Content strategy survey results: part 1

By Richard May 27, 2011 content strategy, open project, survey, visual information

Between April and May, as part of the community-led project I’m running over the summer, 265 web content professionals from six continents (thank you) were surveyed about their life, work and education. This first set of graphics show the results for gender, age and location.

Gender and Age

Q1. What is your gender?

59.25% of respondents were female with 40.75% male

Key findings

This near 60/40 split in favour of females compares favourably to the list of speakers at the recent Confab content strategy conference in Minneapolis where 63% were female, and the forthcoming Content Strategy Forum 2011 in London where 59% of the speakers will be female

Q2. Which age bracket do you fall into?

27.55% of respondents were aged between 31 and 35

Key findings

Hardly earth shattering stuff but over half of all respondents (55.57%) fell between the 31-40 age bracket

Q1. What is your gender? vs. Q2. Which age bracket do you fall into?

15.85% of the 59.25% of female respondents were aged between 31 and 35

Key findings

Of the 55.57% of respondents aged between 31-40, approximately 60% were female

Data summary for gender and age questions

Numeric and percentage shares for each gender and age bracket
Age	Male		Female		Total
Age	#	%	#	%	#	%
Total	108	40.75	157	59.25	265	100
Below 20	3	1.13	0	0	3	1.13
21–25	2	0.75	4	1.51	6	2.26
26-30	20	7.55	22	8.3	42	15.85
31-35	31	11.7	42	15.85	73	27.55
36-40	23	8.68	38	14.34	61	23.02
41-45	14	5.28	21	7.92	35	13.21
46-50	9	3.4	11	4.15	20	7.55
51-55	3	1.13	9	3.4	12	4.53
56-60	1	0.38	7	2.64	8	3.02
Above 60	2	0.75	3	1.13	5	1.89

Geographic Region

World

Key findings

As expected the United States and United Kingdom accounted for the vast majority (83%) of all respondents

United States and Canada’s 73% share in detail

Key findings

Just under a quarter of all respondents (24%) hailed from the Northeast region of the United States alone

Europe’s 21% share in detail

Key findings

With France and Germany accounting for only 6% of Europe’s respondents excluding the United Kingdom, I’m intrigued to learn how the remaining 29% is distributed across the continent

Data summary for location question

Numeric and percentage shares for each region or country
Region		#	%
Total		265	100
North America	Canada	11	4
	United States (Northeast)	63	24
	United States (Midwest)	47	18
	United States (South)	30	11
	United States (West)	42	16
Europe	Europe (minus France, Germany and UK)	16	6
	France	2	1
	Germany	1	0
	United Kingdom	36	14
Asia and Middle East	Asia (minus China, India and Japan)	0	0
	China	0	0
	India	1	0
	Japan	0	0
	Middle East	2	1
	Australasia	6	2
	Africa	6	2
	Central/South America and Caribbean	2	1

What can you do with this data?

Study the spreadsheet on Google docs
Post your own sketches and visualisations on our Flickr group

Tagged on: content strategy, open project, survey, visualisations

7 thoughts on “Content strategy survey results: part 1”

Nikki May 30, 2011 at 5:58 pm

Wow. Only 2% German Content Strategists? I have to do a lot of promotion, then….Or ring cow bells. Or whatever get’s Germans to participate in our EU network.
FionaC May 31, 2011 at 1:10 pm

Hi Richard, thanks for doing this. It was a fun survey to participate in, too.

I’m wondering if the seeming lack of content strategists in Europe is not so much because they don’t exist but because ‘content strategist’ as a title hasn’t caught on as much as in the US, or it is not a discrete job but carried out as part of other roles.

It’s something I’ve been pondering as part of my own work life, which content strategy overlaps to, ooh, let’s make up a statistic and say, 14% actual CS work and 36% CS skills coming under another job title.
Richard Post authorJune 1, 2011 at 9:58 am

@Nikki – It’s a shame that we couldn’t entice more content professionals from Germany (and the rest of what call “mainland Europe”) to respond. We’ll just have to find out where they’re doing their good work.

@FionaC – I agree. It’s probably not as clearly defined as it is in other parts of the world (not that it’s necessarily crystal clear anywhere!) or, as you say, it forms part of other responsibilities and therefore isn’t always reflected in job titles.
J'Ro June 1, 2011 at 8:08 pm

My opersonal reaction: What’s with all these content-strategy younglings? I’m in my 40s and I’m in the 96% percentile (older than 96% of the respondents).

My professional reaction: Looking at the data, there must be tremendous opportunity for people with Content Strategy skill to move into positions of leadership. Director of Content Strategy, Chief Content Officer, Vice President of …?
David Farbey June 11, 2011 at 5:50 pm

I often get the feeling that I’m the oldest content strategist in the room (“oldest” in chronological age, not necessarily in the way I behave). According to your data, my subjective feeling is well-grounded in objective reality.
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