A word cloud is a type of data visualisation, created from text data, where multiple words, phrases, or themes are arranged in different sizes and positions within a ‘cloud’ shape.
The size and (sometimes) the positioning of the words represent the frequency of how often those words appeared in a data file.
For example, the most frequently used word or term is usually larger than the other text, and usually in the middle of the word cloud, like in this example below.
A data source can be anything you can copy and paste text from: a website, a text document, a spreadsheet, etc.
Watch our video here where our cofounder, Ray Poynter, made a word cloud based on the popular book ‘A Christmas Carol’ – just by using the text file version of the book.
The data files can also be from market research data on, for example, what people think about a brand’s customer service, or how they might describe a product.
Data can also be extracted from academic papers, research conference talks, and presentations where you might want to find insight into what has been said. Simply put, a data file is anything and everything where there is text to be analyzed.
And now, with the rise of great transcript services, you can even transcribe videos into words, and put that through a word cloud generator, like Word Cloud Plus, to get the key themes or words from a video.
Create your own word cloud today with a free account here, or try our Professional account with a free 30-day trial period here.
Want to learn more? Check out our YouTube channel to see how our Co-Founders have used Word Cloud Plus for market research, insight, and more”.