Congrats to Sarah Mitchell and the team at Typeset on their State of Writing 2021 research, produced in conjunction with Mantis Research.
It’s here – the State of Writing 2021 report is out. Writing is hard and content marketers are struggling. Find out more: https://t.co/C5SrFH9M5B #writingtips #contentmarketing #SoW21 #businesswriting pic.twitter.com/sgx3EANC0A
— Sarah Mitchell (@SarahMitchellOz) April 28, 2021
Let’s cut to the chase:
What’s wrong with us writers?
In Typeset’s email newsletter announcing the report, Sarah writes:
“Despite the impressive amount of experience in writing and publishing, 70% of respondents said they’re only somewhat satisfied or not satisfied at all with the performance of their written content in the past 12 months.”
Sarah continues:
“Something is clearly wrong.”
At least the surveyed writers are honest and self-aware. But having such a high percentage of writers somewhat satisfied or not satisfied with their writing is a crisis.
Thankfully, the detailed blog post at Typeset provides actionable advice on how writers can fix this. Also, in the Q&A (below), Sarah offers her own take.
The post also includes advice from folks who know a thing or two about writing:
- Doug Kessler
- Michele Linn
- Andy Crestodina
- Astrid Fackelmann
- Janine Pares
- Joe Pulizzi
- Erika Heald
Sarah was nice enough to “sit down” with me for an interview about the research. The interview was conducted via email.
What was your goal with this research?
Sarah Mitchell, Founder at Typeset
We’re trying to get to the bottom of what makes writing effective in a business context. What I mean by that is whether the writing we produce in our work is meeting expectations and providing an acceptable return on investment.
It’s more than whether a piece of writing is academically correct or subjectively ‘good’. Does it do what it was meant to do? It’s been my experience that modern marketers have to focus on a lot more than good writing to produce results that encourage continued funding for marketing and communications.
What was your biggest surprise this year?
The first surprise was to discover we had a highly experienced group of content marketers respond to the survey. Eight-one percent told us they had personally been writing or publishing to support an organisation for more than six years.
That’s a huge opportunity to learn from a mature field. When we discovered only 30% were satisfied with the performance of their written content in the last 12 months, that was the big surprise, especially since most of them reported feeling optimistic about their work.
Clearly, something is wrong in the land of content marketing.
The report uncovered a number of issues that could explain what’s happening.
What’s one thing content marketers can do to improve their writing effectiveness?
The research showed a disconnect between what content marketers say and what they do when it comes to the quality of their writing. Eighty-six percent say they think their brand will be perceived negatively if readers find errors.
And yet – and this blows my mind – only a third send their content for proofreading. It’s such an easy thing to do to improve quality but most of the time it’s a final step that’s not taken.
Note: Here’s a related post by Ann Gynn at Content Marketing Institute, “The Best Proofreading and Editing Tips (Spoiler: Don’t Do Them at the Same Time).”
For other marketers looking to do in-depth research like this, what’s one thing to keep in mind?
Research is a time-consuming discipline and it helps to have a research partner. This is the second annual State of Writing report so we had an easier time of it this year because we built on last year’s work.
There’s so much to know about how to construct a non-biased survey, how to test, and how to collect responses. And then the real work begins once you have the results and begin to construct a story from the data.
We work with Michele Linn at Mantis Research and I can’t recommend her and Clare McDermott enough. They saved us untold hours and kept the project from getting derailed many times.
Tell us about Typeset?
We’re an editorial services company based in Australia, the UK and the USA. We specialise in copywriting, proofreading, reporting, content marketing, and anything related to the written word. That’s why we’re so intent on finding out how we can be more effective for our customers and to help the whole industry understand how to improve every writing project.
Note: to learn more, visit the Typeset website.
State of Writing 2021
Read the research: State of Writing in 2021: Writing is hard [NEW RESEARCH]