Final Notes on a Reader Survey

Our reader survey is closed! The numbers weren’t big enough to draw any serious conclusions, but the following are a few of the notes I’ve made for myself:

– With some exceptions in the Millenial/Boomer ends of the spectrum, our audience – and I say this with deep and abiding (if bemused) affection – is probably best described as “Gen-Xers who seem to enjoy cultural whiplash.”

– Nobody except me uses tags to navigate the site.

– Most popular: reviews (music and books about music-related topics) and “A good read, a good drink . . .” series. Least popular: Video challenges and year-end photo round-ups.

– Most readers connect either via Twitter (reading as stories are posted) OR have us bookmarked and check in periodically.

Thank you to everyone who contributed!

Housekeeping and reminders: submissions guidelines and survey

Two items of business this evening, darlings:

1) Our submission guidelines have been revised.

2) The reader survey: still happening. 10 questions which should not take more than 10 minutes of your time. Stand up and be counted and give us your unvarnished opinion!

One More Time With Feeling: The NTSIB Reader Survey

This time with a little bit more explanation.

The survey is our attempt to get to know y’all a little bit better, partially because we’re curious, and partially because we do sometimes get asked who our audience is, and it would be useful to have some hard data to back up our suppositions.

There are also a few questions about mechanics – the hows, whys and wheres of keeping up with the blog – that are mainly there because I’m curious about people use organizational tools, like tags, and also how they interact with information sources in the context of social media. So far very few people navigate NTSIB with the tags, and the more people are subscribed to the NTSIB Twitter feed than any other of our social media presences.

It’s also a chance for you to tell us about things you like, and maybe would like to see more of, and things you don’t care for, and perhaps would like to never see again. For example, so far the “A Good Read . . .” series is super popular and the Video Challenges have gotten very little love.

In summary, to paraphrase the late Ed Koch: How we doin’?

A final word about numbers: My response goal for this survey is 140 people, or slightly less than 20% of our total Twitter subscriber base. (Which is now at a mind-boggling 770 people. Even allowing for certain percentages of bots/dead accounts, that’s still a lot of people. Enough to fill a small club!) So far we have less than 20 responses. Please stand up and be counted and dispense your unvarnished opinions!

 

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