Hello, from Pirates Breakdown!

Starting….now, each Saturday at 9 we will give you an update on our site, and the goings on around it.

Hi everyone.  It’s Jason Rollison, co-founder and co-editor of Pirates Breakdown. Saturday mornings are a tricky time for a site such as ours. Weekends are sacred, and what we see is a dip in traffic during this time frame. That got us to thinking – how can we better utilitize this time from Saturday morning up to Noon, when our very popular Social Media Roundup takes center stage?

Enter this column. Each week, I – or another one of our founding team – will take a moment to update you on the site, draw some things to your attention, and maybe have some fun.

First off, I want to sincerely thank you for your readership as we grow Pirates Breakdown. When we left Rumbunter last December, we dedicated ourselves to creating a new entity that put the reader first. We knew right away that our main focus was readability, and beyond anything else I think we’ve done that. We also figured out early on that our site should provide a wide breadth of coverage. This is why you see the standard analysis and news, but also fun -and more importantly, interesting – features like the social media roundup and our Hidden Heroes series.

I think we are off to a great job, but the proof is in the pudding. You folks have been wonderfully supportive of us, and we can’t thank you enough.

Site Records – Now With Full Transparency!

One thing that grosses me out about the constant carnival barking that other sites do – which, believe me, is a necessity to a point – is that they either do it with too much transparency, or none at all. That’s weird, right? Why take a half measure?

So for us, we’ll just tell you this. Since the beginning of July, our site traffic has exploded. We couldn’t be happier with the results – over 125K unique pageviews in July, and on pace to at least match that number for August. This is big for an indpendent site such as ours that is still building Search Engine Optimization. We have YOU to thank, not only for the views, but for the facebook shares, RTs, etc. We love the community we’ve built up, and couldn’t appreciate it more. So, thank you!

Infographics

One of our mission statements is to connect you to the Pittsburgh Pirates in unique ways. You may have noticed over the past week that we are doing a big push towards infographics. Communication is much more effective when you can show someone something as well as tell them. So keep an eye out for more of these, and here are our first two efforts, ICYMI –

Stretch Run Plans

The way this Pirates team is playing, the September stretch run is going to be very exciting.  PBD is currently in the lab planning out some special stretch run features and weekly/daily posts. All in with the goal to help you enjoy the spring to the playoffs and stay as informed as possible.

We’d love to hear your suggestions!  Leave a comment or send us a message on Twitter.

That about does it for this week’s update, tune in next week to hear more behind the scenes info and other notes.

-Jason Rollison-