Over the past month, Simple, Good, and Tasty conducted our first ever reader survey. Of the nearly 100 people who completed the survey, almost 90% of you interact with SGT in more than one way - reading articles, coming to events, following us on Twitter or Facebook, subscribing to our RSS feed, and more. First of all, thank you! I was thrilled to hear from so many of you directly, and I appreciate you taking the time to help us make the site better and better. After nearly two years of posts, events, book clubs, and more -- and hundreds of thousands of interactions -- I'd say that this exercise was long overdue.
The first great thing we got from the survey was loads of ideas about topics we should cover. From favorite farmers' markets to non-profit organizations to dairy farmers and more, you've given us more than 50 new topics to explore. I can't promise we'll get to each of them, but I will tell you that we've acted on this information already: many of your suggestions have been assigned to our writers and you'll start seeing these posts -- the posts you've asked for -- within the next few weeks.
The next thing we learned is that many of our readers interact with us in multiple ways, including the website, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and events. This means we can confidently use each of these tools in different ways, to bring together parts of a whole. Each interaction needs to stand on its own, but it can also be part of a greater whole. I don't know exactly where this will take us yet, but I'm excited to think about it (we're still taking ideas if you've got them).
We also learned how well we're meeting the needs of our audience. Responses to the question "What other suggestions do you have to help make Simple, Good, and Tasty better?" were roughly divided into three groups, exemplified by these quotes:
Perfect!
"I think it's been great. A great variety of articles from different people. I love it! Sorry I don't have any constructive criticism. Keep up the good work!"
Less Political!
"Some of the 'political' food writing seems a little strident sometimes, and while I realize it has a place in the discussion, I think it tends to be polarizing and frankly, not that much fun to read."
More Political!
"I like that you're doing more policy and advocacy related stuff. It's good to be able to make a difference about the stuff I care about. It would be great to have more opportunities to get involved in food policy and advocacy."
My friend Barth Anderson from Fair Food Fight tells me that this is a good sign, that we're attracting foodies and activists alike. And yet, I can't help but wonder if there's a way to make everyone even happier. I'll keep working on that one too.
A few more things we learned:
- Some of you think we should dig deeper into our stories, that we tend to be superficial
- Some of you want to know more about our writers and our families
- Some of you wish we hosted more events, especially affordable ones
- Some of you want us to take over the world (that might have been my own survey, I'm not sure)
- Most of you don't care much about contests (but they drive a lot of traffic anyway)
In any case, we've got lots to work on. Thanks again for setting us straight.
Lee Zukor is the founder of Simple, Good, and Tasty. E-mail him at lee@simplegoodandtasty.com or follow him on Twitter.
