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!
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