free Data Sources: General/Academic

1. UNData: A statistical database of all United Nations data.

2. Amazon Public Data Sets: A repository of large datasets relating to biology, chemistry, economics, and physiology, including the Human Genome Project.

3. Pew Research: Public opinion polls, demographic research, content analysis, and other data-driven social science research.

4. Google Scholar: A wide array of information, including articles, theses, books, abstracts, white papers, and court opinions.

5. Datasets Subreddit: A dive into anything and everything, from English grain prices of the 14th Century to U.S. homelessness rates.

6. FiveThirtyEight: Statistical analysis that tells compelling stories about elections, politics, sports, science, economics, and more.

7. Qlik DataMarket: A place to check out data related to economics, healthcare, food, agriculture, and the automotive industry.

8. The Upshot by New York Times: News, analysis, and graphics about politics, policy, and everyday life.

9. Enigma Public: Broad collection of open data, curated for easy perusing.

10. Harvard Dataverse: A repository for research data.

Free Data Sources: Content Marketing

11. Buffer: Data insights on digital marketing.

12. Moz: Insights on SEO.

13. HubSpot: A large repository of marketing data.

14. Content Marketing Institute: The latest news, studies, and research on content marketing.

Free Data Sources: Crime

15. Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics: Statistics on violent crime, such as murder, rape, robbery, and assault; has decades of data at city, county, state, and national levels.

16. FBI Crime Data Explorer: Statistical crime reports and publications detailing specific offenses and outlining trends to understand crime threats at both local and national levels.

17. National Archive of Criminal Justice Data: Original research based on archived data concerning criminal justice and criminology.

18. Bureau of Justice Statistics: Information on anything related to U.S. justice system, including arrest-related deaths, census of jail inmates, national survey of DNA crime labs, surveys of law enforcement gang units, etc.

Free Data Sources: Drugs

19. U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Drug approvals and databases, including therapeutic equivalence evaluations for approved multi-source prescription drug products.

20. National Institute on Drug Abuse: Resources that cover a variety of drug-related issues, such as drug usage, emergency room data, and prevention and treatment programs.

21. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: Research, trend analysis, and forensics with global and regional data collections.

22. Drug War Facts: Thorough look at drugs and drug policy, applied to public health and criminal justice issues.

23. Drug Data and Database by First Databank: Drug data and drug databases provided with the hope of drug knowledge inspiring change in the medication decision-making process.

Free Data Sources: Education

24. Government Data About Education: Education datasets, apps, resources for the classroom, and details about paying for college.

25. Education Data by the World Bank: Comprehensive data and analysis source for key topics in education, such as literacy rates and government expenditures.

26. Education Data by Unicef: Data related to sustainable development, school completion rates, net attendance rates, literacy rates, and more.

27. National Center for Education Statistics: The primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.

Free Data Sources: Entertainment

28. Million Song Dataset: A collection of 28 datasets containing audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.

29. The Numbers: Detailed movie financial analysis, including box office, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports, and release schedules.

30 BFI Film Forever: Research data and market intelligence focused on the UK film industry and film culture.

31. IFPI: Global statistics about the recording industry.

32. Statista: Video Game Industry: Statistics and facts about the video game industry, ranging from global gaming software expenditure to U.S. brand equity of Nintendo Wii.

33. Statista: Film Industry: Statistics and facts about the film industry, from the number of movie tickets sold in U.S. and Canada to the number of 3D cinema screens worldwide.

34. Statista: Music Industry: Statistics and facts about the music industry, ranging from concert revenue to record company market share.

35. Academic Rights Press: A repository of historical and current music sales data with insight on how such numbers can be applied.

36. BLS: Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation: Related industries at a glance, with statistics and datasets relevant to arts, entertainment, and recreation.

Free Data Sources: Environmental/Weather Data

37. Global Biodiversity Information Facility: An international network providing data on all types of life on Earth.

38. National Center for Environmental Health: Nationally funded data systems that have a relationship to environmental public health.

39. National Climatic Data Center: Quick links  from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, covering everything from storm data to climate indices.

40. National Weather Service: Climate data, including past weather conditions and long-term averages, from specific observing stations around the United States.

41. Weather Underground: Tracked weather by regional radar, regional severe weather, and global temperatures.

42. National Centers for Environmental Information: Weather record published since 1927, including monthly mean values of pressure, temperature, precipitation, and station metadata notes documenting observation practices and station configurations.

43. WeatherBase: Travel weather, climate averages, forecasts, current conditions, and normals for 41,997 cities worldwide.

44. International Energy Agency Atlas: A look at climate change that focuses on how each country produces and consumes energy.

45. Environmental Protection Agency: Information for more than 540 chemical substances, containing information on human health effects that may result from exposure to various substances in the environment.

Free Data Sources: Financial/Economic Data

46. OpenCorporates: The largest open database of companies in the world.

47. Google Finance: Real-time stock quotes and charts, financial news, currency conversions, or tracked portfolios.

48. Google Public Data Explorer: Searchable large datasets on economic development worldwide.

 49. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis: U.S. economic statistics, including national income and gross domestic product.

50. National Bureau of Economic Research: Macro data, industry data, productivity data, trade data, international finance, data, and more.

51. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: Quarterly datasets of extracted information from exhibits to corporate financial reports filed with the Commission.

52. World Bank Open Data: Education statistics about everything from finances to service delivery indicators.

53.  Financial Data Finder at OSU: Plentiful links to anything related to finance, no matter how obscure.

54. IMF Economic Data: Global financial stability reports, regional economic reports, international financial statistics, exchange rates, directions of trade, and more.

55. The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Analysis of trade flows and the sectoral composition of an economy with data visualizations.

56. World Bank Doing Business Database: An incredibly useful source of information that evaluates business environment indicators around the world, including trade capabilities and costs.

57. UN Comtrade Database: Raw data on high-level trade with visualizations.

58. Global Financial Data: Covers 60,000 companies across 300 years, analyzing the twists and turns of the global economy.

59. Visualizing Economics: Data visualizations about the economy.

60. Federal Reserve Economic Database: Data on money, banking, macroeconomics, international and regional economics, etc.

Free Data Sources: Government/World

61. Consortium for Political and Social Research: Provides access to a vast archive of social science data.

62. U.S. Census Bureau: Government-informed statistics on population, economy, education, geography, and more.

63. Data.gov: Open data of the U.S. government, focuses on everything from agriculture and ecosystems to manufacturing and science.

64. Unicef: Evidence on the situation of children and women around the world to inform national and global decision-making.

65. Data Catalogs: Comprehensive list of open data catalogs in the world, curated by a group of leading open-data experts.

66. European Union Open Data Portal: Data pulled from European Union institutions.

67. Open Data Network: Government-related data with some visualizations tools built in.

68. Gapminder: Massive collection of data sources that cover everything from agriculture and employment to aid given and death.

69. Land Matrix (Transnational Land Database): A meticulously developed database of international land transactions with plenty of visualization tools.

70. The World Bank’s World Development Indicators: Huge collection of national data on hundreds of indicators, with data on every country.

71. UNDP’s Human Development Index: A ranking of country progress under the lens of human development.

72. OECD Aid Database: Visualized data regarding aid collected from governments.

73. The CIA World Factbook: Facts on every country, dependency, and geographic entity in the world; focuses on history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues.

Free Data Sources: Health

74. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Public health data and statistics by topic, from alcohol use to viral hepatitis.

75. World Health Organization: Information, data, statistics, and reports concerning international public health.

76. President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition: Information aimed to promote, encourage, and motivate Americans of all ages to become physically active and participate in sport.

77. Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce: A collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations, and health sciences libraries.

78. Health Services Research Information Central: Selective links aimed at providing information and data regarding health services resources.

79. MedicinePlus: Health statistics ranging from percentage of obese citizens to rates at which people are catching the flu.

80. National Center for Health Statistics: Datasets, documentation, data access tools, growth charts, and resources for further vital records.

81. America’s Health Rankings: Health reports that view the nation holistically, with in-depth data and analysis.

82. Health & Social Care Information Centre: National provider of information, data, and IT systems for health and social care.

83. Medicare Hospital Quality: A database on complication rates by hospital for interesting comparisons.

84. SEER Cancer Incidence: Cancer-related statistical summaries, interactive tools, and publications.

85. The BROAD Institute: Cancer program legacy publication resources and cancer-related datasets.

86. HealthData.gov: High-value health data for entrepreneurs, researchers, and policy makers; includes data on Medicaid, Medicare, clincial studies, and treatments.

Free Data Sources: Human Rights

87. Human Rights Data Analysis Group: Nonprofit, nonpartisan group applying rigorous science to the analysis of human rights violations around the world.

88. Harvard Law School: A collection of links that cover a variety of topics, including everything from international relations and human rights data, from political institution databases.

89. The Armed Conflict Database by Uppsala University: A look at fragile and conflict-affected states that dives into minor and major violent conflicts around the world.

90. Amnesty International: Human rights information, run independent of any political ideology, economic interest, or religion.

Free Data Sources: Labor/Employment Data

91. Department of Labor: Closely watched measures of employment and unemployment.

92. U.S. Small Business Administration: Employment data from business owners’ perspective, including economic indicators and projections.

93. Employment by U.S. Census: Data that measures the state of the nation’s workforce, including employment and unemployment levels, as well as weeks and hours worked.

94. Bureau of Labor Statistics: U.S. government’s data collection of employment-related stats across regions, states, and local areas.

Free Data Sources: Politics

95. Gallup: Data-driven news based on U.S. and world polls.

96. Real Clear Politics: A look at everything from policy support to election polling data.

97. Intro to Political Science Research by UC Berkeley: Statistics and data for those interested in political science; an ideal starting place.

98. California Field Poll: Independent, nonpartisan, media-sponsored public opinion news service that examines California public opinion.

99. Rand State Statistics: Social science data for the U.S. at the national, state, and local levels.

100. Roper Center for Public Opinion Research: U.S. and international polling and public opinion survey data.

101. Open Secrets: Nonpartisan, independent, and nonprofit; nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

102. Crowdpac: Calculates objective scores for political candidates showing their overall political position and their position on specific issues.

Free Data Sources: Retail

103. Love the Sales: Free data for insights into the global retail industry.

Free Data Sources: Social

104. Facebook Graph: API that pulls data about Facebook engagement.

105. SocialMention: Real-time social media search and analysis.

106. Google Trends: Data and trends by search engine engagement.

Free Data Sources: Travel/Transportation

107. Monthly Tourism Statistics – U.S. Travelers Overseas: A look at U.S. international air passenger statistics.

108. SkiftStats: Latest statistics, research, and data about the travel industry.

109. Search the World: Statistics, population, weather, webcams, and travel information for millions of locations worldwide.

110. U.S. Travel Association: Covers a wide variety of travel-related topics, from impacts of travel on state economies to analysis of what a stronger dollar means for the travel industry.

111. Bureau of Transportation Statistics: Transportation statistical data, research activities, and budgetary resources.

How to Start Data Storytelling

Regardless of the data you choose, turning that data into a compelling story is key. From copy to design, make sure to follow best data storytelling practices at every stage. If you’re ready to start:

• Find the story in your data set. Download our free e-book, The Content Marketer’s Guide to Data Storytelling, for more tips on bringing your data to life. You can also follow our step-by-step guide to uncover the stories in your data (and look into your own data if none of these sources were quite what you were looking for).
• Craft an effective narrative. Try these tips to turn your data into a compelling story.
• Choose the right visualization. Once you know your narrative, make sure to choose the right visual format for your story.
• Source your data correctly. Follow these 5 tips for sourcing to make sure you maintain your credibility. 
• Follow best practices for data design. Learn how to design the most basic charts and graphs, and follow these tips to upgrade your visualizations.

If you need any help telling your data story, hit us up. And if you have any tips for finding great data or great data sources, leave a comment and help us share the data love.