How AOL's Patch Tripled Its Traffic on Election Night

Patch, a network of over 300 local news sites, saw its traffic surge by 300 percent on November 2 as visitors sought local results of the mid-term elections. According to Warren Webster, president of Patch, a unit of AOL, Tuesday was the network's biggest traffic day. One of the newest sites, Santa Cruz Patch was the most popular on Election Day, Webster tells Beet. TV. Patch serves communities with populations ranging generally between 15,000-75,000.

How AOL's Patch Tripled Its Traffic on Election Night Male: I can honestly say this is the most exciting week in the history of Patch. We had over three times the number of visits to Patch sites all across the country even some of our newer sites. Then, we have on an average day, we had an army of reporters and editors all over the country covering local news, local elections, propositions, measures, things coming through. So, the coverage is really phenomenal. We have over 600 journalists hired at this point. We’re the largest hirer of journalists n 2010 which is something we’re really proud of. The way it works is Patch provides a platform, the technology, some guidelines and the local editor in each community really makes the editorial decisions and they work very closely with the regional editor. So, our regional editor is someone that ahs more like 15 years experience in a news organization. Our local editor are average local editor has about 6.6 years of experience but we really here to provide support and guidelines, not so much dictate editorial decisions so we knew that elections were going to be very, vey important. The mission of Patch is to be the most useful informative site, the place that everyone needs to go to live a better, more informed life in their community. So, when elections are coming up, we really encourage al of our journalists to get out there and be first on the scene covering some things that might not typically be covered by traditional media, by regional and metro media. So, we are out there 24/7. We had -- one of our sites that’s only a month old Santa Cruz Patch in California was our largest visited sites. There are a number of propositions up for a vote in California and it was amazing to see that brand new site be our traffic leader for the week and that’s just one example. In -- Island, at -- Patch, there was a great amount of coverage about a really controversial development measure that was going through, measure G. In Redondo Beach, California, there is a similar story. I think there were 26 stories posted about an issue with Pitch development so we couldn’t be more thrilled that we were the first on the scene in a lot of these elections. Interviewer: But, how does the tone or the -- are they nice, are they mean, are they political, are they like to be provocative? Male: I think they’re all very nice. No, but they -- these are professional journalists first and foremost. When we hire people, we make sure that they have the utmost professionalism and then Patch itself is right down the middle. We provide a place for both sides of any issue to debate, interact to talk about each side. Patch editors don’t take a political stand or stands on any issue in the community. They just provide the form for that so that’s what we expect from all of our editors across the country. We had a ton of video around the election which was great to see. So, the way our staffers work. We are in them with the video camera, a still camera, a laptop, a Blackberry and a police scanner. So, they’re kind of like walking mini newsrooms and they -- you see them at the school board meetings at the zoning board meetings covering a kid soccer game. And, the same was true for elections. They are out there on the scene actually posting from polling places victory celebration so video is just a natural fit for elections and -- Interviewer: How does that work? What do they do? They have their own gear? Male: They have their own gear. They edit it themselves. They -- we give them all digital camera that they’re out shooting and they do a great job editing and posting n the site really quickly so it becomes a very fast way to get coverage up on the site. Interviewer: So, tell us how people are aware of the local Patches and is it through the word of mouth? Is it you guys do much promotion? How does it work? Male: We’re kind of half main street business and half big internet company and we try to take the best of both so in one sense, having a local journalist who’s out covering a soccer game or a school board meeting, they become sort of mini celebrities in the town and everyone recognizes them and they say, “Oh, I got people look at Patch to see the story that just got posted.” And, we got a lot of people finding Patch that way. At the same time, we do a lot of grassroots marketing like a main street business would. We hand out flyers at the train stations. We put posters on the commuter rail. We do events. We have a booth that we set up at local events in town and as a bigger company, we have a lot that we do. Social media like Facebook and Twitter. We recently announced the deal, the distribution deal with Starbucks where every Starbucks that has a Patch in it, we’ll have a feed of local Patch news when you come in and sign up our sign on to the free WiFi in Starbucks. And, there’s probably a hundred more deals like that we’ll be looking at. So, it’s really important to us that we take the best of local and the best of being a national company in Iowa. Interviewer: Is there any strategic arrangement or is that basically just like corporate-owned n terms of leader -- the news gathering or operations or sales or anything else which is a pretty much separate deal? Male: There’s a few things. We’re very tightly woven in with a lot of different parts of Iowa. One notable one would be the distribution so Map Quest recently went through a redesign and as part of that, when you plot a trip through a Patch town or if you're looking at a map of a Patch town on Map Quest on the new -- the new version of Map Quest, Patch content will show up Patch listings. The new AOL homepage which has just launched has a local module that if you indicate what town you're from, you’ll see your local content coming from Patch. So, there’s a lot of ways that we work with different AOL properties and then in terms of sales, we work with their national sales team quite a bit and then a lot of ways we work independently. So, for next year, right now we are the largest hirer of journalists, something we’d really proud of. We’re going to build up to over 500 sites this year. Interviewer: How many do you have now? Male: We have 325 as of this moment but that changes everyday. So, we’re going to keep building up to 500 by the end of this year. Take a look around. Make sure that all of our sites are the most helpful, useful sites on the planet in terms of connecting communities and then decide okay, where to next? Interviewer: Any thoughts about the future journalism and you're kind of create important role in terms of journalism and hiring them? Male: As the internet gets blazer and noisier and people are getting information from a lot of different places, sites like Patch.com become more and more important because we’re really about the place that you live, the place that you send your kids to school or you make voting decisions, where you spend most of your disposable income, where you pay your taxes. There needs to be a trusted source of information in that community and there needs to be a way to voice your opinion and share information with the people who share your common geography. So, it’s -- we believe that Patch.com represents one way that journalism is going to involve into the future and I think there are a number of others as national media change. We’re going to be the local source and there’s going to be a lot of different players in the national and regional arena as well. The issues that are more important to me are usually more on the democratic side so that’s why I vote that way but as far as who’s going to win, I really don’t know.