New Smyrna Beach easily outdistanced the four other polling locations in Early Voting totals for the 2010 election primary. How could the little seaside Southeast Volusia area surpass the giants of Daytona Beach and Deltona? Easy: NSBNEWS.net. New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater, Oak Hill, Samsula, Bethune Beach and Silver Sands are blessed to have a fully-online newspaper in a 21-st century world.
Yes, they have traditional daily newspapers in the Orlando Sentinel and the Daytona Beach News-Journal, but unlike the other communities across the county, greater New Smyrna Beach has NSBNEWS.net, fueled by the power of the Internet.
So lets take a look at Early Voting by the numbers:
- New Smyrna Beach 2,461; Deltona 2,190; Ormond Beach 1,992; Daytona Beach 1,958; and Deland 1,572, for a grand total of 10,168.
- The early voting covered 12 days. In nine of those days, New Smyrna Beach had the most voters with Deltona topping that category three of the days. Polling locations were held in the New Smyrna Beach, Daytona Beach, Ormond Beach and Deltona libraries with DeLand-area voting at elections headquarters.
NSBNEWS.net has been a major player in the last two election cycles, since our April 2008 launch.
Early voting in last year's municipal elections crushed the previous turnout, thanks to a series of debates held by NSBNEWS.net and videotaped for viewing online. NSBNEWS.net will again host a series of debates leading to the November elections.
Our website not only reports the news, but often breaks it with comprehensive reports. The departure of Steve Dennis as executive director of the Southeast Volusia Chamber of Commerce was reported by NSB News on Friday and as of today, the other dailies haven't gotten around to it.
We also had exclusive coverage of Thursday's NSB Shrimp and Seafood Festival on Flagler Avenue that drew several thousand people. NSBNEWS.net had the festivities covered with stories, blogs, photos and videos.
Everyone can plainly see that NSBNEWS.net dominated in advertising from the candidates, with the vast majority of candidates, from Congress all the way down to county races, on display in our website.
All of the ads rotated with the ability to be clicked on and taken to the individual candidate's own website. You can count on NSBNEWS.net for complete primary election results and analysis as well as extensive coverage moving forward to November's general elections.
Where else can you go to get around the clock breaking news and investigative stories by my colleague, award-winning journalist Henry Frederick, who broke New Smyrna Beach's planning debacle? Plus, we have daily police reports from New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater, Oak Hill and the Sheriff's Office, plus obituaries, births, jail dockets, lawsuit, forclosure and building permit filings with the courts. Then there are the 300-plus videos produced by Henry's talented wife, Sera, and a host of community bloggers.
Take a look at the search engine that is Google, and type in "Google" and "news," and you'll get news highlights from around the world. Type in "add a section" and you can type in the box that breaks down local news by zip code. Type in "32168" or any other zip code in Volusia County, for that matter, and you'll see daily headlines from the Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, and NSBNEWS.net.
And speaking of Google, it has a way to track Internet usage through a weekly report: Google Analytics. And those reports show that NSBNEWS.net is Southeast Volusia's most powerful website.
We have more unique visitors (click once or 100 times from same computer and it counts once) than all of the following combined: City of New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater and Oak Hill websites, the SE Volusia Advertising Authority, the SE Volusia Chamber of Commerce, and the weekly Shadow and Observer.
In this fast-paced world where communication is delivered in an instant through the power of the Internet, so many people are getting news through websites like ours, social media like Facebook, and even cell phones, I-pods and I-pads.
Not only can you click on NSBNEWS.net for news locally and around the world through our AP videos and headline feeders for wire news, sports and Hollywood, but NSBNEWS.net has the ability to deliver news right into your e-mail with 2,500 of you already signed up to receive breaking news alerts and newsletters. Look for these e-mail blasts on the eve of the primary.
In a matter of weeks, we will unveil a second website, VolusiaNews.net, along with an an upgraded NSBNEWS.net.
