In our last issue we announced our readers’ survey and set up the questionnaire on our website for easy completion and submission. As with all of these things, you can never know what will happen; just put it out there and hope for the best.
By the first weekend of our May magazine’s distribution we had our first replies, and they have been coming in ever since.
All of them, without exception, were kindly, positive, helpful and informative. The last question was: I like Soar Valley Life Magazine because…
You will find some of those answers on the footers in this magazine, with the initials and location of the reader.
For me, the most interesting answers were to the question: What else would you like to see in the magazine?
Here’s a few of those suggestions:
- Recommendations of places to eat
- Regular fitness article
- Soar Valley Visiting ideas what spots to visit/places to stay
- A volunteer section where different local organisations who need volunteers can advertise at charity rates for people they need
- What’s On type of articles
- A comprehensive list of events in the forthcoming month in Loughborough
- Interviews with local personalities
- Maybe a question and answer page to various experts on different subjects
- Local news, people groups
- Sports features and local sportsmen and women, teams and clubs in our area
And so the list goes on…
If you would like to have your say in what we do please follow the link below and fill in the questionnaire and we’ll enter you in our monthly prize draw to win a bottle of Hanwell English Wine delivered to your door.
https://soarvalleylife.co.uk/reader survey/
Another question we ask is:
Have you used any of the advertisers’ services or bought products from them? Yes/No If Yes, which one(s)?
I can tell you our advertisers are doing pretty well from their presence in our pages, judging by the sample cross section of readers responding. One reader listed six advertisers they had bought from and ended that question with “…I could go on!”
So, what do we surmise from all this so far? That we are doing quite a lot right, we could do a lot more, and we have a great number of folk out there who are engaged to some degree with what we do, and feel a part of the wider community we are persevering to appeal to, and, mostly we are gettng it right!
Ever since we began, more than eleven years ago, every month we have tried something different; listened to feedback, improved, and enhanced our little magazine.
We have grown from delivering only to the four villages of Quorn, Barrow, Sileby and Mountsorrel every two months, a total of about 14,000, to 40,000 today, comprised of 26 villages plus our region’s major town of Loughborough.
And this month we introduce a new competition, kindly sponsored by Charnwood Brewery: Find The Fox. Their logo comprises an orange elongated fox, and we have hidden him somewhere in the magazine for you to find. Submit your entry to our competitions email address with a chance to win a £30 Charnwood Brewery Voucher to spend in their shop on Jubilee Drive in Loughborough.
For the last couple of years they have sponsored our Find the Robin competition; but we, and they, thought it would be nice to offer something a bit different. Find the Robin continues, but with the prize being a very special limited edition bone China mug with our little robin hand printed on there. See the contents list to find the details.
Coinciding with our readers’ survey we’re also doing an advertisers’ one… more details on that in the next edition.
And on we go…
Steve
