Walker Blogs survey results

Thanks to everyone who took our Blogs survey over the past couple of weeks. We received a good amount of feedback that we’re in the process of digesting. We also picked a winner for the iPod shuffle, who happens to be a new media developer as well. I hope to post a little more info about that soon.

I thought I would share some of the statistics and comments from the survey, in case anyone is interested.

My hunch is that the kind of people who take our survey are those that are already somewhat interested in programs that the Walker offers, and are likely to want to closely follow what we do. The responses to the first question seems to back up that assumption:

The number of people who came here from a search engine is significantly lower than what we see looking at our analytics, but not all search engine referred visits are of the same quality as people who come on their own. Also, if you’ve been a blog subscriber for years, do you really remember how you found the blog in the first place? Probably not.

We asked how often people read the blogs. The answer is pretty often, with a good chunk of people using RSS readers:

And the reasons people read the blogs:

For what reasons do you read the Walker blogs?

How many people have left a comment:

Have you ever left a comment on the Walker blogs?

Our blogs are not the most heavily commented around. Often the style of posting we engage in isn’t the most comment inducing.

Where people live surprised me a little bit:

St. Paul seems under-represented, as do the suburbs (which are caught up in the jumble of text in the graph). We did focus the choices for this question on the United States, but we do know that there is an international readership.

We also asked people what other blogs they read, which gave us a ton of responses. Here are the handful that were mentioned the most:

And some of the more eclectic (or just mentioned less):

I liked this question a lot, because it gives a sense of what our visitors are reading and what their interests are. The list is heavily weighted towards museum/art blogs and design related blogs. I also liked the question because it gives me a few more sites to add to my RSS reader. Thanks survey takers!

Finally, we asked for some general feedback and comments from anyone who wanted to share. Here are several:

The Walker blogs are great. I really like hearing from designers at Dwell, a magazine I also read, right on the Walker’s site. I love that dialogue w/ outside designers and artists that’s brought to me via the Walker because of the staff’s professional networks that extend well beyond my own! Keep it up 🙂

I enjoy reading your blogs but I really feel that they could use more pictures,video and audio

It would be nice to have guest bloggers on every topic, or to have less specific, umbrella blogs covering a not-so-wide range of topics and points of view.

Be less Minnesotan.

(I’m not sure what that means, eh?)

I live in Massachusetts and can’t come to the Walker very often, but I love your blogs because they keep me connected… and they make me want to move to Minneapolis.

I think NMI should blog more

Here’s trying.

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