A couple years ago, I did a Q&A with Graham Roberts who is a senior graphics editor and visual storyteller at The New York Times. His work with data fascinated me—from visually telling the work of rebuilding Ground Zero to creating “point clouds” of music from a classical quartet. And, of course, no one does anything better than The New York Times.

At the time (no pun intended), I wondered to myself, “Why can’t content marketing take a page out of his playbook? Why aren’t we focused on really innovating the realm of digital storytelling and making this a larger component of the visual strategy?”

We know graphics work and are ripe for social sharing. Even so, the once and oh-so-popular infographic has had its day and is in a steady decline. There’s a new onslaught of infographics hitting the digital world every day. Too often it’s done haphazardly and without a lot of strategy and strength of content and data. You know it when you see it:  “Oh, let’s make an infographic, too.”

Readers increasingly want more in-depth content and long-form articles to dig into topics. So why not make deeply informative visual content? Why not combine the two? Finally, it’s happening with new data visualization in content marketing.

Last week, Fast Company reported on the “death of the infographic.” I’ve been looking around and found some pretty impressive growth in marketing embracing data visualization and interactivity. Here are a few articles with examples and advice that really resonated:

In the end, it’s important to note that we all can’t have the budget to produce visualization in the realm of The New York Times. But that can be the goal and to really think more about the impact of how you can reach your customers—without a throwaway infographic.

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