Blog Reader Profile
Just want to thank everyone who participated in my very unscientific blog readership survey. I had over 350 responses. By the way, the Google form worked like a charm. It automatically takes form submissions and populates a spreadsheet.
Based on the folks that responded, here’s what I learned or confirmed:
98% attend church 2 or more times each month.
- No shock here. Most of my content is about ministry.
- Pretty amazing, actually, that 2% aren’t regular church attenders.
88% of readers don’t attend NewSpring Church.
- That number is actually higher than I thought.
- This is encouraging, though, because my primary target audience is other church leaders…not NewSpring attenders.
61% of you are on paid staff at a church.
- Again, this isn’t a surprise to me.
- Wish I would have thought to ask whether or not the remaining 39% are serving in some sort of volunteer role at their church.
Of those folks who are on paid staff, here is the breakdown on your roles:
- Senior/Lead Pastor – 22%
- Worship/Media/Tech Arts – 22%
- Student Ministry – 15%
- Admin/Finance/IT – 10%
- Adult Ministries/Groups/Care – 7%
- Communications/Web – 4%
- Children’s Ministry – 3%
- Other/Combo Roles – 16%
- The shocker here for me was the number of “arts” folks following the blog. I’d love to hear from you. Why are you following my site? I don’t really picture myself to be writing to that audience.
- And, would someone just let your children’s ministry folks know that there’s this thing that’s called the Internet and they can find all of their coloring sheets online now. :-)
Your thoughts? What surprised you about these results?
I’m surprised at the few number of Admin’s – are they included in the “other” number?
Tony:
To answer your question about “arts people.” At least for me, I follow you blog because you tend to write about things that are pretty universal in ministry and leadership- so even though you’re not writing reviews of Final Cut Pro what you have to say is very relevant to me. Also, I work a lot in media but I’m heading towards senior leadership, so your thoughts and ideas are good for me to look at and consider.
Thanks!
Hey Tony. I’d say that as a worship/arts guy, I follow your blog mostly because you have great leadership insights that enhance my leadership abilities, and because I’m part of a church plant, I don’t just do worship arts, I do marketing, advertising, strategy, etc., so yours is a great place to get a lot of that kind of stuff.
Tony, I think you answered your own question about why “arts” folks are reading. Like you said two questions earlier that your intended target is church leadership. Everybody always has a need for better leadership skills and even “arts” folks needs them :)
dj
thanks for sharing the stats. my guess is that the “arts” people are early adopters of technology because they rely on it professionaly. and it’s obvous that children’s ministry as a whole does not.
I wonder if the Techies saw ‘Tech Arts’ and stopped reading, never seeing IT or Web. Articles like 25 Best Web Apps, comments on switching to GMail from Outlook, and how you’re using Google Apps/Docs to do these surveys is some sweet stuff to a subset of us readers :) It’s just not discussed much by ministry folks. (I shifted us over to Google Apps just last month.) Plus, today I get to point my communications / children’s minister to this site as an example of how we can do surveys now very easily. So, thanks not only for the great stuff on leadership and ministry you have here, but also for the application of great tech tools to your ministry! — Larry
Arts people are more hip and in the know than the rest of us, so naturally they’ll be reading blogs and wasting time more often than the other segments of the population.
NewSpringer, (multi -team ) volunteer. Been following you well before you moved to SC however.
Actually I am surprised with the results. 39% wow.
As you know I so appreciate your leadership and the experience you bring to the table. As a Christian business leader, I think your blog also speaks to those men and women leading others in the business world that are running the show with Christian mission mindset (vision and values). I follow your blog becaue: a. I know you. b. your comments, ideas and teachings inspire me and I learn from them. c. Many things in your leadership role can be applied in business leadership.
Tony I’m an “arts” guy, but more importantly, I’m an Arts Leader. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a lot of readers first connected with you through the Simply Strategic series of books, or at least were turned on to you by someone who did. (you’re so viral).
What surprises me most is that communications/web types make up so little of your readership. Does that speak to their lack of available time or maybe they’ve just found better sources for their coloring sheets.
All these commenters are right on target. Us media/art people follow you, because we usually lack in the leadership area. So, any help we can get… we’ll take it!
I’m an arts folk, and I follow your blog because I like learning anything abour ministry. We may all serve in different areas but Jesus and ministry in the church is something we all have in common.
Many of your posts are about church leadership in general. Those principles are directly applicable to my position, which is similar to Shane’s at your church. I like when you discuss the reasons behind strategic decisions you make, and anything you let us see on Mogulus or video…since I work at a church plant, it’s very interesting to see how more established churches do things. And…my number one strengthfinders strength is Input; therefore, I can’t get enough. :) I remember what you talk about in hopes of making wiser leadership decisions in the future.
I concur. I’m reading because your blog is about leadership, communicating, learning to be more effective, staying creative, and using the latest technology to be more efficient.
Plus, I’m waiting to see if Tony got a new iPhone yet. Did you hear? Jott is now native on the iPhone. It just got better:
http://www.macworld.com/article/134402/2008/07/jottphone.html
Thanks for pointing me to Jott. It has been a true helpful tool.
Many worship arts guys probably found your blog because of Carlos Whittaker (who has a very popular worship arts centric blog.) He promotes your blog frequently. I found your site over a year ago because you were on his top 5 list.
Of course it’s consist good content that keeps readers. The leadership principles you blog about cross ministry lines.
I’ll also echo the notion that more worship guys are up on technology in general than the children’s ministry crew.
As a worship leader, I value the principles that you share on leadership, which are transferable across the board in most ministry areas. I also agree w/ @rebeccamoon, it’s I like to hear how established & growing ministries operate, in order to learn how to better lead my team. Thanks Tony!
I think it would have been interesting to see how many volunteers do read your post.
I’m curious as to why the “roles” all add up to 115%? Either there is a typo or other error or the form allowed more than one role to be chosen.
The “98″ does not surprise me. The “88″ is a little surprising. I wonder how many outsiders have had some interaction, like Unleashed?
Your roles numbers look odd. Why did “IT” go with “Admin” and “Finance?” I think maybe you have more IT folks and they put “arts” as their role. The high number of “other/combo” may mean you need a better breakdown.
Sorry I didn’t participate… I missed it. -jw
oh… and I’m a volunteer… I’m real curious about that number too.
ha… that’s funny, jweaks. i’ll get you the correct numbers this evening. obviously i was in a rush getting that post up. typos galore and bad data. i have a feeling the boss at tonymorganlive.com is about ready to call me into his office and i’m going to have to have a talk with myself about improving performance.
tony
I’m an artist (musician/author/speaker) who is not on staff at a church, and I follow you for a few reasons:
- you regularly post on creativity and the purpose of the arts in church/worship.
- your posts on leadership challenge me to be a better leader in the areas where I’m leading others, as well as prompting me to pray for my church leaders.
- your church is one of my three favorite churches. Given that I travel to 40+ churches per year, that’s kind of a big deal to me. I respect what you do and the way NewSpring serves the Kingdom.
- you manage to straddle the line between being entertaining (metro-rednexual, occasional videos, etc.) and challenging (in both business and spiritual realms).
Hope that helps! Thanks for what you do!
~TLC
Children’s Ministry folk here (waving my hands). Maybe most of them are to deep in the supply closet looking for next week’s game (actually that is where I should be).
again, the children get the shaft. Thank you to the SMT at NS for focusing on the children. Hopefully there will be fewer screwed up adults in 20 years throughout SC because of what God is doing.
for the record…volunteer here.
I read and I imagine a lot of Worhsip/Arts pastors read because alot of us serve as pseudo-executive pastors as well as arts, music, etc. I’m doing as much Admin. and Volunteer organization as I am service planning and worship leading. We also only have 4 on staff at my church so if no one can figure out who is in charge of something, it tends to become a “worship issue.” Everything is worship, right?
I agree with Billy Chia. I bet alot of your creatives link over from Ragamuffin.
I am a volunteer on our fuZe (creative worship/arts) team (my team does 5S, worship design elements) and I am pretty sure that I linked to you from Carlos (particularly Creative Chaos). Liked your stuff. Once I link a couple times to a particular site, then I try to figure out why?
You have culturally relevant stuff. That’s one of the areas I tend to focus on.