Who Are You? (continued)

Several months ago I did a survey of my readers courtesy of Federated Media, who handles the banner advertising on my blog.

I got somewhere around 800 completions (thank you!) and the results were fascinating to me.

But my readership changes and grows (or shrinks) over time and it seems that I should be constantly surveying my audience to keep track of the changes.

So I have added a link to the bottom of my posts in my feed and my blog that says "take my survey".

If you click on it, you'll get a survey monkey powered form, four short pages in all, that will capture demographic info that has no personally identifiable information in it.

This is all powered by Feedburner and is part of the open feedflare and siteflare service offering.

If you use Feedburner and want to survey your audience, just set up feedflare and siteflare and turn on the "take my survey" link.  It's that simple.

Comments

[Steve]

In the survey I found it frustrating that I couldn't say I was a full-time student and working part-time.

I think that question should allow multiple selects.

[Rick Klau]

Steve - good feedback, I'll make sure to incorporate that for v2 of the survey.

--Rick Klau
FeedBurner

[Karen E]

I'm a devoted reader, but last time I balked at the survey because my job was at the bottom rung of the choices, just an individual contributor at my company. Then later that week I read that nearly everyone who replied was a CEO. I couldn't help wondering if there was some self-selecting (self-aggrandizing?) going on ... as in, people responded to the survey if+only if they could answer "yes, I'm high on the totem pole." Hmmm. I'm getting ready to click again and see if the survey suits me tonight.

[Vlad Stesin]

Chances are the CEOs are simply startup founders.

There is probably a portion that are heads of bigger companies, but it makes sense for startup founders to read a VC's musings, doesn't it?

[Jason Preston]

More survey feedback: is there a way to include a link that lets anyone check in on the survey results from time to time?

Just a link on the sidebar maybe that goes to a simple overview page would be pretty cool.

[simon]

okay my results are in

[Baldur Bjarnason]

I can't get beyond the first page ("page cannot be displayed" always comes up as I click on "next"). This is in Camino, Safari, Firefox and Netnewswire Pro on the Mac.

Looks like a server error, though. Is the survey supposed to be via the surveymonkey.com website or am I clicking on the wrong "take my survey" link? (Wouldn't put that past me, I am my own "clueless user" when it comes to testing my web apps.)

[Akshay Navle]

Just curious whether all the questions there are of your choosing. Does any of the information there go to anybody else?

The reason I'm asking is because of the "What have you spent $$ on and what will you spend $$ on in the future?"

And then the request for an email address... sure seems like its going to wind up in the hands of someone trying to sell me my plane ticket, a hotel room and a rental car on my next visit to CA.

Again, this is based ONLY on the language used by those questions, so I might be completely off base... thought I'd ask.

[epc]

I went to take the survey but didn't see a link, which is when I realized I'm not subscribed to your feedburner feed (according to bloglines, there's 717 others who are subscribed directly to your atom feed). I suspect typepad doesn't allow redirects but if they do you might try redirecting the atom feed to feedburner.