Ritika Puri, Author at General Assembly Blog

About Ritika Puri

Ritika Puri is a storyteller, business education consultant, and entrepreneur. She founded Storyhackers (a now two-person team) to help companies like Lean Startup Company, Dun and Bradstreet, LinkedIn, HubSpot, and Taboola to create stronger relationships with customers through awesome content and copy. Ritika teaches storytelling and content marketing courses for General Assembly in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

5 TED Talks to Help You Discover Your Passion

By Ritika Puri

Are you finding it hard to finally resolve to do something new in your career in 2016? Maybe you’re starting the year bogged down in endless work that you don’t enjoy. Or maybe you’re dealing with something more permanent, and you feel like you’ve lost an important spark in your career development.

Regardless of your situation, it’s important to take a step back and remember: everyone goes through these dips and spikes in their careers. Even more? The power is in your hands to course-correct and find the right path forward.

You need inspiration. But contrary to the popular saying, inspiration doesn’t just ‘strike.’ You need to go out and find it. Get in the right mindset for 2016 with the following TED talks.

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3 Ways that Data Affects Mass Media

By Ritika Puri

If you thought the introduction of the commercial Internet changed mass media, take a look at what’s in front of you today. Behind the sites of your favorite newspapers and blogs (yes, even this one), publishers are using data to create better audience experiences. For anyone who has ever considered working with data as part of their career, there are now more opportunities than ever to bring media and data together. Here are some of the most important technologies to have on your radar.

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5 Companies Using Data for Social Impact

By Ritika Puri

Can data improve the future of our humanity? You better believe it. “Big data” is more than just big businesses. Every day, social impact groups are finding new and creative ways to act upon the information that they’re generating. They’re using data to surface new information, uncover underserved communities, and track performance over time. Here are 5 very different organizations that are using data, in new and creative ways, to improve the lives of people around them:

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3 Ways to Get More Meaning from Data

By Ritika Puri

For many people, data feels like an avalanche of information. No matter how proficient we are with Excel, statistical software, SQL, or Google Analytics, it’s often tough to know where and how to take your first steps. Should you create a chart? Should you try to find a correlation between the trend you’re observing and revenue? How do you know whether your findings are statistically significant—and for that matter, what the heck is statistical significance?

At the end of the day, these questions are less intimidating than they seem. Data is a tool that human beings created for other human beings. As a result, it’s up to you to create your own constraints for analysis. You choose your terms. You choose the questions you want to answer. You choose the techniques that you want to deploy. You’re in control.

Here are three tips to help you wrangle your next report.

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Why Data Skills Are Great for Non-Math Backgrounds

By Ritika Puri

Never in my life would I have considered myself a data storyteller. While I had always been good at math — taking multiple levels of calculus throughout my years of high school, college, and grad schools — numbers didn’t really interest me. I was more interested in disciplines I felt were “solving real problems,” like sociology and government. Eventually, I majored in English because I enjoyed the challenge of interpreting and communicating complex ideas. Plus, someone once told me, “Girls can’t be good at math.”

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3 Marketing Skills that Every Entrepreneur Should Have

By Ritika Puri

As an entrepreneur, I wear many hats. I’m my company’s chief accountant, salesperson, strategist, and product-builder. I’m responsible for making sure that my business stays thriving six months and six years from now. It’s exhausting, scary, and highly rewarding — all at once.

The biggest challenge that I face is that there are only 24 hours in the day. With 8 hours spent sleeping, I have very little time to be everything to everyone. I’m constantly in the trenches, working with my existing customers, which means that I have very little time to build marketing campaigns, guest blog, and build the infrastructure that I need to keep my business growing sustainably.

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