One of my favorite people — PR guru, Dan Janal — made a great point about using research for media campaigns.  He’s right — reporters love numbers.  What’s even better:  the bar is set low on sample size.   You don’t have thousands of responses to your survey in order to create cool stats.

My take:  distributing the findings is no longer enough.  We need to take what we’ve learned and do two things:  first, highlight the most provocative things you’ve learned.  That will get your article on the radar screen fast.  Second, turn the findings into a visual.  People love to see the big picture immediately.

Want to see the above in action?  Software company Hubspot is giving away 50 plus slides showing their research findings.  They do everything right:  they focus on what is compelling, turn research findings into a visual and, then, using the visual, they give their color commentary about why the findings are what they are.  Here’s the link if you want to see excellence in action.