As some of you may be aware, we recently ran a survey asking local groups about how they prefer to receive local news, including their views and opinions about ECHO.  We sent the survey to members of NENA, SENA and CARTA and we also posted a link on our Facebook page. Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the survey, we had a very positive response and can now reveal the results.

66% of people who completed the survey buy ECHO every month and 94% of them either read it cover to cover or read most of it. We also discovered that 87% of people share their copy with 2 or more people and that the most common age group amongst our readers is 41-65.

Out of all of the features and articles included in ECHO, general local news, news from local community groups and coverage of seasonal / special events were the most popular. Features on local individuals / groups and news about local shops and businesses also came out well as did theatre/drama news and the diary of events.

As well as asking specific questions about the current content of ECHO, we also asked for comments and suggestions on any improvements we could make or additional topics we could cover. We received lots of suggestions and we are currently looking into implementing a number of them including:

• Additional information on other local groups / organisations – we always welcome contributions from local groups and would be more than happy to include information about others in the area
• Change in layout and order – We are aware that ECHO has looked the same for a number of years and we agree that the month-to-month layout could be clearer in terms of regular pages for regular features so we will look into this
• Classified section – we have had a classified section before and we are happy to look into re-introducing it but we would need to see about popularity

Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions. We hope you continue to enjoy reading ECHO. A more detailed summary of the results can be found on the website.