Our city is our home, so we're proud to do the majority of our business right here within Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania.
But we've also built a big foundation of our readership and people who don't live in our region and, with football a few days away and the Steelers having by far the most widespread fan base of the teams we cover, I thought it'd be fun to break down all our diaspora.
So, checking into Google Analytics, I chose to go with people who've used our site/app over the past full year to fairly include the 2018 NFL season. And here are our top 25 markets outside our immediate region, along with their percentage of our total readership:
1. New York, 3.93%
2. D.C./Virginia, 3.56%
3. Chicago, 3.21%
4. Philadelphia, 1.37%
5. Atlanta, 1.19%
6. Columbus, Ohio, 1.07%
7. Los Angeles, 1.05%
8. Nashville, Tenn., 0.90%
9. Charlotte, N.C., 0.88%
10. Dallas, 0.76%
11. Detroit, 0.68%
12. Orlando, Fla., 0.64%
13. Boston, 0.62%
14. Houston, 0.56%
15. State College, 0.55%
16. Toronto, 0.55%
17. Altoona, 0.50%
18. San Francisco, 0.46%
19. Denver, 0.42%
20. Phoenix, 0.42%
21. Cincinnati, 0.42%
22. Tampa, Fla., 0.41%
23. Miami, 0.38%
24. Austin, Texas, 0.37%
25. San Diego, 0.36%
A few random observations: Regarding our active-duty military: We've got 160 users in Afghanistan, 134 in Kuwait, 109 in Iraq, and that's to say nothing of those serving elsewhere. With our gratitude. ... New York's just got so many humans that it'll almost certainly always be No. 1 on this list. But I'm still always surprised that the D.C. area doesn't overtake it. Just tangentially, that's where we hear from out-of-market subscribers the most. ... Chicago went way up. No idea why. It had never been top five before this. ... State College fell out of our top 10 for the first time, undoubtedly because we dropped college coverage. ... Toronto was obviously our top out-of-country market. Our only two overseas markets in the top 100 were Helsinki and London. (Taylor Haase has the Finns reading like crazy.) ... Winnipeg fell all the way to No. 136, behind Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver among Canadian cities. I'm clearly doing something wrong. ... We had one recurring user each in South Sudan, Chad, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Falkland Islands and, of course, The Gambia.
Anyway, wherever you are, thank you!
REACHING STEELERS FANS
I've long written that our greatest challenge as a company -- other than tech -- has been reaching Steelers Nation. Or Steelers World, as it were, since, to repeat, they're everywhere.
We've tried the standard social media avenues, particularly on Facebook, which is where a lot of Steelers fans are. For reasons I won't bore you with, Facebook's paid boosting systems have become a complete ripoff. So we're sticking by Twitter, our most reliable social platform, and pushing a HALF-OFF SALE from now until the ball flies in Foxborough next Sunday.
As with all sales, this is for new subscribers only, as we strive to keep growing our readership. So if you know someone who loves the Steelers, let them know that this is the time to sign up and share the link!
THE BIG TECH THING
We're going to build an all-new site, an all-new app, as was announced here a couple weeks ago. And as we've continued to have more meetings and discussions -- with more planned for the coming week -- some concepts are starting to crystallize while others only get cloudier.
Since we've kept peppering you with questions as we go through this process, here's the one I've got for you this week: How important are live boxscores, standing, stats and the like to you, particularly on the app?
That one's kind of a crossroads issue for us at the moment. Because there'd be some extra money involved in that, though that also could be offset, theoretically, if they're used a lot by readers. So any feedback would help.
I'M TIRED
Yeah, I am. I'm going to take a handful of days off from reporting and writing, then kick it into gear before we take off for Foxborough. Might be the last chance I get at a break for a long while, with football and hockey both about to start up.
VETERAN COUNT: 305
At the moment, we're all caught up on veteran requests vs. veteran purchases. Thanks to everyone who keeps it that way.
Early this year, our friend Josh DeNinno at Moon Golf Club came up with the concept of pushing all of us to reach 1,000 full-year military subscriptions for the calendar year through his Veterans Challenge. And to back that, Josh is buying 10 a month himself for a total of 100, leaving 900 for everyone else.
To date, we've sold and committed 305. That's awesome and appreciated.
BECOME A PARTNER
We're always looking to grow our base of business partners, and there currently are several very good opportunities available to take advantage of our unprecedented reach. Our 2019 media kit has all the info you’d want. Email me at Dali@DKPittsburghSports.com to set up a meeting.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• New subscribers for 2019 are at 732. You can track this figure daily at the bottom of the desktop and tablet versions of the site.
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past 30 days, are at 87,302. The goal with this figure is to average 100,000 — a number we've achieved only during the two Stanley Cup runs.
• Our most-hit original article of the past week was Dale's 10 Thoughts from Nashville at 40,067. The Steelers accounted for 158,602 page views, the Pirates 96,669, and the Penguins 48,063.
• We're at 33,236 (+81) followers on Twitter, we're at 32,058 (+2) page likes on Facebook, we're at 11,367 (+30) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• Get our free newsletter with a simple signup! We send out a new one Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
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