Survey Results: How I’m Changing My Blog Based on Your Responses
February 13th, 2008 | Posted in blog 15 Comments »
Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent survey. Seventy four people participated — this is roughly 9% of my readers.
You can view the survey results here, including all kinds of colorful graphs, such as the one below.
Results Summary
Here’s a summary of the survey results:
- 79% of you work in the field of technical communication, with another 4% who want to break in, and about 3% who want to transition out.
- About 50% of you read my blog during work as a “break,” or else you read it at random times. About 13% read it before work, 12% read it after work, and only 9% read it on the weekends.
- 67% of you prefer my blog posts over podcasts, but 26% of you like both the blog and podcasts.
- 58% of you listen to my podcasts directly from the computer; 30% of you use an MP3 player or iPod; others actually burn the files onto CDs.
- 65% of you read my blog through your feedreader, 34% read it by visiting my site, and 9% from email notifications.
- 42% of you are between 30-39 years old, and 29% of you are 40-49.
- 78% of you prefer topics about technical communication, and 48% enjoy innovation.
- 77% of you create user guides, 76% of you create online help, and 59% of you create quick reference guides.
- 41% of you also have a blog, 34% of you don’t have a blog, and 11% of you are thinking of starting one. Another 11% of you have blogs but rarely post to them.
- 37% of you like the podcast as is, while 19% want more interesting topics
- 40% of you like the blog posts as is, 25% want me to focus more on technical communication, and 25% want me to focus more on personal stories and experiences.
New Directions for the Blog
Based on these results, I’ve decided to do the following:
- Since most people read my blog during work, I’ll set my blog posts to publish during weekday work hours. I’ve always been hesitant about doing this, for fear that my employer would think I was blogging during work. But really the concept of timestamped posts is not unheard of. In the past, I just published posts when I finished them — which was often on the weekends. But this hurts readership because when Monday rolls around, at around 11 a.m. when you need a break, the posts I wrote during the weekend will be buried in your feedreader and you won’t notice them. I’ll let you know if timestamping to work hours increases my hits.
- Given that you read my blog during work, you probably feel a little guilty too unless you view the blog as an act of professional development. If you’re reading posts on WordPress and blogging, this might violate your rationalization to read. So I will focus more on technical writing. I also like that my readers value innovation, because blogs should be a venue for new ideas and exploration. I will pursue these topics more exclusively.
- I’ll try to integrate more personal stories and experiences, but this is tough because transparency is a delicate issue if topics stem from work situations. Your responses here are such an interesting result given the recent article on The Content Wrangler about a reader who was irate about an author’s supposed expression of political opinion. I too value personal stories and experiences. I’ll work on this. I enjoy authenticity and voice almost as much as content itself.
- Regarding the imbalance of podcasts to blogs and your preferences (you prefer blog posts 3:1), I’ve had mixed thoughts about the podcast. I could try to focus all my energy on blogging, trying to reach as many as possible. However, I get a lot of visibility from simply having a podcast, and interviewing people is often fun. Maybe the core audience of technical writers isn’t embracing podcasting yet. Maybe the podcasts have more impact than blog posts. Maybe …. the podcasting scene hasn’t emerged yet in tech comm, and when it does, I’ll be in the right place. Or maybe podcasting is morphing into something else. As for integrating more video, that might be possible with skype and webcams, but it’s less practical given that few people have these tools.
- So many of you have blogs too. I hope I’m subscribed to your blog (check whether it’s on my Google Reader Blogroll). If not, please let me know (tomjohnson1492@gmail.com) and I’ll probably add it.
Is there anything else I should do, based on your responses? If I missed something there, please let me know. Thank you to all who participated in the survey. If you missed out and still want to take the survey, go for it.
By-the-Way Thought
By the way, I really, really like Survey Gizmo as a survey tool. It’s free up to the first 250 responses, and the graphs and charts in the reports look superb. In fact, I’m thinking of using Survey Gizmo to survey my users about their favorite help deliverable.
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Tags: Blogging, Podcasting, Survey Gizmo, surveys, Technical Writing
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unknownwrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt Is there anything else I should do, based on your responses? If I missed something there, please let me know. Thank you to all who participated in the survey. If you missed out and still want
Tom writes: “Since most people read my blog during work, I’ll set my blog posts to publish during weekday work hours.”
Can you please take into account work hours in Western Europe?
(As in: What are weekday work hours to a globally read blog…?)
- Don’t let this deter you in your improvements, but this one sounded a little impractical from where I’m sitting…
Thanks for the survey, I’m looking forward to the new directions, Kai.
Kai, so you’re in western Europe? Where? Here’s a graphical map of the survey respondent’s locations..
Most readers are U.S.-based. I doubt the timestamp of the blog will actually make much difference anyway. I appreciate your feedback. Sometimes I forget that the audience for blogs are global.
Tom,
Speaking of reading your blog during work: I actually listen to your podcasts at work, typically when I’m doing DTP or some other tasks that do not require that I concentrate a lot, and I think it’s ideal
I mean: I’m doing my job (no guilt, then), and at the same time I’m learning things related to technical communication and IT, and improving my English (since I’m not a native speaker). I think my employer can only be satisfied with that
So please, keep podcasting!
You don’t mention the iTunes feed problem. Did anybody mention that (besides me)? Is that something you think you’ll be able to fix?
Isabelle, I sometimes listen to podcasts that way too. For example, today I decided to convert all my topic title gerunds into regular verbs, and it freed up about 3/4 of my brain to listen to podcasts.
i’m still interested in more posts about your fascinating wife and adorable children. surely a smart guy like you can make them relevant to technical communication?
Well, Avery did write a couple of blog posts today on her new, first-grade blog. And you can read Shannon’s blog here: whataboutmomblog.com. I will try to work in more family stories into my blog. Anyone want to run to Wal-Mart for me tonight?
Paul,
If fixing the iTunes problem were something within my control, I would certainly do it. Unfortunately, iTunes is a problematic (and negligent) directory to submit podcasts too. They also seem to lack support. But I’m still working on a solution, b/c I know the iPod is so popular.
That said, try this. First, unsubscribe from my feed. Then open iTunes, go to Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast and enter my podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/techwritervoices.
You should get everything up to Oestreich. (The Jing screencast isn’t going to validate against the iTunes feed because it’s a javascript embedded video.)
Let me know if that works.
I’m in Frankfurt, Germany.
Thanks for sharing the cool map! Fascinating to know we’re part of a community that includes people from central Brazil and the western Hudson Bay shore…
Tom, can you do a poll re-run “round 2″ for us guilty 91% who didn’t participate the first time?
I quickly scanned the original post during a typical lunchtime Google-Reader while eating.
Seeing the words “Changing My Blog” this time smacked me out of the feed-read-blur, I guess because we are usually averse to change.
Your podcast is unique and excellent! KUTGW
DeepFraight, you can actually still take the poll. I haven’t closed it. And you’re always welcome to send me feedback outside of a poll, such as in a comment here or using the contact form. I was going to change my posting times to set them to publish exclusively during work hours, but I tried this for about 4 days and didn’t notice a difference. In fact, I think the posts were hit less frequently. So I reverted back to my regular post-when-I’m-finished-with-it schedule.
Even though only 75 people took the survey, that’s probably enough to get a general sense of how things are going. I think occasional surveys are a good way to gauge things. I’m always second-guessing my podcast, wondering if I should keep it or just focus on writing, which is my strength.
I also realized how technical my audience is. There are a lot of people who don’t read me in a feedreader and who burn mp3 files to CDs.
Overall I am trying to include more personal experiences and stories. That and focus more on technical writing than blogging.
[...] in a while, details of the experiences seep through my blog, but I try to leave them out. Yet in my recent survey, most readers say they want more sharing of personal experiences. Does a good blog have to be [...]
Nice story you got here. It would be great to read something more about that matter.
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