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They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Guess what?
A Word Cloud Chart with a hundred words is enough. We’re sure you’ve seen these charts everywhere, including the business settings. A Word Cloud is a form of visualization for textual data. You only need texts to create this chart.
This blog will show some examples about how to create a Word Cloud. So keep reading to avoid missing valuable tips.
A picture is worth a thousand words. But when that image consists of a hundred or so words, it becomes super-effective. You can use Word Cloud visualizations to create a compelling data story for your audience. And this is because they are amazingly easy to read and understand.
You can use a Word Cloud Chart to visualize all sorts of data, from customer and employee surveys to keyword analysis.
In this blog, we’ve rounded up valuable tips and strategies you can use to create easy-to-read Word Cloud Charts for your data story. Besides, you’ll also uncover how you can leverage this visualization to stay ahead of your competitors. We will discuss following things in this blog:
These tips and strategies are tested and proven by thousands of seasoned data visualization experts across the world.
So you won’t be wasting your valuable time reading this blog in its entirety.
Definition: A Word Cloud also known as tag clouds or text clouds, is a cluster of words in different sizes, colors, and orientations.
So how can you read this chart?
The more often a word occurs in the source text, the larger and more important the word appears. You can use Word Cloud images in multiple scenarios. For instance, if you’re a content writer, you need to create a Word Cloud to identify the search terms overused by competition to bump your SEO rankings.
This visualization chart breaks down bulky text data into high-level insights. Essentially, the larger a word’s size in the cloud, the more regularly it is used.
A Word Cloud Chart is a proven visualization that can engage, educate, and quickly capture your audience’s attention. Besides, it can empower audiences to assess swiftly which text is the most popular.
One of the most appealing characteristics of Word Cloud Chart is that they provide insights effortlessly from a large amount of data. So you don’t have to waste your time counting or poring textual notes for answers.
Now that you’re familiar with the Word Cloud: let’s check out its benefits. Why does this visualization matter to you?
Examples are the best way to learn about ways to create a chart. Following Word Cloud example will help you learn how to create this chart in few clicks without any coding.
Let’s assume you’ve hired a transcriber to decode the audio interviews into a written narrative. Let’s use the tabular data below for our scenario.
The count is the frequency a particular word was mentioned by the hotel guests in a particular context.
| Tag | Count |
| Staff | 1240 |
| Restaurant | 576 |
| Well | 1133 |
| Crowded | 571 |
| Comfortable | 756 |
| Information | 897 |
| Carpets | 1052 |
| Distance | 1254 |
| Reception | 859 |
| Clean | 377 |
| Unfriendly | 493 |
| Wi-Fi | 1769 |
| Parking | 984 |
| best | 426 |
| Dirty | 1055 |
| Line | 718 |
| Polite | 545 |
| Hall | 1163 |
| Responding | 775 |
| Bars | 1296 |
| Grand | 819 |
| Recipe | 648 |
| Cafe | 602 |
| Kitchen | 1045 |
| Party | 784 |
| Eating | 2060 |
| Plate | 1193 |
| Modern | 733 |
| Flower | 399 |
| Lifestyle | 840 |
| Knife | 1952 |
| Chef | 1722 |
| Shop | 1877 |
| Gourmet | 1070 |
| Occupation | 271 |
| Traditional | 1360 |
| Romance | 679 |
| Menu | 196 |
| Chair | 498 |
| Interior | 1616 |
| Dish | 1583 |
| Furniture | 2116 |
| Crystal | 1688 |
| Lunch | 380 |
| Meal | 1216 |
| Luxury | 83 |
| Drink | 1719 |
| Grinder | 1393 |
| Table | 1615 |
| Romantic | 282 |
| Decoration | 2055 |
| Seafood | 592 |
| Decoration | 589 |
| Vacation | 1534 |
| Glass | 1981 |
| Business | 474 |
| Wine | 812 |
| Customer | 1117 |
| Light | 1633 |
| Cocktail | 863 |
| Beautiful | 773 |
| Sitting | 1139 |
| Order | 915 |
| Dinning | 458 |
| Dinner | 518 |
| Food | 986 |
| Cutlery | 2230 |
| Fork | 1091 |
| Eat | 815 |
| Coffee | 717 |
| Set | 1921 |
| Couple | 2063 |
| Elegant | 109 |
| Dating | 1055 |
Now prepare the data in the sheet and select Word Cloud Chart from the list.
Check out the resulting Word Cloud Chart.
There seem to be feedback about Cutlery and Decoration of the hall, which might be positive and liked by the guests.
Following are few uses of a word cloud.
You can use a Word Cloud Chart to visualize the recurring words from survey data. In other words, it’s one of the quickest ways of getting high-level insights from survey results.
For instance, you can use this chart to visualize the words that your target market uses to describe your brand. Recurring negative opinions and sentiments associated with your brand are a bad sign.
Besides, this is a cue that you need to take action before things get out of hand.
Next time you’re conducting a survey to create a data story, use a Word Cloud Chart. You’ll be surprised by the high-level insights you’ll uncover using this cutting-edge visualization.
One of the smartest ways of using a Word Cloud is spying on the SEO game of your competitors. All you need is to copy all the textual information from their websites and visualize it using a Word Cloud Chart.
Ideally, the most recurring words are the keywords you should consider depending on their performance.
If keywords already work for your rivals, why don’t you leverage them as well?
There are tools with a Word Cloud chart that’s designed to separate noise from your data, such as emojis, punctuations, etc. Next time you think of conducting surveillance on your close competition’s search engine optimization (SEO) game, use a Word Cloud.
Every content writer has words they like to use repeatedly.
When you edit your words, it’s immensely difficult to see terms you’ve used repeatedly. Remember, overusing certain words can cause your whole content to sound redundant.
This is where a Word Cloud Chart comes in to help you identify the redundant words in your content. This chart shows you the most overused words by highlighting them by size and color. It’s incredibly easy to spot recurring words in your content without wasting time or breaking a sweat.
Do you have too many dialogue tags in your writing?
If so, the term “said” will show up as a larger word. Do your personas smirk or shrug all the time? A Word Cloud Chart can help you find the actions you repeat too often.
Use this chart to ensure you’re focusing on the right characters, themes, and plot points.
For instance, if your content is about Jane, but Jack’s name is three times bigger, you might need to re-evaluate everything. If you’re curating content about war, but the words “war” and “battle” are tiny on your Word Cloud: you’ll need to develop that plot more.
The Word Cloud Chart has a special place for copywriters and bloggers. Why?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is really a bane of copywriters and bloggers everywhere. And this is because algorithms are constantly changing. But with a Word Cloud Chart, SEO doesn’t have to be a mystery. Remember, the most essential part of SEO is keywords.
Yes, the words people input in search engines when they want to sort out a need or want. Run your copy or blog post through a Word Cloud tool.
Are your target keywords huge or tiny?
What words have you inadvertently turned into SEO keywords? This chart can help you figure out precisely what edits you need to make to bump up your search engine rankings and resonate more with the target market.
Bonus! You can use a Word Cloud Chart generator to preview how your content appears to Google crawlers. While it won’t reveal the more technical elements of SEO, such as headers, backlinks, and alt tags, it does help you see the general message that your page conveys.
This is important because when Google “looks” at your page, it does so by scanning its content and code. You might think you’re getting the right points across.
But do your keywords really dominate?
The Word Cloud Chart can reveal if you’re giving enough attention to the keywords that matter.
When you ask employees to share their feedback and opinions about the workplace, what do you do with those responses?
Remember, it’s difficult to turn this kind of unstructured data into meaningful action if you don’t know where to start.
This is where the Word Cloud Chart comes in.
If you can see which points your employees are discussing frequently, you can make valuable and meaningful changes that can:
How can you present highly technical researching findings to a non-technical audience, such as a board of directors?
You guessed right.
You should use a data story that’s free of technical jargon. How can you spot and remove jargon from your data story or presentation? Use a Word Cloud chart to separate jargon words that may confuse your audience and render your data narrative ineffective.
Data visualizations (like charts, graphs, infographics, and more) give you a valuable medium to communicate important information at a glance.
But what if your raw data is text-based?
If you want a stunning visualization format to highlight significant textual data points, use a Word Cloud Chart. It can make dull data sizzle and immediately convey crucial insights.
If you’ve stared blankly at lengthy data or long pages of text, you can relate.
With so many insights to comprehend, how do you know where to begin?
Word Cloud Chart can help simplify this process. If you’ve ever looked at a jumble of disparate words that seem to not correlate until you investigate further: You know the benefit of this chart.
Let’s check out how you can best deploy this visualization to uncover in-depth insights from your data.
Charts, graphs, and other data visualizations can help you identify key patterns. However, pulling these same insights from qualitative data can prove cumbersome at best and impossible at worst.
A Word Cloud generator makes this process easy peasy. The words you see overpowering the others in this chart are your salient points and overlapping themes.
This chart can help you spot redundant words that spoil the flow and impact of your writing. Besides, you can easily know whether your content is aligned with your target themes, topics, and most importantly, relevant keywords.
Word Cloud Charts can help you find your customers’ pain points. If you collect feedback from your customers, generate a Word Cloud using their language to identify what matters the most to them.
For instance, if “long wait time” is highlighted by a Word Cloud, then this is your target market’s pain.
If you’re a business-to-consumer content marketer, this chart can help you fine-tune your sales messages by highlighting technical jargon. Use this chart to ensure your language is accessible, understandable, and resonates with your target market.
Essentially, if you want visualization that lends clarity to your data story effortlessly, use the Word Cloud Chart.
So far, you’ve learned about Word Cloud, its application, and most importantly, why you should use it for your data story.
Now let’s head to the practical part of the blog: the actual tools for generating this chart.
Let’s talk about Google Sheets because it’s one of the most used tools for data analysis and visualizing data besides Excel.
This spreadsheet app is top-rated because it’s easy to use. Besides, it has been there for years, making it familiar to almost anyone who works with data.
So how can you use Google Sheets to create Word Cloud Charts that are easy to read and interpret?
Remember, for a data story to be compelling to your target audience, it should have charts that lend clarity. You don’t want critical insights to be obscured by unnecessary stuff, such as heavy colors.
Well, Google Sheets has no templates for Word Cloud. We understand that this is very disappointing, but it’s the reality. So if you have bulks of textual information from a survey or a rival’s blog, Google Sheets is not the go-to tool.
The solution is not to ditch Google Sheets. No, we’re not advocating you to do away with the spreadsheet tool you’ve known for years.
You just need to supercharge it with an add-on to make it a reliable partner for data visualization.
Google knew very well it’s impossible to cater to all the data visualization needs you may have. And that’s why they came up with a store where you can access third-party add-ons to get various specialized tasks done with ease.
Well, there’s a reliable and incredibly easy-to-use add-on called ChartExpo. And it comes jam-packed with Word Cloud templates and other cutting-edge 50-plus charts.
The ChartExpo is a cloud-hosted add-on that transforms your Google Sheets into a highly responsive data visualization tool.
Wait! That’s not all.
This highly affordable data visualization tool comes with over 50 chart templates to grant you a broader choice of visuals to select. With ChartExpo, you don’t need to know programming or coding. Yes, it’s that easy peasy to use.
So when you’re curating a data story, feel confident you have a reliable data visualization buddy on your side. ChartExpo provides you unlimited freedom to customize your Word Cloud diagram.
Remember, you can highlight the key insights you want your audience to take in with ease. You just need a few mouse clicks to access a Word Cloud Chart that fits seamlessly within your data narrative.
Let’s head to the meaty part of the blog: the section where you get to practice what you’ve learned. Follow the simple steps below in preparation for the next section.
You need to install ChartExpo for Google Sheets Add-on.
Then follow the simple and easy steps below.
Imagine you’ve just conducted a survey for a hotel brand.
You’ve conducted personal interviews and recorded opinions from hotel guests regarding brand perception in various key areas, namely:
ChartExpo (add-on for Google Sheets) is an interactive Word Cloud generator designed to ensure the most repeated keywords stand out without much highlighting using colors. Unlike other tools, you don’t need to code using python to access Word Cloud Charts that are easy to read and interpret.
Besides, this easy-to-use Word Cloud template automatically detects the collocations (words that often go together) in sentences, paragraphs, and documents, to offer you more context than other Word Cloud tools.
Guess what?
You have total freedom to customize and edit your Word Cloud Chart to align with your data story. Yes, you heard that right. More so, you can customize fonts, layouts, and color.
Lastly, it has a super-cool interface to help you discover the most frequent and profitable keywords your competition is hoarding.
Wait! There’s more for you.
We’ve only covered about one chart (Word Cloud) in ChartExpo. Well, the ChartExpo add-on is a visualization juggernaut you can rely on to create compelling data stories for your audiences.
So what are the benefits of ChartExpo besides being a Word Cloud Generator for seasoned data experts?
ChartExpo comes with an incredibly user-friendly interface to ensure you don’t have to waste time visualizing complex data. Besides, the cost of accessing over 50-plus chart templates is only $10 a month. And this is not to mention a 7-days FREE trial you get once you sign up.
Note, you’re not installing anything on your computer. So you don’t have to worry about viruses and malware because Google Sheets is cloud-hosted.
Word clouds (also known as text clouds) work in a simple way: the more a specific word appears in a source of textual data (such as a speech, blog post, or database), the bigger and bolder it appears in the word cloud. A word cloud is a group, or cluster, of words depicted in different sizes.
Word cloud presents a low-cost alternative for analyzing text from any source e.g. surveys, plus it’s much faster than coding. Essentially, word clouds work by breaking the text down into component words and counting how often they appear in the body of text.
The simplest and most familiar form of text visualization is a word cloud. They depict tags arranged in space varied in size, color, and position based on the frequency, categorization, or importance. Font size is the important thing to consider as it mentions the frequency or value of the word.
It’s crystal clear that the Word Cloud Charts are among the best visualizations to use for your data story. And this is because they are easy to read and interpret.
Essentially, if you use these charts in your data narrative, your audience will find them easy to read and interpret.
This you might have got the idea by having example of how to create a Word Cloud.
If you have textual data and want quick and high-level insights without wasting time, use ChartExpo library for creating Word or Word Cloud.
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