Uncategorized

Downtown Denville is your holiday destination !

Holiday Shopping Open House On Ice – Friday, Nov. 25th 5:30pm

Sponsored by the Oaks at Denville, A Springpoint Community

Ice skating on Broadway is back. Come visit one of the coolest events in the area. Our Downtown is transformed into a Holiday Destination. We’ll have a photo booth, Santa hats, carolers, store specials, fire pits, warming stations and so much more. Our ice rink is a special “ice-less” synthetic ice and skates are provided. Skaters can line up to receive their time block and can return for their skate during their allotted time. Check out more info at our Facebook event page.

Small Business Saturday – Saturday, Nov. 26th 5:30pm

Support our stores and restaurants. We’ll have carolers and holiday activities all day long.

KickStart Live at the Clocktower, Saturday, Nov. 26th, 12-2pm

Come check out local acoustic duo, KickStart live playing in front of our clocktower with their set being played all throughout our downtown speakers.

Rotary SantaLand Tree Lighting – Saturday, Nov. 26th Around 6pm

Come see SantaLand, one of Denville’s unique treasures. located behind Chase Bank on Diamond Spring Road. The Rotary lights Santa’s tree the day before he arrives to town and stations at his Denville residence.

Holiday Parade, Sunday Nov. 27th 2pm

Santa arrives to Denville with a glorious parade featuring many of our great local organizations, grand floats and entertainment. Enjoy a wonderful downtown environment for this festive event.

AND MORE ACTIVITIES TO COME !

In order to help your business plan the for plastic bag/styrofoam container ban, we have put together this information to help you navigate the changes.

Plastic Ban for NJ.pptx from DanielleGrayson1

Great opportunity to sponsor two amazing events to get your business noticed.

Downtown Denville After Dark is a street party filled with music, food, events, shopping and more. We close our downtown streets to traffic and let pedestrians mingle amongst our outstanding business district where they can shop, dine and enjoy. Your business or brand can leverage all the attention and activity from the event by being a sponsor.

Naming Sponsor  $5000

• Your name on every event mention and advertising (social, poster, annoucements & more.  Event reaches approx 50,000 impressions & over 3500 attendees)
• 10×10 event space
• Promotional video of your business from event (1 min)
• One social media post (8k reach)
• Two social media stories (over 10k reach)

Band Sponsor $2500

• Logo on band tent
• Social media story mention (over 10k reach)
• Social media mentions when highlighting the band (8k reach)
• Live mention from the band during performances

Bar Sponsor $2500

• Logo on band tent
• Social media story mention (over 10k reach)
• Social media mentions when highlighting the band (8k reach)
• Live mention from the band during performances

You don’t want to miss out on leveraging this event.

The Downtown Denville Business Improvement District is an organization dedicated to promoting our district and the businesses within it.  Our social media channels are a great way for us to continually create awareness for our beautiful downtown.  Listed in this post are the strategy with our social media channels

WHAT SOCIAL HANDLES DOES DOWNTOWN DENVILLE USE?

Downtown Denville owns and operates a “Downtown Denville” Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DowntownDenville

Instagram Handle @DwtnDenville and Twitter. 

We also have a Facebook Group specifically for our Downtown Businesses only to communicate with and only available to our downtown businesses.

We have just started a TikTok handle as well. 

WE DO NOT CONTROL ANY OTHER DENVILLE RELATED SOCIAL PAGES, COMMUNITIES, HANDLES, etc…    

Sometimes there is a great misconception when other Denville properties post.  They are not us or under our control.  

WHAT WE POST

Our strategy is simple:  Posting to create awareness and engagement of the entire downtown district.  Naturally we want to also post and promote our businesses but there are some criteria. 

For the most part these are a result of “reposting” something that the business has posted or another major social media property has posted.   We may “repost” as a part of an Instagram story, we may retweet or just “@” the business.  Other criteria we follow:

Newsworthy – we will post anything about our businesses that is newsworthy and helpful in creating awareness to Downtown Denville being a premiere downtown.  An example might be- anniversary of a store, a business that was featured on a news program, newspaper, news outlet or perhaps just highly ranked in another social media properties post.  

Engaging –  Social media is all about “engagement”.  Getting users to interact with us by commenting, liking, etc… Many social media channels are highly visual like Instagram or TikTok.  We follow most of our downtown businesses on our social channels.  Many of those businesses have really amazing social media followings and properties.  Leveraging those properties also helps gain followers and viewers to our channels.  If a business in our district has created a viral video that has a million views on TikTok, we are going to re-share it.  If a business posts a beautiful picture of our downtown at sunset on Instagram, we are going to reshare with credit and a “shout out”.  Since social is also about engagement it’s not good practice to post about businesses that don’t have any social presence, handles or activity because it leaves the viewer nowhere to go for further engagement.  We try to accommodate those businesses, but we are limited. 

Highlights –  During the course of the year we try to create social media campaigns where we highlight businesses.  Sometimes we’ll do a “love your local” or a focus on black-owned businesses during Black History Month, Restaurant week and more.  For those “campaigns” we send a message to our business email list and ask if they’d like to be included. 

WHAT WE DON’T POST

We stay away from :

• Political posts.

• Non-commerce related – We are supportive of awareness days but always remain focused on promoting business and commerce.  We try and tactically be respectful towards important milestone dates or months for social causes but recognize we are a business focused organization and sometimes leveraging those days for commercial purposes are insincere.  As well, we recognize how many amazing causes there are.  Many stores may have tie-ins for donations for certain causes or initiatives.  Naturally, we are unable to recognize all of those and/or repost every charitable or cause-related initiative our businesses are involved in.  If we did, we’d have to be fair and do the same for every business which would take our focus away from creating a social media presence about promoting the district and commerce. 

• Re-posting very specific daily specials, price points, etc… The reason for this is that if we start to post one restaurant daily soup special we’d have to be fair to other restaurants.  Or if we posted a “10% off dresses” from one store, we’d have to consider the same.  If we did that, our social feeds would be nothing but specials and sales.  That is deadly for social media engagement.  We would lose followers and lose our audience.

HOW DOES DOWNTOWN DENVILLE POST FAIRLY FOR ALL BUSINESSES?

This will always be a challenge for several reasons: 

Social Presence & Equity – as stated above, some of our businesses have huge social media followings and presence.  It’s in the best interest of the whole district to leverage that audience and convert to following, interacting and engaging with Downtown Denville.  As well, some industries may not be effective in social channels.  If a businesses is leveraging us by hashtags (#downtowndenville) or “@-ing” us (@dwtndenville) we will be more likely to see if and repost it. 

Business Equity –  There are also some businesses in our town that draw huge traffic to the downtown area.  Even if they don’t have big social followings, they are a big draw.  For example, we have an ice cream shop that is one of the most known in Northern New Jersey.  They attract people from all over.  They are one of the leading results when users search “Denville” online.  While they don’t have hugely active social media channels, they are still a huge draw to Downtown Denville.  As a district, we should be leveraging that equity to further convert visitors to the rest of what Downtown Denville has to offer.  We  are likely to post about that business or perhaps other leading businesses in our district.  

HOW CAN A BUSINESS LEVERAGE DOWNTOWN DENVILLE SOCIAL PRESENCE?

A few simple things will make a big difference.  We have a good following that can be leveraged by the businesses alone:

Hashtag –  #downtowndenville in your posts.  This will leverage the hashtag

@dwtndenville –  @ us on Instagram and Twitter and tag us on FB.  This will get your post seen by our audiences

Like and comment – just liking our posts or other related properties will help the way the social platforms algorithms display and treat your social presence.   Commenting on our posts appropriately also gets your social handle in front of our audience

Email us – if you have a big event, newsworthy item, etc…let us know.

September 19-23rd. This is a great time to rediscover all the amazing eateries Downtown Denville has to offer. And we’ve gained a few great new ones as well. It’s be a very tough few years for all of our businesses and is a great time to continue showing your support by eating local. Many restaurants are still struggling with staffing issues as well as the constant upkeep required to keep their locations clean, safe and efficient so please continue the the great support.

Check back here for updated specials from many of our establishments.

Here are a few just to start:

Church Street Bagel – Special Pop-Up Burger Menu, Friday Sept. 24th

Denville Pizza – 10% Dine In Sunday through Thursday 4-8pm

El Mejicano – Come in and see their brand new menu !!

Grub Connect/Inspiration Roll –  Free Side with an order of Ramen or Signature Creation (*limit of 1 free side per order)

Hunan Taste – Special Restaurant Week Menu ! See Menu Here

Moe’s – Queso Monday with the first 50 customers in line receiving a free t-shirt, Sun-Weds 10% off all $15 or more purchases and Kids eat free on Weds with purchase of an adult meal and drink.

Playa Bowls – Doggy Bowl (peanut butter base, almond milk, doggy treat for your pooch) Full week long !!

Tuscan Table – $25 Five Course Meal special Sun-Thurs.

(See Restaurants for details)