Yearly Archives: 2023

Are you brimming with ideas, creativity, and a passion to share your unique perspective with the world? If so, becoming a content creator might just be the perfect avenue for you.

Content creators are valuable for the creative and informative content they produce, whether working for a company or on their own.

But what does it take to be a good content creator? If you want to know how to become a content creator, follow these steps and examples from successful creators across industries.

What is a content creator?

10 Tips for Aspiring Content Creators

What is a content creator?

A content creator produces entertaining, helpful, or educational material that caters to the interests and challenges of a target audience.

The content they produce can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, podcasts, photos, and graphics.

A few common types of content creators include:

Podcasters.
YouTubers.
Writers.
Social media influencers.

Whether you work on a content marketing team at your company or you’re building a personal brand as a content creator, there are some tried-and-true steps you can follow that will put you on the path to being a truly successful content creator.

Fair warning: Like all good things, it‘s not going to happen overnight. And it shouldn’t, because you‘re trying to get good at it, not just simply do it.

But the sooner you start working on these steps, the sooner you’ll be well on your way to becoming a high-quality content creator.

1. Choose a niche.

As you’re getting started with content creation, you should have a general idea of the topics you want to talk about or the channel you want to focus on.

For example, maybe you have a background as a social media manager and want to share your social media tips with others on Instagram.

Or perhaps you paid off a ton of debt and want to share your personal finance tips on YouTube so others can do the same.

Whatever you choose to focus on will be your niche or positioning, and all of the content you create should be relevant to that niche.

But don’t feel pressure to settle into a niche right away. In fact, content creator Vanessa Lau shares that you don’t necessarily need to have a niche as soon as you get started.

“If you are just starting out, I would say that experimenting with a broader niche and broader audience is going to help you accelerate the journey of finding that niche over time,” she shared on her YouTube channel.

“The mistake that I see a lot of aspiring content creators making is they stress so much about finding a niche to the point where they don’t create any content at all,” she said. 

Hear more of her tips for aspiring content creators in the video below:

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2. Read content about your industry every day.

Creating great content that really resonates with your target audience requires you to be tapped into your industry. The best content creators scour — not just read but scour — the internet for industry news and trends.

This sets them up nicely to understand the context behind what‘s happened historically in their industry and how that shapes their target audience’s mindset in the present.

Subscribe to newsletters, listen to podcasts, and read industry publications and blogs to stay on top of the latest trends and observations from thought leaders in your space.

Also, ask your audience what they’re reading and watching these days and follow suit. By discovering where your audience spends time online, you can learn even more about the topics and types of content they’re drawn to.

3. Write on the regular.

If you don’t use it, you lose it. Successful content creators understand the importance of constantly flexing their writing muscles.

Doing so helps them work through ideas that might be jumbled in their head and identify nuggets that could turn into fully realized ideas later.

Successful content creators may not always be inspired to write, but they know something inspiring can come from their writing.

Even if your main channel doesn’t involve written content — for example, if you’re a podcaster or YouTuber — writing regularly helps you better form your thoughts and understand your unique point of view.

Get in the habit of writing by doing it daily or every other day. I‘m not saying you need to write a polished, 1500-word essay on an industry-relevant topic daily.

Rather, I’m talking about setting aside 10 or 15 minutes to jot down some thoughts and ideas.

Figure out when your mind is the clearest (it could be first thing in the morning or late into the night) and just free-form write. What did you read yesterday that stuck with you? What didn’t you understand?

Asking yourself those questions should start the flow.

Content creator Zak Sherman shared his daily writing routine, demonstrating that you don’t need to write essays to practice writing. Even sending an email can be an exercise in crafting your words and finding your voice.

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4. Study your audience.

One of the hardest pills to swallow as a creative professional is that you are at the mercy of your audience — and the needs of that audience can sap your creativity.

But, at the end of the day, your audience pays your bills. And if you study your audience deeply enough, you‘ll find interests and creative opportunities you wouldn’t have found without them.

One of the most important qualities of all successful content creators?

They know their audience inside and out. Examine your own readers and viewers: What do they want that you’re not yet giving them? What problems do they have that you can solve for them?

Tracking and analyzing certain metrics can help you figure out if your content is resonating with your audience.

If you have a newsletter, a high open rate tells you that your subject line spoke to your subscribers. A high click-through rate lets you know that people wanted to know more about the links you included.

Study your audience — their behaviors, interests, and trends — to create content that they want to see. And if you’re still stuck, ask your audience directly.

The people who are interested in your content will be more than happy to share feedback for what they want to see more of.

5. Establish your own voice.

Quick reality check: You‘re not the only content creator in your industry. That means you’re not the only one offering the advice, observations, and thought leadership your industry is asking for.

There are lots of things you can do to stand out from the other content creators in your field: diversifying into a new content medium, promoting your content on different channels, and naturally gaining experience and trust over time.

But even then, the content producers with whom you’re competing for attention are doing the same thing.

What can you bring to your content that nobody else can? Your own personal voice.

Content creator Erica Schneider has built a large following on Twitter by sharing writing and editing tips.

Writing and editing are popular topics, but what helps Schneider stand out is how she weaves her voice and personality into everything she shares.

One of the tips she shared in the thread below is to show up as yourself. “Sounds simple, but it’s easy to lose your voice in a sea of templated tips,” she tweeted. “Let your personality out. Add your unique flare. Take a stance for or against something.”

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Readers click on your content for the information, but they come back for the personality. Writing about cybersecurity?

Don‘t just offer fresh insight on today’s malware; offer analogies and personal stories of data breaches that justify your insights and that only you can offer.

6. Curate other people’s content (when it makes sense to).

There’s no shortage of people curating content these days.

In fact, anyone on the internet can take someone else‘s content and retweet it, share it on LinkedIn, or write their own blog post around it — the list goes on.

But successful content creators know it’s not enough to take relevant industry news and spit it back out to your fans and followers.

Engaging with the content and sharing how it’s relevant to you is key.

Freelance writer and content creator Kat Boogaard shares a weekly newsletter for subscribers interested in receiving her tips and insights on freelancing.

One section of the newsletter is dedicated to other resources that she knows her audience will find relevant.

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Get in the habit of curating content when you have something valuable to add. Now that you’ve started scouring the internet on a regular basis for industry news, you probably have a wider depth of knowledge than you think.

Be confident, and give your readers additional, useful information or even a thought or opinion when sharing others’ content. Your networks will appreciate it, and the author probably will too (or it could at least spark a debate — bonus!).

7. Understand your KPIs.

Just because you publish content online doesn‘t mean you’ll get the traffic your insight deserves. To get your content discovered, you first need to focus on a key performance indicator (KPI) and optimize your content for it.

A KPI is a specific metric you’ve chosen to measure how well your content is doing against your expectations.

Some KPIs that content creators might track include:

Social media traffic: the number of visitors that come to your content from a social media post.
Direct traffic: the number of visitors that come to your content by entering your website‘s URL directly into their browser’s address bar.
Organic traffic: the number of visitors that come to your content from a search engine result link.
Submissions: the number of people who visit your website and leave having submitted their contact information in exchange for a resource you offered them (a form of lead generation).

If you have an active blog or YouTube channel and want to focus on organic traffic, for example, it’s a good idea to study both Google and YouTube’s search algorithm to find out how it ranks content.

Then, optimize your content so that it performs well under the organic traffic KPI. The more knowledge you have of the KPIs available to content creators now, the more successful your content will be.

8. Network at every opportunity.

Successful content creators know their success is due not only to their passion but also to those who taught them, inspired them, and pushed them to think differently.

This is one-way content creators grow into successful content creators. They‘ve accepted that there’s more to learn than what they already know, and they’re open to new ways of thinking.

Networking forces you to do just that. It‘s a time to listen to others’ ideas and take them into consideration alongside your own.

Get in the habit of networking by seizing the countless opportunities you have to do it. They aren’t called social networks for nothing! Spend some time on Twitter and LinkedIn to check out who the thought leaders are in your industry and follow them.

9. Offer solutions, not just commentary.

When you‘re just getting started as a content creator, you might already have the knowledge your market is looking for. For successful content creators, however, expertise isn’t everything.

Want your audience to remember your content? Don‘t just recite the things you know — explain why they’re important and what your audience can take away from them.

The people consuming your content aren’t interested in just hearing you talk. They come looking to satisfy specific needs. Provide actionable tips and walk them through the solutions you’re suggesting.

Twitter threads are a great example of how to do this effectively.

In the thread below, finance content creator Andrew Lokenauth shares a helpful guide on different types of financial statements every investor should understand.

Not only does he state why he’s qualified to share his tips, but Lokenauth also uses graphics throughout the thread that makes it easy to follow along with the tips.

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Whether those needs are to solve a problem or to simply increase their confidence in your industry, it’s your job to put your market observations into terms they can understand and find lessons in.

10. Question everything.

Polished content creators are curious by nature. They‘ve learned to be curious about the internal knowledge they already have and the external information that’s being promoted out in the world.

It’s the insights that come from this inherent curiosity that makes great content.

Get in the habit of questioning the status quo by constantly playing devil’s advocate.

Taking the contrarian view of a piece of content can be difficult at first.

However, if you start to question why the author thinks this way and what happened in the industry that triggered this viewpoint, you‘ll begin to think more critically about the content you’re consuming.

And if you didn’t know, critical thinkers make great content creators.

Getting Started

There‘s a lot of pressure on content creators to churn out great content and build their brands.

Just know that being a successful content creator starts with the habits you form, as they’ll set you up to produce some seriously valuable content for your target audience.

Coordinating a massive amount of data in Microsoft Excel is a time-consuming headache. Thankfully, you don’t have to. The VLOOKUP function can help you automate this task and save you tons of time.

What does VLOOKUP do, exactly? Here’s the simple explanation: The VLOOKUP function searches for a specific value in your data, and once it identifies that value, it can find — and display — some other piece of information that’s associated with that value.

Microsoft Excel’s VLOOKUP function is easier to use than you think. What’s more, it is incredibly powerful, and is definitely something you want to have in your arsenal of analytical weapons.

Skip to:

How VLOOKUP Works
VLOOKUP Example
How to Use VLOOKUP
Troubleshooting Tips

How does VLOOKUP work?

VLOOKUP stands for “vertical lookup.” In Excel, this means the act of looking up data vertically across a spreadsheet, using the spreadsheet’s columns — and a unique identifier within those columns — as the basis of your search. When you look up your data, it must be listed vertically wherever that data is located.

VLOOKUP Excel Formula 

Microsoft describes the VLOOKUP formula or function as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value, range containing the lookup value, the column number in the range containing the return value, Approximate match (TRUE) or Exact match (FALSE)).

It helps to organize your data in a way so that the value you want to look up is to the left of the return value you want to find.

The formula always searches to the right.

When conducting a VLOOKUP in Excel, you’re essentially looking for new data in a different spreadsheet that is associated with old data in your current one. When VLOOKUP runs this search, it always looks for the new data to the right of your current data.

For instance, if one spreadsheet has a vertical list of names, and another spreadsheet has an unorganized list of those names and their email addresses, you can use VLOOKUP to retrieve those email addresses in the order you have them in your first spreadsheet. Those email addresses must be listed in the column to the right of the names in the second spreadsheet, or Excel won’t be able to find them. (Go figure … )

The formula needs a unique identifier to retrieve data.

The secret to how VLOOKUP works? Unique identifiers.

A unique identifier is a piece of information that both of your data sources share, and — as its name implies — it is unique (i.e. the identifier is only associated with one record in your database). Unique identifiers include product codes, stock-keeping units (SKUs), and customer contacts.

Alright, enough explanation: let’s see another example of the VLOOKUP in action!

VLOOKUP Excel Example

In the video below, we’ll show an example in action, using the VLOOKUP function to match email addresses (from a second data source) to their corresponding data in a separate sheet. 

Author’s note: There are many different versions of Excel, so what you see in the video above might not always match up exactly with what you’ll see in your version. That’s why we encourage you to follow along with the written instructions below.

For your reference, here’s what the syntax for a VLOOKUP function looks like:

VLOOKUP(lookup_value , table_array , col_index_num , range_lookup)

In the steps below, we’ll assign the right value to each of these components, using customer names as our unique identifier to find the MRR of each customer.

1. Identify a column of cells you’d like to fill with new data.

Remember, you’re looking to retrieve data from another sheet and deposit it into this one. With that in mind, label a column next to the cells you want more information on with a proper title in the top cell, such as “MRR,” for monthly recurring revenue. This new column is where the data you’re fetching will go.

2. Select ‘Function’ (Fx) > VLOOKUP and insert this formula into your highlighted cell.

To the left of the text bar above your spreadsheet, you’ll see a small function icon that looks like a script: Fx. Click on the first empty cell beneath your column title and then click this function icon. A box titled Formula Builder or Insert Function will appear to the right of your screen (depending on which version of Excel you have).

Search for and select “VLOOKUP” from the list of options included in the Formula Builder. Then, select OK or Insert Function to start building your VLOOKUP. The cell you currently have highlighted in your spreadsheet should now look like this: “=VLOOKUP()“

You can also enter this formula into a call manually by entering the bold text above exactly into your desired cell.

With the =VLOOKUP text entered into your first cell, it’s time to fill the formula with four different criteria. These criteria will help Excel narrow down exactly where the data you want is located and what to look for.

3. Enter the lookup value for which you want to retrieve new data.

The first criteria is your lookup value — this is the value of your spreadsheet that has data associated with it, which you want Excel to find and return for you. To enter it, click on the cell that carries a value you’re trying to find a match for. In our example, shown above, it’s in cell A2. You’ll start migrating your new data into D2, since this cell represents the MRR of the customer name listed in A2.

Keep in mind your lookup value can be anything: text, numbers, website links, you name it. As long as the value you’re looking up matches the value in the referring spreadsheet — which we’ll talk about that in the next step — this function will return the data you want.

4. Enter the table array of the spreadsheet where your desired data is located.

Next to the “table array” field, enter the range of cells you’d like to search and the sheet where these cells are located, using the format shown in the screenshot above. The entry above means the data we’re looking for is in a spreadsheet titled “Pages” and can be found anywhere between column B and column K.

The sheet where your data is located must be within your current Excel file. This means your data can either be in a different table of cells somewhere in your current spreadsheet, or in a different spreadsheet linked at the bottom of your workbook, as shown below.

For example, if your data is located in “Sheet2” between cells C7 and L18, your table array entry will be “Sheet2!C7:L18.”

5. Enter the column number of the data you want Excel to return.

Beneath the table array field, you’ll enter the “column index number” of the table array you’re searching through. For example, if you’re focusing on columns B through K (notated “B:K” when entered in the “table array” field), but the specific values you want are in column K, you’ll enter “10” in the “column index number” field, since column K is the 10th column from the left.

6. Enter your range lookup to find an exact or approximate match of your lookup value.

In situations like ours, which concerns monthly revenue, you want to find exact matches from the table you’re searching through. To do this, enter “FALSE” in the “range lookup” field. This tells Excel you want to find only the exact revenue associated with each sales contact.

To answer your burning question: Yes, you can allow Excel to look for an approximate match instead of an exact match. To do so, simply enter TRUE instead of FALSE in the fourth field shown above.

When VLOOKUP is set for an approximate match, it’s looking for data that most closely resembles your lookup value, rather than data that is identical to that value. If you’re looking up data associated with a list of website links, for example, and some of your links have “https://” at the beginning, it might behoove you to find an approximate match just in case there are links that do not have this “https://” tag. This way, the rest of the link can match without this initial text tag causing your VLOOKUP formula to return an error if Excel can’t find it.

7. Click ‘Done’ (or ‘Enter’) and fill your new column.

In order to officially bring in the values you want into your new column from Step 1, click “Done” (or “Enter,” depending on your version of Excel) after filling the “range lookup” field. This will populate your first cell. You might take this opportunity to look in the other spreadsheet to make sure this was the correct value.

If so, populate the rest of the new column with each subsequent value by clicking the first filled cell, then clicking the tiny square that appears on the bottom-right corner of this cell. Done! All your values should appear.

VLOOKUP Not Working?

VLOOKUP Tutorial

Got stuck after trying to conduct your own VLOOKUP with the steps above? Check out this handy tutorial from Microsoft has a handy tutorial that will walk you through properly using the function. 

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If you’ve followed the above steps and your VLOOKUP is still not working, it will either be an issue with your:

Syntax (i.e. how you’ve structured the formula)
Values (i.e. whether the data it’s looking up is good and formatted correctly)

Troubleshooting VLOOKUP Syntax

Start with looking at the VLOOKUP formula that you have written in the designated cell.

Is it referring to the right lookup value for its key identifier?
Does it specify the correct table array range for the values it needs to retrieve
Does it specify the correct sheet for the range?
Is that sheet spelled correctly?
Is it using the correct syntax to refer to the sheet? (e.g. Pages!B:K or ‘Sheet 1’!B:K)
Has the correct column number been specified? (e.g. A is 1, B is 2, and so on)
Is True or False the correct route for how your sheet is set up?

Troubleshooting VLOOKUP Values

If the syntax is not the problem, how you may have an issue with the values you’re trying to receive themselves. This often manifests as an #N/A error where the VLOOKUP cannot find a referenced value.

Are the values formatted vertically and from right to left?
Do the values match how you refer to them?

For example, if you’re looking up URL data, each URL must be a row with its corresponding data to the left of it in the same row. If you have the URLs as column headers with the data moving vertically, the VLOOKUP will not work.

Keeping with this example, the URLs must match in format in both sheets. If you have one sheet including the “https://” in the value while the other sheet omits the “https://”, the VLOOKUP will not be able to match the values.

VLOOKUPs as a Powerful Marketing Tool

Marketers have to analyze data from a variety of sources to get a complete picture of lead generation (and more). Microsoft Excel is the perfect tool to do this accurately and at scale, especially with the VLOOKUP function.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Ask any professional athlete or business executive how they became successful, and they’ll tell you they mastered a process. By figuring out which habits led to success and which didn’t, they improved their efficiency and productivity.

But implementing a process into a business, department, or even a team is a completely different animal than honing your personal process. With so many moving parts, how do you track and refine each aspect of your business process?

Data flow diagrams provide a straightforward, efficient way for organizations to understand, perfect, and implement new processes or systems. They’re visual representations of your system, making it easy to understand and prune.

Before we dive into how data flow diagrams can help refine any of your business systems or processes, let’s go over what exactly it is.

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DFDs became popular in the 1970s and have maintained their widespread use by being easy to understand.

There are two types of DFDs — logical and physical. Logical diagrams display the theoretical process of moving information through a system, like where the data comes from, where it goes, how it changes, and where it ends up.

Physical diagrams show you the practical process of moving information through a system. It can show how your system’s specific software, hardware, files, employees, and customers influence the flow of information.

You can either use logical or physical diagrams to describe that flow of information. You can also use them in conjunction to understand a process or system on a more granular level.

The Benefits of Data Flow Diagrams

DFDs are visual representations that can help almost anyone grasp a system‘s or process’ logic and functions. Aside from being accessible, they provide much-needed clarity and improve productivity. Here’s how.

Accessibility

Because visual information is easier to digest, DFDs typically explain complex concepts better than blocks of text can.

Visual presentations of how a process works can also hold people’s attention longer — making it easier to retain the information.

Clarity

DFDs clarify the systems and processes necessary for your team to do their best work. Whether implementing a new company-wide system or refining a department’s existing process, a DFD gets you and your team on the same page.

Creating DFDs will give you clarity about business operations, too. A clearer understanding enables you to refine and track your business processes with less friction.

Productivity

The accessibility and clarity created with DFDs will leave less room for error. Your team will better master systems and processes because they understand them.

Greater understanding — paired with a repeatable process — will likely boost team effectiveness and productivity.

On a broader level, DFDs can help you streamline your business operations. When mapping out your processes, you‘ll gain insights into what does and doesn’t work.

These insights help boost you and your team’s productivity. As a bonus, you can share any best practices across departments.

Data Flow Diagram Symbols

Before using a DFD, you need to know the symbols used to describe it.

Data flow diagram symbols are standardized notations, like rectangles, circles, arrows, and short-text labels. These symbols represent a system’s data flow direction, inputs, outputs, storage points, and sub-processes.

Four common methods of notation are used in DFDs: Yourdon & De Marco, Gene & Sarson, SSADM, and Unified.

All use the same labels and similar shapes to represent the four main elements of a DFD — external entity, process, data store, and data flow.

1. External Entity

External entities — which are also known as terminators, sources, sinks, or actors — are outside systems that send or receive data to and from the diagrammed system.

They’re either the sources or destinations of information, so they’re usually placed on the diagram’s edges.

External entity symbols are similar across models except for Unified, which uses a stick-figure drawing instead of a rectangle, circle, or square.

2. Process

Process is a procedure that manipulates the data and its flow by taking incoming data, changing it, and producing an output. A process can do this by performing computations and using logic to sort the data or change its flow of direction.

Processes usually start from the top left of the DFD and finish on the bottom right of the diagram.

3. Data Store

Data stores hold information for later use, like a file of documents that’s waiting to be processed. Data inputs flow through a process and then through a data store, while data outputs flow out of a data store and then through a process.

4. Data Flow

Data flow is the path the system’s information takes from external entities through processes and data stores. With arrows and succinct labels, the DFD can show you the direction of the data flow.

DFD Levels

DFDs can range from simple overviews to complex, granular representations of a system or process with multiple levels, starting with level 0.

The most common and intuitive DFDs are level 0 DFDs, also called context diagrams. They’re digestible, high-level overviews of the flow of information through a system or process, so almost anyone can understand it.

Level 0: Context Diagram

This DFD level focuses on high-level system processes or functions and the data sources that flow to or from them. Level 0 diagrams are designed to be simple, straightforward overviews of a process or system.

Level 1: Process Decomposition

While level 1 DFDs are still broad overviews of a system or process, they’re also more detailed — they break down the system’s single process node into subprocesses.

Level 2: Deeper Dives

The next level of DFDs dives even deeper into detail by breaking down each level 1 process into granular subprocesses.

Level 3: Increasing Complexity

Level 3 and higher-numbered DFDs are uncommon. This is largely due to the amount of detail required, which defeats its original purpose of being easy to understand.

Data Flow Diagram Examples

Professionals in various industries, like software engineering, IT, ecommerce, and product management & design, can use DFDs to better understand, refine, or implement a new system or process.

But what does a data flow diagram look like in practice — and how does it help your business? Here are three examples to help you contextualize DFDs’ impact.

1. Level 0 DFD

This Level 0 DFD provides a contextual map of a securities trading platform.

Data flows in one direction from the customer service assistant and the broker to the platform. It also flows in two directions from customers to the platform and back again.

2. Level 1 DFD

This Level 1 DFD breaks down the customer process in more detail, expanding it to include account creation, cash withdrawals, and eventual securities transactions.

3. Level 2 DFD

This Level 2 DFD decomposes the “Place Order” process to contextualize the steps required to place an order — either by a customer or by a broker.

It even accounts for a third-party stock exchange center where transaction details are forwarded after an order is placed.

1. Know the basics.

Before you start mapping out data flow diagrams, you need to follow four best practices to create a valid DFD.

Each process should have at least one input and one output.
Each data store should have at least one data flow in and data flow out.
A system’s stored data must go through a process.
All processes in a DFD must link to another process or data store.

2. Select a system or process.

Begin by selecting a specific system or process you want to analyze. While any system or process can be turned into a DFD, the larger the process, the more complicated the diagram and the more difficult it will be to contextualize.

Wherever possible, start with a small function or process you’re looking to improve.

3. Categorize related business activities.

Next, categorize all activities related to this process into external entities, data flows, processes, and data stores.

Consider a restaurant food ordering system. Customers are external entities, the food ordering system is a process, and the interaction between customers and the system (which goes in both directions) is the flow.

Also worth noting? The ordering system doubles as a data store, so for an SSADA model, this means drawing it as a rectangle with rounded corners with two horizontal lines inside to represent its dual function.

4. Draw a context DFD.

Now it’s time to start drawing. DFDs can be created by hand, using free templates available online, or via browser extensions.

Begin with a simple, Level 0 DFD: Start with your process or system, then map all basic connections and flows.

5. Check your work.

Before diving into more complex DFDs, check the work you’ve already done to make sure it’s accurate and complete.

If you’ve missed (or added) a process, entity, or flow, your next-level DFDs may not make sense, and you may be forced to start over.

6. Create child diagrams.

For each process or system described in your Level 0 DFD, create a new child diagram with its own entities and flows. Eventually, you can use these child diagrams to connect processes together.

7. Expand processes into Level 1 DFDs.

Using your child diagrams, you should map more in-depth connections between each process.

In the case of our restaurant example, this could mean digging deeper into the food ordering system and its connection to suppliers, managers, customers, and kitchen staff.

8. Repeat as needed.

Each process — no matter how large or small — can be reimagined as a Level 0 context diagram, and the cycle can begin again.

Repeat these steps as needed to create as many DFDs as required, or break processes down further to develop Level 2, 3, etc. DFDs.

Perfecting Your Process

While there’s no such thing as a “perfect” data flow diagram, continued practice can help streamline the process and offer critical insight into what’s working, what isn’t, and where your business can make impactful improvements.

Your best bet? Remember the rule: Keep it simple. Start with context, build out connected processes, and repeat as needed to map key connections, flows, and entities across your organization.

In addition to chicken, KFC is frying up controversy.

On August 24 Azim Akhtar, KFC Canada’s Director of Marketing, tweeted a few billboard images from the company’s new “It’s finger lickin’ good” campaign.

While the ads are supposed to be playful, suggesting that utensils aren’t needed to enjoy KFC, X users quickly pointed out that all of the images featured Black people eating fried chicken and feed into harmful stereotypes.

Upon receiving the pushback, Akhtar took to X to clarify that the print images were part of a broader campaign and shared a video version of the ad that featured a diverse group of actors casting aside utensils to enjoy KFC with their hands.

Though sharing the video was an attempt to provide broader context, it left social media users wondering why the creative used on the billboards didn’t reflect the diversity of the commercial. Other commentators speculated that the imagery was intentionally used to stir up controversy.

The Importance of Culturally Competent Marketing

While fried chicken is not inherently racial, North America has a history of stereotyping the consumption of fried chicken by Black people, using it as a demeaning trope. Failing to take this historical context into consideration is definitely a misstep for the brand.

We saw another example earlier this summer during the Barbie movie’s promo. The official X account for the Warner Bros. film shared light-hearted responses to fan-made images of Barbie and Oppenheimer. The move was seen as distasteful to Japanese audiences given the history of nuclear weapons used in Japan during World War II. Warner Bros. later issued an apology for the insensitive engagement.

These examples show the importance of culturally competent marketing. To avoid mistakes like this in the future, marketing teams should aim to:

Understand relevant historical context and how different demographics may be impacted by a piece of context
Enlist diverse teams with marketers of different backgrounds and experiences who can provide necessary insights
Constantly examine, question, and deconstruct biases that may show up in their content

While outrage can contribute to virality, not all engagement is good engagement. Culturally insensitive content breaks the audience’s trust and can overshadow potentially positive experiences a customer can have with a brand.

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