Blog Survey Results

I recently
posted the second annual “Head Tale Blog Survey” to find out a bit
about the visitors to this site – how they get here, what they like
about the site, what they want to see more of and so on.

Here are some of the results…

– 75% of
respondents read the site via RSS with 55% occasionally clicking
through to the site and 20% never clicking through. 25% visit directly
via a bookmark.

– it was pretty
evenly split between Google Reader and Bloglines with 60-40% for each
respective service. Even though I love it and have raved about it on
this blog multiple times, no one uses NetVibes.

– 30% of people
read/visit the site when they see a new post, 12% visit multiple times
per day, 20% visit daily, 20% visit every few days, 6% visit weekly and
12% visit “whenever the mood strikes me”. Nobody answered “monthly or
less frequently” but then again, I don't think I've had the post up for
a month yet!

– Given that the
blog started when I was in library school and is known mostly to people
who are either professors, alumni, former colleagues from when I was
attending FIMS or current students there now (and the same categories
from other library schools to a lesser degree), it's no surprise that
“Library related” and “Library school” are, by far, the most popular
types of posts being picked by 87% and 73% of respondents. Other
popular categories with more than 50% of people picking them were
“Work-Related” (a new category I added to the survey this year) and
“Miscellaneous Ramblings” (which sort of surprised me as I don't do a
lot of these and tend to not like them as they often feel unfocused and
random. But hey, didn't I just describe 90% of blogs in general?)

–
“Baby-related”, “Pop Culture”, “Technology” and “Humour” were all just
under the 50% level in terms of popularity with survey respondents.

– Everything
else got at least a double-digit approval rating except “Hockey” which
only got a 6% approval rating including one person who went so far as
to write-in “I like everything you write about except hockey!”

– Sending a strong message to get back to the theme that this blog started with (a message which I may or may not hear! ),
“Library-related” was not only the most popular category for posts I do
now but also, by far, the category people would like to see more posts
in with 67% of respondents citing it. “Work related” (which you can
probably view as a vote for “library related” in some ways) and
“Miscellaneous ramblings” were the other top vote getters in this
area.

– “Comments”
were by far the most popular widget with people indicating that they
read them, even if they don't post them. Every other widget got at
least a vote or two except for the LastFM “last song played” widget and
the Regina/Calgary/London weather widget (but I use that one on a daily
basis so it ain't going anywhere!)

– Maybe
surprisingly, 100% of respondents who answered the question liked that
this blog has daily posts! (If I remember correctly, last year, it was
only a slight majority who thought this was important.) Thanks for the
vote of support folks. I'll try to keep it up (even if I have to
occasionally “fudge” time stamps the following day to do so!).

– the general
comments were very supportive of what I do with this blog and it was
nice to see that the respondents included a few former
classmates/colleagues from FIMS because I didn't know if those folks
were still “out there” reading now that we've all gone our separate
ways.

– Pace got lots
of kudos as well and I'm sure he'll continue to be a regular feature on
the blog. (Idea for a future post – the security/privacy issues around
putting up pictures and updates about him – something I've thought
about a lot while doing my computer/Internet training sessions the past
three months. I didn't show Shea's Flickr account or our YouTube
videos at every workshop but occasionally it would come up and then I
often had to explain our choice to put this type of material on the
Internet to people who still buy into that media-generated hysteria
about pedophiles lurking around every URL and IP address.)

– as for ideas for other future posts from the respondents, I can address this one right now: “Will a Large Hadron Collider experiment create a mini black hole that consumes the earth? Or, do aliens blog more than humans?”