We'll occasionally survey our readers as to how they found out about us. And, within that, what got them to subscribe.
The answer's almost always got a family feel.
It's a son or daughter buying one for dad or mom. It's a dad or mom doing the reverse. It's a brother, a sister, an uncle, an aunt ... and the connection is always Pittsburgh sports. Often across some significant geographical and/or generational divides.
In that spirit, we're introducing a Dads 'N' Grads promotion spanning the month of June that emphasizes getting a gift subscription for that special Steelers, Penguins or Pirates fan in your life. Father's Day falls on June 20 this year, high school and college students are graduating everywhere and, ideally, through us, everyone can stay a little more connected.
Kind of like these familiar faces ...
DKPS
Top row: Taylor Haase, Alex Stumpf, Dale Lolley. Bottom: Chris Carter (twice), Jarrod Prugar.
If you'd like to get one, they're half-off at $19.99, and here's how to go about it:
1. Tap here.
2. Tap 'BUY A GIFT SUBSCRIPTION'
3. Fill out the super-quick form
And be sure, in that email field, to make it your email and not that of the recipient. This way, you'll be the one receiving the gift redemption code that you can distribute whenever you'd like. The subscription itself begins only when the code's redeemed.
Thanks in advance for helping this venture grow in the best way possible!
LIVE TWITTER FEED!
It's not there yet, but very soon we'll be adding a live staff Twitter feed to the app!
It'll be easy to access by pushing the bottom right button on the app, and it'll replace the current LIVE page that very few were using. One tap is all it'll take to whip up to-the-second material from all our reporters wherever we happen to be. Without having to go anywhere else.
Hopefully by next week.
MILITARY SUBS SOLD: 109
Inspired by Josh DeNinno at Moon Golf Club, we're striving to connect an unprecedented 2,000 military veterans to their favorite teams with free one-year subscriptions in 2021.
So far, we're at 109, including 63 sold this past week. (Five from a longtime reader in Germany who's served!)
Thanks to everyone who's been part of this. But we'll need a lot more, obviously. The cost of a single one-year military subscription is always $20. You can contribute one, or as many as you'd like. And the process couldn't be simpler: Email me directly at DK@DKPittsburghSports.com and let me know how many you'd like, and I, in turn, can thank you personally.
BACK TO WORK
I took the past week off from writing. Was beat beyond belief. Also, there was a bunch of business stuff to tackle, which I mostly finished. But I'll be back on the various beats beginning Tuesday at PNC Park, Wednesday at the Steelers' OTAs, then back to baseball Thursday. Looking forward to all of it, as always.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• Looking for the day's live game file in a hurry? I recently added those files -- the latest one -- to right near the top of each team page. So, if the Pirates are playing, and you're looking for the live file or score or whatever, just tap the Pirates button at the bottom of the app, thumb down a millimeter or so, and there it is!
Our previous two tips:
• The page-view and comment counts you can find on all our pages had been lagging, but that was given a big upgrade a couple weeks ago. They're now as close to current as possible. (We're kind of proud of this transparency, by the way. Find another site anywhere that's willing to show you its traffic.) Within that, be sure to check out our TRENDING feature. Anytime you open a commenting window, TRENDING is one of the three options on the blue bar. Tap that, and you'll see a listing of our 10 most active current files.
• Go get an avatar! If you've tried before, try again, because we've made some adjustments this past week. Go to your profile by tapping the top left corner of the home page. On the next page, tap the little camera icon near the top. Insert any image that's 300x300 or smaller, tap SAVE, and that's it. This will now show as your image on comments, as well as the top left corner of your home page.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 368,465, down 25.5% from the previous week. Our most-read original piece was the exclusive reporting Jarrod Prugar and I did on the Robert Morris hockey mess, at 22,440. Broken down by team, articles on the Penguins brought 24.4% of our traffic, the Steelers 18.2%, the Pirates 14.8%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 30, down 40 from the previous week.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 58 for Apple, down 58 from the previous week, and 19 for Android, down 15 from the previous week.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 88,300, down 20.1% from the previous week.
• We're at 41,242 (+117) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,155 (-1) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,564 (+17) followers on Instagram, and we're at 3,511 (+467) 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
• Random geographic fun, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: This country was the only one in Africa to have more than two unique users of our app in the past week.