Thanks for Mindsharing How To Make My Website Better

After I read Lior Zoref’s Mindsharing: The Art of Crowdsourcing Everything, I decided to try his method with a question of my own, only it wasn’t quite the Mindsharing success that Lior experienced over and over in his book.

When I asked my Facebook friends “What do you think my next e-book should be?” I got exactly ONE response, and that was it. I had well over twice as many friends as the minimum Mindsharing group of 250 that Lior suggests. I gave some brief personal background. I asked just one question. But hmmm, for whatever reason, my Facebook crowd wasn’t quite the source for me that Lior’s crowd was/is for him.

I might try Mindsharing again some time with a different question and a different crowd (maybe Quora, which is a community oriented toward answering questions). In the meantime, I received a LOT more Mindsharing response in the form of my recent reader survey. Thanks to Survey Monkey which turned out to be fun, easy-to-use, and a great addition to my social media menagerie.

Thank you to everyone who responded, and here are the results.

On my mostly once-a-week publishing frequency, the majority responded that’s just right, with some saying that’s not enough and others saying that’s too much:

Most said that article length doesn’t matter depending on the topic, although a minority prefer shorter articles and an even smaller minority prefer longer:

For more content, the top three preferences turned out to be:

1. Stories and practical ideas related to faith in daily living;
2. Prayer and personal spiritual practices;
3. Biblical and theological reflection.

If you could have me write a free e-book, what would most interest you? received a wide range of responses:

• the joys and challenges of long-term ministry in one congregation;
• dealing with grief;
• teaching healthy sexuality to youth;
• spiritual practices as part of everyday life;
• heaven;
• racism;
• and many other topics!

I couldn’t identify a consensus around any single topic for a future e-book, but many of the suggestions would work well as future articles.

The last survey question asked for any other comments, and also received a broad range of responses. This is my favourite:

I have been using Sacred Pauses as my prayer journal for the year (this is a new discipline for me) and I’m really appreciating it. The small questions, thoughts, and prompts, help me to focus my prayer and not just to recount the good and the bad of my day.

The most immediately useful comment was that “the website generally feels cluttered”–and when I took another look at my website, I had to agree. Did I really need a left sidebar of recent articles by category and a sub-navigation menu of categories? I decided to eliminate both since my home page includes a selection of recent articles anyway. If you miss the category feature, check out the category list that I’ve added to the right sidebar which serves the same purpose in a simpler format.

Thanks again for your help in making this website better. If you missed the survey or have thought of something that you’d like to add, please leave a comment below. I love to hear from you!