2009 Readers Survey Results

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The Readers Have Spoken.

The results are in and I’d like to begin with a huge thank you. For everyone who took the time to click on the survey and answer the feedback questions I appreciate your time and your input. The feedback I got was generally positive and entirely helpful. I think everyone who took the time to do the survey genuinely wanted to help make the EMT Spot even better.

In total, 58 came by and completed the survey. There were three questions. The results were as follows.

Question 1) Which categories do you tend to enjoy reading?

• Skills
• Assessment (tie)
• The Big Get It (tie)
• Knowledge
• News and Research
• Guest Posts

The top four in this list were very competitive but skills edged out a lead at the end. This also seems to be validated by the web stats. The skills category link is clicked on almost twice as often as any other category link. Stand by for more skills based posts.

Question 2) What brings you back to the site?

The answers to this question reinforced the idea that I have found my target audience. When I started the site I was looking for individuals who wanted to expand their knowledge and skills and explore ideas about what we do and why we do it. I aimed for a casual, professional and positive atmosphere. All of these things seemed to be recurring topics in my responses. Here’s a sample:

• I enjoy reading up on different ways of looking at the world in which we work.
• Witty commentary, excellent skills reviews, and great news I can’t often find elsewhere.
• It is informative and clear.
• It’s not the typical, cynical, type-A that you find on the streets.
• I read it for the creative writing of what would normally be a boring drool inducing subject.
• Thought provoking enough to make me do better on my next shift.
• Very relevant and entertaining.
• New, useful and interesting information which is clearly presented and well written.

I’m glad I asked this question. As a writer, it’s hard to tell if you’re finding your audience. Now I feel like I can sit down at my keyboard with confidence that my regular readers are reading the site for the same reasons I enjoy writing it.

Question 3) What topics could I address to keep you coming back?

On this question the responses were loud and clear. “Don’t change what you’re doing” was the overwhelming theme of the day. OK, I hear you. No big changes. It’s a deal.

Specific topic suggestions were: driving, scene safety, new skills, initial assessment, MCIs, ICS, atypical trauma or medical presentations, tricks of the trade, critical thinking, name-the-diagnosis and more basics. I like all of those suggestions and that gives me a great outline to work from.

Some specific responses:

• I guess all I can say is keep writing – I’m sure that I’ll continue to learn from the topics that you post.
• More explosions, perhaps a bikini or two. I’m just sayin’. (Thanks Buckman)
•  Just keep changing it up — when posts become almost cookie-cutter, using the same format and becoming repetitive, that’s when I’m likely to unsubscribe to a blog feed.
• I want to see more about the issues new EMTs run into and EMS’ main challenges.
• I think have touched on every subject I questioned from the beginning of my career. Even if you have written about something I already knew, there was a completely new light shed on that subject.
• Your usual, varied thoughts and musings are enough to keep me coming back

This is a small sample of the great feedback I got from doing this survey. I appreciate all of it and I’ll certainly do this again. In retrospect there are two other questions I wish I had asked. The first has to do with the blog design. A few readers commented that they thought the black background was depressing. (Hideous in one readers opinion.) I’ve been considering some minor changes in the blog design and now I’d like to know what people think of the current black background.

I also wish I had asked about the comments section. One of my favorite things about blogging is getting comments back and being able to hear from the readers what they are thinking immediately after reading a post. From my page view stats, it appears that less than .2% of readers ever leave a comment. I wonder what might encourage people to leave comments before they head off to the next post.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to complete the survey. I’ll start working on those explosions Buckman.