I’ve been thinking about the audience of this blog. Whether you are a public speaker, author, or Web site developer, it’s a good idea to know your audience. I know our intended audience is LDS parents and youth, but without some research, I don’t know if that is the actual audience coming to the blog and reading it.
Web Analytics
Visitor tracking through Web analytics can tell us a lot about the audience of LDS365, but not everything. Through Web analytics, I know how many people come to the site, where they are from, how long they stay, what articles they view, etc. but I don’t know if they are members of the LDS Church or not, nor do I know if they are parents or youth or neither.
Visitors to the Site
About 5,000 visitors come to the blog each month (4,854 in the month of November) plus there are over 1,100 people that subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog. During November, there averaged about 200 people a day coming to the blog.
Time on Site
Looking at the last month of data, the average person spends about a minute and a half on the site. As you can see in the graph above, there seems to be an upward trend, which indicates we might be doing better at providing content people like to see. I certainly hope that’s the case.
Geo-Segmentation
Web analytics data tells us that we have visitors from about 100 countries throughout the world and all 50 states in the US. A majority of the US visitors are from Utah, followed by California, then Arizona, Idaho and Texas (as can be seen in the green heat map).
Audience Participation
The Web analytics data helps us in indispensible ways to know our audience, how frequently they read the blog, and where they are from. But despite all this great Web analytics data, we still don’t know for sure if we are reaching our intended audience, LDS parents and youth. So I thought I’d just come out and ask. Below you will see a survey (if you don’t see it in your RSS reader or email, then go to the actual blog Web site and you will see it). Please fill out the survey and soon we will know our audience better. Thanks.
What is the purpose in specifically targeting LDS parents and youth? It seems that the target should be any parents and youth and the LDS in “LDS Media Talk” is a reference to the perspective being presented on the blog rather than an attribute of the intended audience.
I subscribe to the RSS feed. I am a father of small children but do work with the youth of the Church. I look forward to reading your blog posts! I often talk with family members and friends about your posts and the subjects you discuss. Valuable information. Great job! Thank you!
I follow your blog through my google reader. Does webanalytics track things like that? Or does that just make me a blog lurker? 😉
Tara, the RSS subscriber number quoted in the post most likely includes people like yourself who read the blog through Google Reader. Larry Richman gave me the figure, so he’d have to confirm it. But most RSS feed managers, like FeedBurner, include in their subscriber figures, the numbers from the major RSS readers like Google, Yahoo, Bloglines, NewsGator, etc.
My wife and I are Senior Missionaries in the New York New York South Mission. and we have found LDS Media Talk especially useful to the Riverhead NY Branch where we are serving. Thank you for all the wonderful Media helps avaliable
I’m an LDS parent, also serving children in my ward, always interested in using technology to serve gospel purposes in my home and ward. I think I’m exactly the audience you were thinking of. Also, I’m in a remote area, and we particularly need the net to keep us playing in tune with the LDS band.
I read you through google reader. I like the topics so far, the links to vids, the stats, the resources. I could actually keep up with about twice the current posting volume. Love to see more of what lds groups are doing with technology: BYU-ers, Mission fielders, Church employees, etc.
One note: when you link to a neat piece like the Joy To Everyone vid, don’t forget to connect it to the tech idea mantra — like mention ways we can learn to make ameteur video to spread gospel messages. People may not realize how easy it is to author vids these days. Techie people don’t just want the “what”, they also want the “how.”