The majority of business communicators say they know what successful writing looks like, but less than half consider their writing to be extremely or very effective. This is a key finding in Typeset’s State of Writing 2020, a global survey of 238 business communicators produced with the help of Mantis Research. 

Typeset is a specialist editorial and content marketing services company headquartered in Australia, with offices in the UK and the USA. As well as producing any kind of written content required by companies or agencies Typeset offers professional development for people who want to improve their writing effectiveness and expand their content marketing capabilities.

Typeset partnered with USA-based Mantis Research to conduct the global survey of marketers, business owners, and communications professionals to understand how businesses use writing to achieve their goals and how well their writing is working. 

State of Writing 2020 set out to discover where business communicators ¬– marketers, communications professionals and small-business owners – were experiencing success and where they were falling down in their writing projects. The purpose of the research was to learn what separated the best writers from those experiencing less than satisfactory results and to report those findings to the wider business community. 

“We wanted to go beyond an academic understanding of good or bad writing and get to the bottom of what makes writing effective in a business context,” Sarah Mitchell, co-founder of Typeset says. “Writing requires an investment of time and budget, so we were interested to find out what was needed to improve the return on that spend.” 

Other stand-out findings from the research include:

• Business communicators lack quality control in their writing process. 
• Nearly half of all communicators find it difficult to know what their audience wants to read. 
• Communicators are too focused on increasing quantity. Almost 6 in 10 business communicators plan to write more, but only 3 in 10 plan to increase their budgets. 
• Despite publishing the majority of their writing online, communicators are struggling with (or not prioritizing) SEO. 

You can find the full report here. 

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