Last weekend, between cleaning up weeds in our backyard and grilling veggies on the Weber, I spent many hours reviewing and writing up the results of my second annual survey of writers and content marketing professionals.
In 2024, I conducted the survey and did the analysis using nothing more than Google Forms and Google Sheets. (See: Blogs are alive and well, survey data shows)
This year, I teamed up with Researchscape, a professional research firm with a long track record of conducting surveys for PR and marketing teams.
I'm pretty good with a spreadsheet, and I am proud of my ability to interpret research results and draw out compelling storylines from them. But Researchscape has powerful analytical tools and a depth of statistical sophistication that I admire. It was a privilege to partner with them.
Not only did we get a larger sample of content people responding to our survey (169 qualified respondents, after filtering out spam, robots, people who aren't really paying attention, and people who don't really product content), but Researchscape brings the ability to generate a huge number of crosstabs and evaluate statistical significance for every variable you might want to look at.
The result is a report that reveals some truly interesting insights into the way people approach collaborative writing, editing, and content creation.
Here's just one peek at the data, showing that the most common types of content people create collaboratively include short-form social media posts and blog posts.
We found out what the most popular tools are for:
- writing
- editing
- AI assistance
We discovered what content pros are using AI for (in most cases, it's not replacing the actual writing)—and we found data confirming the value that content pros bring.
We also collected a wealth of excellent advice from respondents on how to work collaboratively with others, how to produce great content, and how best to work with AI.
I'll release the report next week, on June 6. I'll share the PDF with all my subscribers.
This Thursday, June 5, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific (2:00 p.m. Eastern), I'm doing a webinar with Researchscape's Tony Cheevers to preview the results. It's hosted by O'Dwyer's, a longstanding PR news site.
It's a free webinar and you're invited. Everyone who attends will also get a copy of the report.
Please sign up at the link below. And feel free to forward this to anyone you think would be interested in learning more about how content creation works today.
I hope to see you Thursday!
