Community Profile
By the Bootstraps’ audience will largely be in Chicago because of the blog’s content. By 2008 Census estimates, Chicago’s population (male and female) is over 2.8 million. However, according to a recent Chicago Journal article nearly 40 percent of Chicago have little or no internet access at home and 25 percent are completely offline. Assuming I cut the population by 65 percent, By the Bootstraps potential audience is 980,000 people.
As you can see from my Google Analytics however, the blog has only been able to reach 61 unique readers. Largely faceless during the class, I created a 10-question survey for readers to take to give me an idea of who had been reading By the Bootstraps the last 10 weeks. Thirty-two people answered the questions.
What did I learn from this survey?
My readership was predominantly female (28.1 percent versus 71.9 percent) and relatively young (56.3 percent of readers were between the ages of 18-24).
Photo credit: “I work on the web” http://www.flickr.com/photos/webchicken/ / CC BY 2.0
Despite these differences, all readers came from a well-educated background: 46.9 percent of readers had earned their Bachelor’s degree and 37.5 percent had their Master’s.
Because we circulated these surveys amongst our classmates, a fair amount of readers were in journalism but outside of that, the occupations were across the board. I received responses from a college professor and social worker, a real estate appraiser, an environmental consultant, and advertising to name a few. With the exception of the students, no one was unemployed.
I asked my audience about where they got their news, specifically news dealing with By the Bootstraps focus: small businesses and the recession. Over half of Bootstraps readers visit Mom and Pop stores (56.3 percent). Not surprisingly, a majority of users received their news on the U.S. Economic recovery, the nation’s recession, and how people and the business world are affected by the recession through online newspapers. However most users found out about how the recession affected their community through word of mouth (19) with online newspapers a close second (17). When users consider the business content they read, 59.4 percent felt that an explanation to the recession’s cause was absent (second was effects on human services).
In the graph you can also see that online news sites not affiliated with newspapers (such as HuffPo) also had these readers confidence.
Somewhat surprisingly though was the lack of social media variety and frequency in their lives.
As you can see in this graph, a little over half of By the Bootstraps readers (53.1 percent) used Facebook multiple times a day. Yet they say they’ve never used Twitter (50 percent), MySpace (59.4 percent), LinkedIn (43.8 percent), Ning (93.8 percent), forums (59.4 percent), article/blog comments (50 percent) and Yahoo! or Google groups (56.3 percent).
People interested in small businesses in Chicago do not have many outlets to discuss small businesses in their city. There are only two Google Groups on small businesses in Illinois (one for Chicago Vaudeville performers) and they cater only to small business owners. Ning has over 8.600 groups, but has the same problems as Google Groups. Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times allows readers to comment on articles but very few people do; out of 16 articles in the Tribune’s small business section, only three readers commented. Chicagoist and Gapers Block, two Chicago blogs with similar audience makeup as By the Bootstraps, don’t have business categories on their site.
Out of the readers who took the By the Bootstraps User Survey, over half of users (19) visited Web sites where community members can interact and share information. Sixteen actually commented on news articles and blog posts.
What the community enjoys about By the Bootstraps? What would they like to change?
Most of the readers who took the survey said they visited the blog infrequently, but they did say they enjoyed the content.
One user summed up the average user’s experience best in this comment:
“When I come across notification that it has been updated, I always make a point to read it; I find the interview-based format very engaging and effective, since I respond more to a human interest focus than more abstract, fact-based reporting (usually).”
Asked what improvements they would like to see, users’ ideas ranged from cosmetic to content-based:
- have feature stories that are distinguished from regular content by having a different appearance
- have a “most read” section for the blog’s more popular entries
- make even more local
- include news articles that explain what the recession is doing on a local level
- organize posts by a theme or business type
- offer more connections to the average user
- create a header graphic
- change the layout so it doesn’t look like a blog