Thursday, April 8, 2010

The Record's coverage of breaking news story Tuesday sets site traffic record

On Tuesday I blogged about how The Record newsroom executed coverage that day of breaking news story – Troy’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute locked down its campus after an alleged armed robber was reportedly sighted near one of its buildings - exemplified our paper's digital first strategy.

I also said readers responded to our tweets, blogs and e-mail alerts and scoured our coverage in large numbers. The traffic stats are in and we set a one-day site record for visitors, crushing a record set a week earlier. Some 26,343 visits were recorded, up 46 percent over a previous one-day record of 18,028. Wednesday's coverage also drove an audience near the size of the previous record: 17,422 visitors. We also set a one-day record for page views on Tuesday (70.556). And, we set a record for two-day views of a single video (4,156) of the sound of an RPI alert shot from our newsroom window. Another video from the same package also recorded the second most views over a two-day period (2,743).

Our use of social media to drive site traffic also drove registration for our main Twitter news account; 45 new followers signed up.

More on how our digital efforts are paying off in bigger audiences in future blogs.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations, you guys earned it. The Troy Record had the highest quality journalism throughout the day, embarrassing the Times Union and local news stations. I was extremely impressed by the response time of your photographers, reporters, and videographers. Ongoing tweets helped to keep me in the loop as well.

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