OK we wanted to know how to improve news at Fan To Pro, and the answers were pretty revealing!
1. We're going to be improving fan to pro over the next few months, and one of the major areas is how we do news. As a reader of the blog – and blogs in general – how important is news analysis to you?
- The Most Important Thing – 0%
- Very Important – 42.9%
- Somewhat Important – 57.1%
- Not Very Important – 0%
- The Least Important – 0%
This was actually different than what I expected – I expected skews towards both extremes. So right now it tells me that the blog is more than the large amount of news we discuss, and that our other content is important in general, as opposed to the more divided audience I expected.
2. We're looking at various formats to do the news. Which one do you think is the most useful?
Next up, we asked about the formats, ranked from: Bad Idea, Not The Best Idea, Neutral/Medium, Good Idea, and Best Idea. Or in short, a five-point scale. What did we find?
- Keep the news as it is with daily roundups – Good Idea (with a little dissent in some cases)
- The people posting news should just post top stories, separately – This was stuck between "Not The Best Idea" and Neutral/Medium, with some high-end skewing.
- The people posting news should just post top stories, separately – Neutral/Medium with some skewing higher.
- Have "news drops" like you do occasionally, posting news as people submit/suggest it – Neutral/Medium, but just barely – many thought it was a Good Idea.
- Have people who cover specific geeky industries do their own news roundups as needed – reporters – This one was split evenly between Good Idea and Best Idea.
- Do deep analysis of trends as needed – Pretty much Best Idea, with others slightly lower – but no disagreements.
- Have a weekly roundup of big news (perhaps combined with other methods) – Good Idea very solid.
So it sounds like
- People want daily news with analysis.
- People want in-depth coverage.
- People want and like specific reporters.
- A roundup weekly is a good idea.
Gives me plenty of ideas folks, thanks very much! Now hang in there as this evolves . . .