Thanks to everyone who took a few minutes to take my 2019 Technology Survey!! I was able to get 49 responses and so I feel it was a good sampling pool to create a meaningful snapshot of the technology being used by those of you who are interested in reading my blog. This helps me create future posts because it sees where you all are at technically and I can tailor the results to be more targeted.
Ready? Let's dive into the results and I'll give my running commentary as we go...
This first result was a little surprising as I expected to see a more level distribution of Windows and Mac. However, I'm not disappointed in this result, rather quite pleased! 82% Windows to 18% Mac for a primary computer. I have used Windows for a very long time and it is my preference (and specialty). It has not been a perfect ride, but the latest version of Windows 10 is one that I can highly recommended. I also have access to working on a mac. So I'm not totally disconnected from this audience, I try to work on that computer once in a while. I want to be able to switch hit when required. I have been shying away from the Windows tips as blog topics because I figured a higher percenteage was on Mac, but now that I see these figures, I see how I can readjust that thought some!
This is very good news that Windows 10 has found high adoption. If you weren't already aware, Windows 7 will stop getting update support January 2020! Your computer will still continue to work, but we live in a world full of constant security threat, so it is a slippery course to follow in having an out of date operating system because of no longer getting updates.
For a browser, I'm not surprised at all that Google Chrome is far and away the favorite at 75%. It has been my favorite browser for many years now too! Firefox comes in 2nd place with 12%. I think some may choose Firefox as an alternate for ActiveRain when this site has issues that may be browser related. For instance, on the new blog post edit screen you may have issues like I do. Tip: if you ever have the same problem that I've been having with AR and Chrome, here's what I do. When starting a new blog post and the cursor doesn't appear in the edit box, click on any of the toolbar buttons (e.g. the left justify button). This causes the cursor to reappear and I can start typing. This also happens sometimes in comment boxes and the same thing fixes it. (I hope that helps, it was very frustrating until I discovered that workaround). Keep an eye on Microsoft Edge in the future. Microsoft has recreated this browser using the Chromium engine. It is getting very positive reviews. And finally, for those of you using Microsoft Internet Explorer, please reconsider moving on... web developers hate it and it just has no future. I suggest you visit the chrome download page now. :)
This is an interesting result for email client apps and a question that I had not posed on previous years' surveys. I myself use both Microsoft Outlook (40% of you do too) and Google Gmail/GSuite (56% of you do). Perhaps this is good blogging topic for my future posting.
The Microsoft Office Suite is part of most everyone's experience on a computer. (alternatively I guess you'd be using Google Docs or the Apple Pages app). I wanted to see where everyone's skill level was and where they thought that they needed to get more training. Microsoft Word as I expected has a good competency level with even a high number proficient or expert. Well done! Excel also showed a good proficiency, but it can be a little more tricky getting those formulas to work like you want. PowerPoint as expected has a less familiarity to it.
In the above charts what I was looking to see was if this is good blogging subject material. Do you want to learn how to better use Word, Excel, Powerpoint? It looks like you are strongest in Word, but could use a little help there. But more help needed in Excel and PowerPoint. Good to know! Watch for future blog posts and videos.
MOBILE DEVICES
Aha, here's the focus on our mobile devices. We're going to say we are 60% Apple iPhone and 40% Android phone users. That sounds right to me based on observing the phones I see out there. I'm an android guy so I'm pretty happy to see a decent percentage in my corner. Though Apple of course is a great phone too (and a little competition helps keep things getting better all the time)
Now Samsung has the dominant share at 68% and the others splitting up the other 32%. Samsungs are good, however I personally chose the Google Pixel phone myself. What an awesome camera and each generation Pixel just gets better and better!
It doesn't look like we have any camp deserters here. Still an interesting question just to make sure.
Full size iPad takes the largest portion of 43%. Prices have really come within reach for iPads recently with $250 seen quite often as the going price for the newest gen iPad. 14% don't have any tablet at all. I myself just got the 10" Amazon Fire tablet. I have only used it for a day so far, but testing pretty good and for that sweet price point. However, be aware that the Amazon fire tablets only offer a somewhat limited amazon app store (lots of apps, yes, but missing some very important ones!) There is a 'back door' way to get the full google play store to make it a true android tablet. This can be done, and it is what I did, but you may need to ask the geek in your family to give you a hand installing the google play store on a fire tablet.
LIST OF FAVORITE TABLET APPS HERE
This question was to help us discover some very useful apps that we might not be already aware of (i.e. you were not to list other essential or fundamental apps we all know already: email, calendar, contacts, browser, calculator, maps, camera, text message, and social media)
Check this list out! Did you discover any you want to go check out? I see a few for sure I'll be looking into.
YOUR WEBSITE/BLOG/SOCIAL MEDIA
This pie is pretty split up isn't it? It is VERY tough to maintain a daily blogging schedule and yet there are healthy number 18% that do this. However there is nothing at all wrong with a weekly or semi weekly schedule. If you are producing quality posts, but regularly producing new content several times a month at least this is a good thing!
WordPress is a great blogging platform. 53% of you are using WordPress for a website.
Now for social media. Nearly ALL (98%) of you take a look regularly at Facebook. YouTube is a high percentage at 70%, people love to watch videos. Which (#nudge) is why you should be considering if video can fit in your business marketing plan. LinkedIn has a strong foothold at 62% and Instagram at 60%. Twitter 60% and Pinterest at 43% come in on the lower side but still with strong enough numbers that we aren't writing off any of these platforms.
Now the question, are you putting out content on these platforms. Facebook is a strong yes. Instagram also gets used (but not sure if you are leveraging instagram for business or just personal). The other sites are getting 30-40% of you posting content here.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
25 responded that they use professional photography for their listings compared to 15 who take their own photos. That is a 62% to 38% actual result (I should have omitted the N/A part in the answer choices to have the pie chart show actual breakdown.) Anyway, that is essentially nearly a 2/3 majority who do professional photos.
Again I should have left the N/A part out of the question. But the takeaway here is that those who take their own listing photos do post-processing edits to make their presentations better! A good number feel that they could do better and I hope to share posts that will help with that!
I'm glad to see 27% using Google Photos. It is a service that I cannot recommend enough (and I do at every opportunity!) It is a web based photo system that is completely free to use. Not only does it let you organize all your photos, it does a tremendous job of letting you do post-production edits easily and amazingly. Check out my Google Photos post if you want to learn more, and guaranteed you'll be hearing more about this topic including instructional video tutorials hopefully soon.
It is good to see this much interest in videos for business marketing! If you want a differentiator in your field this could be time well invested. We all enjoy watching videos (were you paying attention at the chart before about how many of us watch YouTube regularly) Video is not hard to do. Good video however can be a challenge, but those meeting the challenge have something unique! You already know where to go on ActiveRain to learn and be inspired by good video creation, but let me point you there anyway for the person who hasn't yet discovered Debb Janes and her group YouTube Thursdays. Whoever is creating new video content should post there so we can all be inspired and by following that group, you'll see Debb's regular inspiration posts to help us along.
A good percentage (just under half) have used drone photography/videography for their business. Interesting! Using 360 photography also has some good traction (about 1/3 using).
CLOUD SERVICES
Dropbox and Google Drive are tied for first place, followed by iCloud, then OneDrive. (Some people use more than one simultaneously and that works too!). My recent blog post "Your Head Should Be in the Cloud" is a good place to go if you want to dive into this topic more.
Here's a very important question to me in this year's survey. I love cloud based note taking. Since I've been doing it for a few years now, it has really changed my being better organized and efficient. I mean dramatically so! Evernote may be the more well known tool, but again if you are on a Microsoft subscription already (e.g. Word, Excel) then you already also have 1 TB of cloud storage bundled into your plan so you don't really need to be paying extra for dropbox storage or evernote note sytem. OneNote by Microsoft is a matured note taking app and is one of the first apps I install on every one of my devices. Watch for more posts on this topic hopefully soon.
If you have ever needed to collaborate on a document (or spreadsheet) and found yourself emailing back and forth, back and forth attaching the revision at each step with your colleague. Cloud based documents are the solution to this! Everyone on the team can instantly see whatever edits are made. It looks like a good percentage of you (62%) have seen this in action!
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And there you have it! Technology review of 2019.
Thanks so much to everyone who took a few minutes to fill out the survey. As you can see, it is interesting to see what is happening in your peer group here in ActiveRain. Also, it is extremely helpful to help me tailor my upcoming blog posts and videos to help you all with your technology needs. Looking forward to continue seeing you all in the new decade! Please subscribe to my blog if you haven't already to watch for the future posts. :)
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