About three weeks ago, we asked Oakland Local readers--on the web site and on Facebook--to fill out a short survey telling us more about themselves and what they'd like to see added to the site. We learned alot--and we want to share what we learned with you (besides the fact you are amazing, of course).
:
How old are you and where do you live?

Oakland Local readers are all ages, but 26-35 year olds are our core group. 70% of our readers are under 45.  As for location, 50% of you live in the flatlands, 23% in the hills, and 13% live in another part of the East Bay. The remaining 8% were split evenly between those who read Ol because they work in Oakland, and folks from San Francisco.  That means 79% of you are in Oakland daily, a number that tracks well with our Google Analytics stats.

What do you do?

We asked people to describe their work life. 32.1% said they were freelancers or self-employed; 27.2% work for a non-profit or community group. 18.5% said they work in the private sector, and 17.3 specifically work in tech.  14.8% work for government or a city agency, and 7.4% work in the arts.   11% are unemployed, and 6.2% are mostly students. 

Are you surprised that over 60% of OL's readers identified as self-employed or working for community groups & non-profits?  And that almost 15% work for government or the city? What did we forget to ask: who has a small business! (Sorry, next time.)

How do you read Oakland Local--and how often?

We wanted to know to what extent our social media audience and our web site visitors overlapped. We have over 3,600 Facebook fans and a lively Facebook page AND we have over 70,000 monthly visitors, so we were eager to see where survey respondents said they connected with OL.

43% of our Facebook fans said they checked OL out on Facebook daily. Another 18% said they visited the page 1-3 times a week.  As for those who go directly to Oakland Local every day, 52% said they visited at least 3 times a week, and 20% go daily.

These stats gave context to our referral logs from Google analytics that were pretty interesting--basically, while the Facebook fans do go over to Oakland Local on a regular basis, we have some Oakland Local readers--27% of them--who don't hang out at our Facebook page.  Then, we have another 27% who hang out at the Facebook page, but rarely go back to Oakland Local. What does this mean? People have many different ways to access information on the web, so  it's good to go where your community is, basically.

What topics are of greatest interest to add to OL?

This was a fun question because the two items OL survey respondents were most interested in were the two items we'd already decided to beef up and pilot: Help wanted for non-profits and local businesses AND more entertainment listings. What you didn't want to see- Singles & Dating info and coverage of HS sports (go figure).

What are we doing with everything we learned?

First of all, we're super appreciative of everyone who took the time to participate. THANK YOU.

Also,  we're launching a new Help Wanted area with free ads for non-profits and community groups. (See http://oaklandlocal.com/tags/help-wanted).  To submit a Help Wanted posting, fill out the form at: http://bit.ly/br543A

We're also launching a new Causes and Benefits column (see the first one
We want to help get the word out--and with 70,000 local visitors every month, we can help.  Send your event notices and requests for promotion to causes@oaklandlocal.com; we'd like notice at least two weeks before the event.

And we're going to add more to our entertainment listings!  If you have events you want listed, email them to editor@oaklandlocal.com with EVENT in the header, or add them to the calendar yourself (Register for OL, then click contribute and select event.)

Some freebies coming up

Because part of our mission is about sharing knowledge and empowering others, we're going to offer a free workshop in August in using Google analytics and Survey Monkey, the two tools we used to create our survey and measure our site stats. If you'd like to attend this free workshop, send an email to editor@oaklandlocal.com with your contact info and we will let you know when we schedule a date in mid-August.

Also, we're having a Meet-Up on July 26 starting at 6PM--if you are interested in contributing to Oakland Local--as a writer, blogger, community poster, commnity or non-profit partner, photographer, videographer, volunteer--come on down.  RSVP here, please.

   

About Susan Mernit

Susan Mernit is the founder of Oakland Local. She is also a circuit rider for The Community Information Challenge, a program of The John S and James L Knight Foundation, and a consultant to non-profit and community organizations. Susan lives in North Oakland, near the Santa Fe school, with her partner Andy, her housemate, a big old dog named Winston, and a yard full of ants. She is an aspiring gardener, a long-time blogger & entrepreneur, and a recovering journalist.