Article: Twins Daily Community Report 5/12-5/18

[John Bonnes]

Time is short, but there are a number of small developments in Twins Daily’s community as stories, interaction and new visitors all seem to be trending in positive directions. Let’s jump in.

 

Stories

Good lord: there were 30 stories last week on Twins Daily. I love you all.I especially love Tom Froemming, our editor, who absolutely hit it out of the park last week. Besides managing all of that content, he wrote a good chunk of it, leading all authors in page views. Our top 10 list for the week also includes several recently productive writers like Matt Braun, A J Condon, Thieres Rabelo, Andrew Thares & Andrew Gebo. When you see their byline in some of the stories you’re writing, perhaps take a little time to comment, even if it’s just to tell them a portion you liked, or even a part you didn’t. Let them know you heard their voice. It matters.

 

Forums

• Registrations – 6 (we had 13 the same week in 2018)
• Topics – 83 (up from 45 the same week in 2018)
• Posts - 3054 (up from 2171 the same week in 2018)

Huh. Fewer registrations? For some reason we had nine people register in one day this week a year ago, so that’s why the decrease, but six isn’t many. If anyone has ideas on good ways to increase registrations and discussion, feel free to pass it along in the comments below.

 

But there was a LOT of discussion. I don’t think I’ve ever seen us clear 3000 comments in a week, and the 83 topics seems like the highest number I’ve seen, too.

 

Usually, I’d like to call out some of the top posters, but I’m pressed for time this week. Sorry. By the way, did you know that you can “Like” comments in our forums? That’s a nice low-key way to let people know that you appreciate their contributions to a discussion. Just look for the little “Like This” red button in the bottom right-hand corner of their comment. Or if you want to wade in a little deeper we would love to have you register and tell us your thoughts.

 

Blogs

There were six great blog entries in our blog area this week. Honestly, if you’re coming to Twins Daily regularly, you might want to make a point to stop by there. It’s like seeing the bands before they get big: you get to know the writers as they grow, it’s a little more intimate, and there is often some encouraging give-and-take feedback in the comments.

 

I wish I had time to call out all the great topics and stories, but I must point out we had a new voice join the chorus. The “Original Twin” Blog was started by thephilomath this week, and his first topic was about batting order with respect to Byron Buxton. Check it out, and thank thephilomath for sharing!

 

Remember, when you’re ready to start your own Twins blog on Twins Daily, we have a whole bunch of people who are ready to read it. It looks like thephilomath got 500+ readers already. I think I was blogging for seven months before I got 500 readers to stop by a story, and that was only because Rob Neyer linked to it.

 

News

We really appreciate your patience at the beginning of last week as we worked through all kinds of issues with our new ad provider. I know there is a lot of anti-ad sentiment in general, but it’s an important source of revenue for the site and also for our contributing writers. If you contribute a story to Twins Daily, and we promote it to the front page, we pay you all of the ad revenue that comes from that story. That rate has been stalled out for a couple of years now, and we’re hoping this change can allow us give more back to our contributing writers who give so much to the community.

 

Overall Traffic Last Week

• Users – 29,643 (up 71% from 2018)
• Sessions – 73,316 (up 48% from 2018)
• Page Views – 231,094 (up 37% rom 2018)

Our users and sessions dipped slightly from the previous week, but our page view went up, which suggests more interaction, which is a great sign. And we saw a similar dip between the same two weeks a year ago, only much more pronounced, so this week was actually very encouraging. I don’t think we’ve seen a 71% increase year-over-year of any traffic metric since I’ve been doing these reports. That’s stunning.

 

I’m sorry about the briefness of the report this week, but the length of it depends on how much time I have to produce it, so some weeks I’ll be able to go a little more in-depth on the stories, blogs and comments, and some weeks I can’t. It is more important to me that it be done every week than that it have certain elements every week. Writing it fires me up about the community, even if I can’t dive into every story, blog or post.

 

Finally, I’m still looking for the right title for this series, so if you have a good one, please add it to the comments below. We got a decent suggestion last week, but I’m sticking with the “Community Report” for this week. But seriously, let’s get something a little slicker.

 

Thanks again for reading and contributing so much to the community!

 

Gratefully,

John

 

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[Aerodeliria]

Yay!

[nicksaviking]

Crazy theory: winning is great for business!

[vavo]

Been a reader here since the beginning, but not much for commenting. I was very disappointed to see the increase in ads last week. They're incredibly obnoxious and often make the site unpleasant to read. Every 30 seconds when the ads reload I get a status bar in the middle of the screen, and have also had text jumping around in articles as new ads insert themselves.

 

I really want to support everyone here, but this is kinda brutal. Have you thought about a paid, ad-free version? I'd gladly pay $5/month for a cleaner, fast-loading, non-distracting version of this.

[bighat]

I work for an online subscription-based service. We require people to register in order to view/post.

 

I wonder if that might work for you guys if you want to increase registrations? It'll turn lurkers into registered members.

 

Maybe have a landing page that says something like: "We're glad you're interested in reading the content! Don't worry, TwinsDaily is 100% free. In order to view our content and post to our forums, please take a quick second to sign up. It just takes 2 seconds and you'll be back to browsing the best Twins news in town", or something like that.

 

I guess it all depends on how much of the traffic % the non-registered users (aka: lurkers) make up.

[drock2190]

^^^ Sometimes I check out this site on mobile, I think having to login in all the time would discourage traffic.

[bighat]

 

^^^ Sometimes I check out this site on mobile, I think having to login in all the time would discourage traffic.

 

I also check this site out on mobile. In my experience, you don't have to log in all the time, it pretty must just logs you in automatically. I logged in once and it's just saved my user/pass and it's very quick. haven't had any problems.

 

I think an app would be the logical next step for TD as well. That may be a big hit with mobile users.

[Mr. Brooks]

^^^ Sometimes I check out this site on mobile, I think having to login in all the time would discourage traffic.

I only visit on mobile, and haven't once had to re login. I just keep my browser tab open, and when I open it up I'm always still logged in.

[Brandon]

Some title concepts you can turn into actual titles include:. Twinsdaily Stats line.....Incremental Adjustment Bureau...... Analyzing our own Swing ......data analytics, stats and geometry......and The Accountant....

[benji21]

My ideas for the article name: The Box Score, Weekly Wrap, The Daily Update, and Twins Weekly. That's all I've got off the top of my head, thanks.

[John Bonnes]

Thanks for the great name suggestions Brandon and benji21. 

 

vavo, thank for the feedback. We might roll out an option like that. I'll spell things out in the next report, but the ad results have been encouraging, so I think we're unlikely to switch back. I'm sorry you find them intrusive. I haven't notice a whole lot of difference in my user experience, now that we got them ironed out a little. 

 

As for logging in to view the content ... that feels a little forced to me. Plus, the goal isn't to have a lot of registrations, it's to have a lot of interaction. So I'm OK with only registering if you want to comment. I guess what I'm really asking is how can we better encourage people to take the chance and share their thoughts with the rest of the community.

[AlwaysinModeration]

Does anyone remember “TWIB Notes” from the This Week in Baseball show? Maybe use a play on that: TWIB Notes, TD Edition.

Thanks for putting together these summaries, John. Interesting to see the big picture of the site. I’d suggest a review of game thread #s (and thank any thread starters who did multiple threads).