All You Need to Do to Post Hyperlocal News on Patch.com

One of the goals of Patch is to strengthen communities and improve the lives of residents.

We’ve built the platform so users have plenty of opportunities to comment on stories, share their opinions and post their own stories — whether about something going on in schools, service clubs like the Rotary Club or other events around town.

One login works for all Patch.com sites nationwide. Also, for best results, use the latest version of Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer as your browser. Internet Explorer 10 and earlier may have compatibility problems.

Posting is easy. Here's all you need to do:

1) Sign in to your free account at Patch, found at http://contribute.patch.com

• If you don't already have a Patch account set up, then click on the option to Sign Up on the upper right side of the page, below the fields used to Sign In.

• It may take a day or two for your initial account set-up — our awesome team of engineers just need to get you all plugged in — but you'll then be able to get posting throughout Patch for good!
• Note: One login works for all PATCH sites nationwide. Also, for best results, use the latest version of Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer as your browser. Internet Explorer 10 and earlier may have compatibility problems.

2) You are now brought to the My Contributions page. On this page, you will see all of your previous posts in the "back end" of our system. To see the posts on the Patch site itself, you can click on your profile page — just click the byline on one of your posts and direct readers to do the same.

3) To start a new post, click + Create Article in the upper right corner of the page.

4) Choose a topic. Your topic is Bulletin Board or Classifieds.

5) Choose a community, found in the right corner of the page. You will need to start typing the name of your community and it will appear. We’ve used Royal Oak, Michigan, as an example, but you should customize your post to your Patch town. Click it when it appears to "assign it."

6) Enter your headline and a description of the story, called a deck. Follow these tips:

• Keep your headlines short — 60 or fewer characters for SEO (search engine optimization).
• Patch uses what is called an “up style” in its headlines, meaning the first letters of all words are capitalized, except for words like “the,” “a,” “and,” “on,” “of,” etc.
• Use keywords that people actually type into search engines in both the headline and deck.
• Avoid unnecessary punctuation marks such as exclamation points, and never use multiple punctuation marks.
• The maximum number of characters in the deck is 140. Describe what the post is about, using words that people would type into the search engine.

7) Upload a photo. This platform supports jpeg images.

If the image is too large, you’ll get message preventing you from uploading. It will look like this:

The optimum size is 800 x 600 pixels. If you need to adjust your photo, here’s a handy free online resource.

8) Add the article text . Writing Tips:

• Follow the “who, what, when, where, why” rule and get the information people need in the first paragraph, and use as many search terms as possible. For example, if the Rotary Club is having a pancake breakfast to raise money for student scholarships, say that.
• Don’t write long paragraphs. Break them up every couple of sentences or so. A big wall of type is intimidating to readers.
• Paragraphs shouldn’t be any longer than shown in the example below. Note: The Patch platform will automatically add the space between paragraphs, so there’s no need to add an extra carriage return if you’re typing your article into another application and then pasting in the Patch content management system.

9) Click Publish Immediately and the Green Arrow button

if your button is orange, you will need to make sure you have filled in all the required fields.

Your article is automatically approved and will be posted on the site. Be patient, you may not see your article at once. Do not publish more than once, or you will see it appear many times.