Who Reads This Blog? Find out with 2009 Web Strategy Survey Results

Above: See the details of the survey results, due to heavy data, it’s best when put into ‘full screen’ mode, the fourth icon on bottom.

To me, this blog belongs as much to the community in which I serve as it does to me, as such, it’s important to find out who the readers are and what they want, to learn about previous efforts, see 2008’s results. The goals of this survey are simple 1) Find out who the readers are, 2) Find out if they are they influenced by this blog, and how, 3) How this blog can improve year-over year. With a sample size of nearly 200 respondents, some of the key findings from this survey were:

1. Overall, Readers Were Satisfied: Overall, respondents were pleased with the blog, and 47% rated it a “10/10″ in recommending it to others when asked “would you recommend this blog to a friend or colleague”, and 54% read more than half the posts, and over one-third shares it monthly with others (slides 3, 4, 5)
2. Many are Buyers at Corporate: 59% of respondents said they are buyers,  28% of respondents have budgets $100k-$1 million (although one-fifth do not hold budget), and over a quarter work at enterprise class companies with over half of respondents in the United States (slides 10, 14, 18, 19).
3. Some are Influenced By Blog: Over one-third of respondents said this blog strongly informs their actions at work, but it was nearly split between influence in their buying process, with 40% agreeing, and 39% disagreeing.  (slide 6).  Read more from Edelman’s Analyst Relations specialist, Jonny Bentwood on his take of this data.
4. Sophistication of Social and Mobile at Work Varies: 39% of respondents said their company was intermediate when it came to social strategy, and 43% said their novice when it comes to mobile strategy. (slide 20, 21)
5. Identified Many Areas for This Blog to Improve: There was a large request for adding more case studies, and interviews with thought leaders in the space, and a variety of comments in the open-ended section that I’m all taking to heart. (slide 8, and qualitative answers)

You can read the qualitative answers on a separate page, in case you want to understand why they read this blog, and what they want to see improved.

A few notes on this survey.  I’m not sure this is truly representative of all readers, it’s likely those that are more engaged, and are willing to spend time filling out the survey.  While some research firms take data samples from smaller numbers, this is only 195 of respondents, although there are far more readers than that.

If you want to influence the readers of this blog, it’s simple.  Be part of the ongoing conversation (not be pitchy) by leaving comments and demonstrating your knowledge and expertise.  Also, you can schedule a briefing with me, but I’ll have to admit up front, it’s been hard getting on my cal as we just launched this new company.  I’m figuring out ways to make briefings easier, such as blocking out Friday mornings, using web based forms to collect more information up front.

Thanks to the folks who took the time to answer the 20 question survey, I read every response, and am constantly trying to improve this blog. Here’s to making this blog even better in 2010!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 6:53 am and is filed under Feedback, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.