It’s our 30th anniversary, and we’re self-celebrating. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, including everything from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. You’ll be able to find these stories on our website, as well as in our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
The Downtown Alliance’s communications team functions as a megaphone for the neighborhood, sharing everything from local news to resources to profiles on downtown’s many businesses. Essential pillars of our storytelling are our social media platforms, our website and our weekly newsletter, which has a circulation of around 32,000 devoted readers.
If you’ve been following along with our 30th anniversary celebration posts (perhaps in our aforementioned newsletter or on the website!), you may have noticed that the Downtown Alliance pursues many avenues in our goal to make Lower Manhattan a great place to live, work and play. Our work, which runs the gamut from streetscaping and public safety, to placemaking, food programming, small business support, research on the commercial real estate market, tourism initiatives, community events and beyond, all gets represented on our website and social media platforms, keeping our digital presence just as exciting and multifaceted as our mission.
Our commitment to supporting small businesses translates to our digital platforms in lots of ways. Our website functions as a hyperlocal news site, and is an indispensable resource for small businesses, workers, tourists and residents alike, particularly while local journalism disappears at an alarming clip nationwide. In addition to sharing organizational news and events, our hyperlocal focus allows us to tell important stories about the neighborhood that might not otherwise make it to print.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, we executed a “Portraits From the Pandemic” series that profiled essential workers and businesses as they navigated day-to-day challenges. Recently, we launched a Legacy Business series centered on businesses that have operated in Lower Manhattan for over 25 years. The series has thus far covered places like Barclay Rex, a family-owned cigar shop that first opened in the neighborhood 114 years ago, and Underground Pizza, a beloved pizza parlor that sheltered people from the dust on the morning of September 11, 2001. We also show love to the new kids in town, welcoming businesses like Gitano NYC and PAC NYC with stories, posts and videos showcasing all they have to offer to Lower Manhattan. And we regularly publish guides, itineraries and roundups that simultaneously help visitors and locals navigate the neighborhood as well as boost downtown’s businesses and landmarks.
When the Downtown Alliance was first established 30 years ago, social media as we know it today was a mere twinkle in the eye of a dial-up connection. The word “Instagram” read as a meaningless, and “TikTok” was still just the sound that a clock made.
As the internet and social media culture evolved, the Downtown Alliance evolved with it. In the 2000s and early 2010s, we posted some of our first digital content on platforms like YouTube and Twitter. In our earliest dispatches as an organization, we humbly introduced ourselves to the online world – when we joined Instagram on March 2, 2011, we did so with a photo of our district map. Tens of thousands of photos, videos, Tweets and followers later, we’re still finding creative ways to share our neighborhood with our audiences (and still posting our map).
Social media is often misunderstood as something that exists solely for entertainment. And while we do like to have fun on our channels — posting graphics to help people find the perfect bar, going viral for a visit to the Barbie Cafe and showing off our neighborhood’s best biking routes — we also use it as a tool to further our economic development initiatives. Last year, we ran paid campaigns on LinkedIn targeting commercial real estate changemakers. Through our “Only Downtown” campaign, we put some of Lower Manhattan’s most compelling assets in front of the people with the power to relocate or establish their businesses in the neighborhood, generating thousands of leads to our “Do Business” website page.
As anyone who has spent time downtown in the last 30 years knows, this neighborhood, like the rest of New York City, is ever-evolving. The digital landscape is the same way. Understanding that keeps us light on our feet, allowing us to stay flexible enough to cover everything that’s new and exciting, while maintaining our identity as informed, friendly stewards of downtown New York. We are looking forward to growing on all our platforms — creating more educational, entertaining and inspiring content that gets people out of their apartments and into Lower Manhattan’s bustling streets. We hope you’ll follow along! And, as always, you can subscribe to our newsletter here.
