In 2006, when we first surveyed the listeners of the For Immediate Release podcast that Shel and Neville started in January 2005, we learned a lot from what they told us.

Three years later, we’ve had a new learning experience as the results of the 2009 FIR Listener Survey provide us with some terrific feedback that will help us shape the development of the core FIR podcast, The Hobson and Holtz Report, usually referred to simply as ‘FIR.’

Last month, we asked FIR listeners to tell us what they think of FIR via a simple survey that contained around 35 questions. Most of those needed a click to select a response and we also had plenty of places where you could write freeform comment to say what you think.

The survey closed on May 1 and we’ve spent some time reviewing those results in order to quickly produce a preliminary report. We’ve shared that with our two sponsors -‘ Ragan Communications and CustomScoop – and now we’ll share it with all of you.

Here’s the PowerPoint presentation on Slideshare with a 43-slide concise summary of the survey results including a description of how we did the survey and how many valid responses we received (69 in total):

You can download the PPTX if you like: it’s freely available under a Creative Commons copyright license. So we hope you’ll talk about FIR, too.

If you prefer to read the headline metrics about the survey, here they are:

• Nearly two-thirds of listeners, 61% of you, listen to every episode of The Hobson and Holtz Report
• 58% get hold of the MP3 files via iTunes; 16% subscribe to the RSS feed; only 4.35% listen via the Flash player on the website
• Nearly half of you, 48%, listen to FIR on an iPod
• 77% of you are men; 32% of you are aged between 25-34, and 31% between 35-54
• Most of you (48%) are in the USA; 15% are in the UK followed by Australia and Canada at 9% each
• 74% of you have budget responsibility in your jobs
• 43% of you don’t describe yourselves as traditional communicators: job titles mentioned also include CEO, university professor, general manager, industry analyst, engineer, sales VP and marketing manager
• The feature you like most in the podcast is Shel’s and Neville’s commentaries
• Least liked is harder to pinpoint: a majority of you say you like everything :)
• 58% of you have contributed a comment to the show
• Nearly one-third of you, 30%, are active in the FIR Room on Friendfeed
• 48% of you follow FIR on Twitter
• Our sponsors’ contributions to each show attract the attention of 88% of you

One other metric some of our fellow podcasters might like to know – the top 5 other podcasts FIR listeners say they also listen to:

=1. Inside PR with Terry Fallis and David Jones (43%)
=1. Marketing Over Coffee with John Wall and Christopher S. Penn (43%)
3. Six Pixels of Separation with Mitch Joel (40%)
4. Managing the Gray with C.C. Chapman (34%)
5. Donna Papacosta’s Trafcom News (31%)

The data we have from the survey is a rich source of information, the views and opinions of our listeners that we’re paying attention to. We’ll be talking more about the survey and what people say in the coming weeks. Thanks again to everyone who took part.

If you have any views on these survey results, we’d love to hear them. Why not send in a comment to the show!

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)