The results of the Bristol24/7 reader survey

In November 2022 we ran our annual reader survey, in which we asked for feedback from our audience on all of our channels. As an incentive we offered a chance for one lucky participant to win a £100 restaurant voucher for COR Restaurant which recently opened to critical acclaim on North Street.

Bristol24/7’s vision is that using the combined power of our journalism and our social impact projects, supported by our community, we can make Bristol a better place. We wish to light a path for a new type of independent media, uphold the highest editorial values and do everything in our power to create opportunities, amplify marginalised voices and empower environmental groups.

That is to say; our readers and members are at the heart of everything we do. Getting a greater understanding of our audience, and opening the floor to feedback, is essential to helping us achieve our mission. In the interest of transparency we thought we would share some of our findings.

Here is what we discovered from 601 respondents.

Firstly, where do our audience live?

Our team were very pleased to see that our coverage reaches people in almost every area of Bristol. This year, we would like to work on increasing our audience in BS2 – St Paul’s, St Werburgh’s and St Philip’s – so that next year this segment is closer to resembling the representation from the other inner city postcodes. We could achieve this by increasing our coverage in the area, working more with local charities and community groups or holding local events.

How old are our audience?

It is fantastic to see such a wide range of ages so well represented in respondents. The lowest represented age group here is people aged 18-24. However, this contradicts data from our Google analytics, which suggests that 18-24 year olds are a much greater percentage of our readers than this suggests.

Data taken from the last seven days of Bristol24/7 Google analytics

Here we see a very even split between all ages; suggesting that perhaps people in the 18-24 demographic just weren’t as interested in taking our survey!

If you were to describe Bristol24/7 in a few words, what would you say?

The team at Bristol24/7 HQ were so pleased to see this word cloud featuring words taken randomly from 100 responses. To hear that you think we are local (we are! Our offices are based on Gloucester Road) informative and interesting among everything else is exactly what we hope to achieve with our journalism. Next year, we’d like to see community grow a bit bigger and we hope to see membership feature on there too.

Were you aware that Bristol24/7 was a Community Interest Company?

A Community Interest Company is a social enterprise which exist to benefit the community and re-invest their profits into projects for social good. Bristol24/7 is a Community Interest Company and we’re really proud of the community and partnership work that we do alongside and as part of our journalism. However, we recognise that we need to talk about it publicly more. This pie chart shows that less than half of respondents knew that we are a Community Interest Company, and we’d like to see that change by the end of this year.

What would you like to see Bristol24/7 cover more of?

‘Things you probably didn’t know’ was the most popular choice in response to this question. These are articles such as ‘The church hidden above the shops‘ and ‘The medieval arcade now hidden behind a bin store‘ which are always very popular on the site, as evidenced by our Google analytics. Second to this was local business news and the third most popular choice was things to do. Our editorial team are incorporating all of these categories into the new quarterly magazine and we are increasing their prominence online too.

Finally, any other feedback

In our open feedback section at the end of the survey we had lots of lovely compliments and more suggestions for content. Many respondents showed appreciation for our daily newsletters, our member discounts and offers and our social media coverage.

We had some respondents raise concerns or questions that we want to address and we’re really pleased that these have been shared with us. If you have any questions or concerns at any time about our business, coverage or team then you can contact hello@bristol247.com.

One such set of questions raised was ‘please explain what you mean by Bristol24/7 being independent? What definition do you use? What evidence can you provide for your independence? What is the ownership model?’

These are fantastic questions. So fantastic in fact that we feel they deserve an article of their own! We’ll be covering this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

We had a couple of comments about the navigation and search facilities on our website. The team is painfully aware of how much these could be improved. We made some sorely needed changes to our site in December last year and we have further updates coming later this year. The plans we have in mind could include a total overhaul of the look and feel. We will be consulting with members and readers in focus groups to ensure the new designs work for everyone, and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve got in store!

Several people asked us to bring back our magazine. We’re so pleased that there is an appetite among our readers for this. The first Bristol24/7 Quarterly magazine will be published this March and will be distributed all around Bristol.

One respondent asked us to segment our email. This is at the top of our agenda! At the moment we send the same daily email to members and non-members. It’s not ideal because our daily newsletter asks people to support us by becoming members, which is confusing for people who are already a part of our membership community.

We have a solution for this, but it involves sending our emails from another platform – and migrating a whopping great big email list is not an overnight task it seems. Rest assured, we will have this sorted in the coming months.

Last but certainly not least, a handful of respondents suggested that they would like to be able to suggest stories to the editorial team. Our editorial team do read most suggestions sent to us, the main challenge is that we do not have time to respond. However we’d like to open up the conversation.

Anyone can write for Bristol24/7 if they have something relevant to say. We have a section of the website dedicated to opinion pieces, which are often submitted by members of our audience. If you’re interested in writing an opinion piece please contact our editorial team by email at ed-team@bristol247.com

From February, we are inviting members and community members to attend monthly Bristol24/7 meetings, which will provide an opportunity to share and feedback on story ideas.

Our ambition is for the editorial team to be able to dedicate some time every week to responding to reader suggestions, but at the moment we don’t have the resources to do this. With every one person that becomes a member and opts to support us ambitions like this become a little more possible.

Transparency is really important to us. Over the next few months, we will be sharing more information about how Bristol24/7 is run, how we make decisions and more. If there is something you would particularly like to hear about, please get in touch by emailing hello@bristol247.com.

Main photo: Bristol24/7

Read next:

• Bristol24/7 to launch a new quarterly magazine
• Refer five members and win a restaurant voucher worth £50
• ‘We have big ambitions to make local journalism accessible for all’

Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: