We hope this article is gracing your screens during a lovely sunny August day – probably a rarity again in the UK at the moment but we can hope!
Back at the end of last year, many of you kindly filled in the survey that we asked you to complete so that we could learn more about what you, as a community, were looking for from Countrywoman’s Guide (CWG).
We very much want CWG to keep in mind what’s important to you so your feedback has been taken into account as we look at the year ahead.
But, if you’re anything like us, if you’ve taken the time to fill out a survey it’s likely to be on a topic you’re passionate about and subsequently you will be equally passionate about the answers and want to hear them.
So, we asked Charlotte, our lovely placement student, to look at the anonymised results and pull out the key findings for you. It’s going to be released in two parts, so let’s get started.
Location, location, location…
Through our survey, we learnt that, at the moment, 59.4% of you are based in the Southern end of England and 40.6% in the more Northern areas – with Sussex (12%) being the most popular county for our readers, very closely followed by Somerset (11.2%), which isn’t surprising as that’s where Holly and Emma live!
Location statistics are so helpful for us when considering places and events to recommend to you but they also help us to understand the type of countryside you live in. The land, weather and countryside customs can vary across England so having an understanding of location is so valuable when making content relevant and relatable.
We’d love to grow our community across the UK and Ireland as well, so if you have friends you can recommend us to, please do!
And guess what, our CWG community has made it all the way to America – how exciting is that!
From our survey, we also learnt that the CWG Community is nearly a 50/50 split of young and more mature ladies. Now, this is a statistic we are A) very proud of and B) so excited to work with.
At CWG we are really passionate about merging, mixing and complementing all the different age groups of country women. We believe we can all learn so much from each other and one of our key aims is to facilitate this. Our diverse age group statistic puts such a smile on our face as it means we already have the basis in our community to achieve exactly this.
We also learnt that we have a lot of readers amongst us. Through our survey we were able to pin point the specific genres and publications you enjoy reading the most. Your top three publication genres were: Country Lifestyle, Field sports and General Lifestyle with a huge number of Country Living and The Field fans – you certainly all have very good reading taste (but we knew that already!).
It was partly this feedback that inspired Holly to set off and relaunch In The Country magazine, which we’re all very excited about and can’t wait to see!
Continuing with the theme of reading and learning, many of you (54.14%) consume your media through social media channels but lots of you also enjoy your podcasts and physical printed publications.
As CWG is an internet based publication we were very happy to hear that you all enjoy social media as much as we do. We are very passionate about social media and using it in a good way, for both for personal and professional use. But we also want to inspire you to spend time away from the screen when you can, maybe bringing a little balance back into your life?
It’s hard to find space for you when you have so much to do, so let’s work together to find that time here and there. We want you all to inspire each other with your tips and tricks, you’re an amazing set of people, let’s never forget that!
Speaking of which, there was also a resounding respect for women across all genres (not just the countryside) when we asked you who your inspirations are. As a female led publication we are naturally huge advocates for women putting their own stamp on the business and/or countryside worlds and were overjoyed to find that many of you shared this appreciation. We are really keen to include more inspirational women within The CWG and our very own ‘Countrywoman’ Emma Warren is currently working on exactly this.
Turning the tables back to social media, having found out that so many of you love your social media, it was no surprise that when asked for one material thing you couldn’t live without, 26% of you couldn’t live without your phones. But this wasn’t the most interesting part, like us, so many of you were embarrassed to admit such a reliance.
We want to let you know – it’s ok! We get it. We rely on our phones too – for everything, all the time. They provide convenience, safety, organisation, entertainment, memories, communication, connection and so much more – it’s no wonder we depend so heavily on them.
But maybe we can work on balancing this out, together? We want to help you get the best out of that digital world and unlock the many possibilities it has to offer but all whilst achieving that balance you seek.
That’s why we’ve based ourselves on Substack for the time being, it’s away from the constant scrolling, so, like a magazine, we hope that in time it will become a corner for you to quietly come to and read or listen to our latest article – either on substack or by just simply flagging us in your emails to come back to when you have a moment.
From our survey, we also discovered that nearly all of you find the afore-mentioned balance when out embracing our beautiful countryside. You love nothing more than mingling within its community, drinking in the spectacular views and utilising the free sanctuary it offers for that much needed quiet, thinking time.
As we draw Part One to a close, we couldn’t possibly round up the first-half of our survey findings without mentioning the other unanimous link across our CWG community – animals!
Without a shadow of a doubt our horses, dogs and livestock play a huge role in the country lifestyles we lead. 31% of participants had dogs; 20.93% had a mix of horses and dogs; and a staggering 40.31% had a combination of all our answers including horses, dogs, cats, livestock and chickens!
Riding proved to be a very popular country pursuit with 39.83% of participants partaking in it. Furthermore, 60.17% of you enjoy a combination of animal centred pursuits such as riding, shooting, fishing, working dog training/competitions, deer stalking and polo! One thing we know for sure is that animals are at the centre of our community, we want to be sure to honour this so going forward we promise to grace your inboxes will lots of animal based content!
And there we have it, that’s a wrap for Part One of the CWG survey findings! We hope you have enjoyed learning a little more about each other and the community we are part of here at The Countrywoman’s Guide.
We’re going to be asking all new subscribers if they would like to complete our survey, so that as we grow we can reflect what you ask for, and if you missed doing the survey the first-time around, please do feel free to fill it in here – we’d love to hear what you think.