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.
