A week ago in this space, we put forth a promise of unprecedented-for-us coverage of the Pirates.
This week, we deliver.
Please join me, Dali and Dale Lolley in welcoming Gerard Gilberto, formerly of Yahoo! Sports and MLB.com, to our baseball staff alongside Alex Stumpf. His first work date with us will be March 16 and, soon thereafter, he'll be bound for Bradenton and beyond.
I met Gerard a couple years ago in Manhattan as part of a meeting we had when I was a paid advisor for a broader Yahoo! project to basically replicate our site nationwide. He was part of an amazingly talented team Yahoo! had assembled to cover the Mets for that project, one that, alas, never was given a chance by corporate types who decided at the last second to kill the whole thing in favor of some unrelated tech endeavor.
That left Gerard and those other talents out of work, and none of them ever left my mind. I vividly recall after that very meeting stepping out onto that Manhattan street and phoning Dali to share with her how much I'd love to work with these people someday. Meaning, you know, right here at this site. And as a result, a couple of us stayed loosely in touch even after the plug was pulled.
Gerard, specifically, made quite the impression on me that day. I was standing before the room, sharing some of the things we'd done here, and he was the one who asked almost all of the questions. Challenged me, too. I respected that.
Infinitely more important, as I saw upon reading his work, he's got everything anyone would want in an excellent baseball writer. He writes with passion. He digs deep into the subject matter. He applies all the appropriate scouting, analytics and other research. And ... well, I'll keep coming back to that outgoing personality. Because on a daily grind like the baseball beat, being willing -- no, happy -- to engage everyone around you toward gathering the most compelling information ... that's a mega-plus.
I'll stop there. He won't need my build-up any more than Tom Reed did. And as Tom did, he'll show you who he is without my help.
The breakdown of the beat is still to come. We had one available hire in the budget, and we decided to take the best available talent rather than worrying about roles. But along the way, be sure that, given the way the Pirates are being built from the bottom up, we'll place a heavier emphasis than ever on following the prospects, wherever they are. And Gerard, it should be noted, did most of his work for MLB.com on prospect analysis, so he's very much qualified on that front, as well.
Think of our baseball beat the way we do the hockey beat: Two people dedicated full-time, plus Tom doing in-depth features, Jarrod Prugar reporting on the Curve from Altoona, plus me ... making all the Milwaukee trips!
OUR GOALS SHARPENING
One positive from the pandemic was that, especially in the early months, Dali and I had time to do some bigger-picture thinking. We backed off, looked at the total landscape, and tried to take an honest look at our strengths, weaknesses and how we can grow, grow, grow.
The pandemic wasn't friendly for most businesses' growth, unless one was selling masks or sanitizer, and it wasn't for us, either, as I've detailed in recent weeks. Our declines weren't dramatic at all, but they were declines, and they need to be reversed.
To that end, we're emphasizing four areas where the minuses need to become pluses in 2021:
• New subscribers
• New app downloads
• Page views
• Podcast downloads
The first two will be our emphasis from a promotional standpoint, since there really isn't much one can do to push people to directly read or listen to content. But if we reach out to find new, new, new, that's how we'll grow, grow, grow.
As such, we've put into motion some automated marketing, about a quarter of which is already active. (You won't see it, since you're already here!) It's an approach we should've stuck by when we initially tried it in 2017, and now we will. In fact, you'll now see in Site Stuff's bullets at the bottom, for the first time, new subscribers and new app downloads. If I ever leave those out, feel free to wag a finger this way.
LEAVE A REVIEW!
We obviously don't charge for the podcasts, but you can still leave a little something in the mythical tip jar: On your chosen platform, find where you can leave a review.
On Apple Podcasts, our most popular platform, we're at DK Pittsburgh Sports, after which you scroll down a little for the reviews section. Leave us five stars, say something super-nice about, oh, Chris Carter's extraordinary wit and charm, and that's it. Takes maybe 10 seconds. But it moves us way up in the search rankings, having more stars, and that helps more potential listeners find us.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• If you like what you read by someone on our staff, and you'd like to read more from that individual, you can do so by tapping the author's byline on any article or by tapping their name on our menu. And while you're there, you'll also see the author's brief bio, as well as links to find them on Twitter and/or reach them via email.
• The top right corner has three thick horizontal lines. That's known in the app business as a 'hamburger menu' because it looks kind of like a bun around a patty. It's the way to open our main menu, where you'll find a wholly separate gateway to all our content and one that, if I'm reading the data right, not all readers use. That's too bad, because there's lots of good stuff there, not least of which are direct links to local small colleges, minor leagues and much more.
• We now have RSS feeds. Insert this as the URL for your RSS reader -- https://www.dkpittsburghsports.com/feed -- and you'll have headlines sent your way.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 426,077, up 11.7% from the previous week. Our most-read original piece was my Grind on Tristan Jarry bouncing back to form, at 9,961. Broken down by team, the Penguins brought 32.1% of our traffic, the Steelers 14.2% and the Pirates 12.6%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 61, a really nice figure for February.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 98 for Apple, up 60% from the previous week, and 28 for Android, exactly the same as the previous week.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 76,161, up 13% from the previous week.
• We're at 39,618 (+81) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,075 (+19) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,459 (-2) followers on Instagram, and we're at 977 (+2) followers on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Oh, and we had 1 active user of our app in Iran. I actually used to have a regular reader based in Tehran, and I'd love to think it's the same individual, but that was more than a decade ago.