DiscoverNorwalk.com is one of the many projects operated by Norwalk 2.0. We’re all about working with people to make living and working around Norwalk really awesome and for Norwalk to be a great place to be. We want to share our love for Norwalk in new ways that help you be part of the adventure. That can be advertising your company, promoting your event, telling your story, or partnering with you to make something great. We also have a special mission to promote the arts in and the Norwalk Arts District by offering curated information about artists, exhibits, workshops and events.

While not totally limited to the stuff listed below, here’s our guide to how to work with us:

• Event promotion
• Giveaways
• Partnerships
• Featured coverage on website
• Freelancers

SO YOU WANT TO PROMOTE YOUR EVENT

Our subscribers like to be in the know about all the cool stuff happening around Norwalk. There are a couple of ways to promote your event.

Advertise in our newsletter

• You can use our advertising form to create customized ads for our weekly newsletter email. There’s a 30 percent discount for nonprofits.

Suggest something for our Field Guide

This is a list of interesting events around Norwalk for the curious at heart. It appears in our newsletter and in our Field Guide. We do share curated news, exhibits, calls, and workshops through our social media network of Norwalk arts related groups beyond just here on DiscoverNorwalk.com.

• We like receiving suggestions about what to cover, but unlike traffic on I-95, there are no guarantees that sending one along means we will put it in. We are curators at heart. We look at many things like connection to our community, newness, accessibility and cost, which is a long way of saying timing is everything and it depends.  Send suggestions to [email protected].
• We do need to receive submissions at least a week before the event. We update our field guide once a week.
• What we need from you should come to us in the form of an email. A brief description and a live URL to an event listing (it can be on your website or on any public social media platform, but it can’t be a flyer or image that has to be attached.)

Swag and Giveaways are fun

Free stuff, promotional tchotckees and giveaways are the building blocks of marketing for a reason. We think they are an awesome way for us to give our readers access to local experiences, and for you to get a boost of buzz. We offer these giveaways to our readers, members and event partners. For this to work, we need to offer up whatever it is at least a week before you wnat people to show up to get whatever it is. Usually that means an event.

Then, there are three golden guidelines that make the promotion work.

• You are offering a special experience that isn’t available for purchase anywhere else,
• You are offering access to an invite-only event, the kind where yuo limit who knows or
• You have some product or service that has some significant financial value.

Want to give away access to a great product or experience? Email [email protected].

SO YOU WANT TO PARTNER WITH US TO CHANGE THE WORLD …

Every revolution starts with a journey.

At Norwalk 2.0, a “partner” isn’t someone who contacts us only when they have something they are promoting, it’s someone we work with to amplify and strengthen our connections to the communities we both serve.

We provide that essential link to getting your project started, analyzed, communicated or delivered. Talk to us about how that works. We’re always trying to motivate others to make Norwalk cooler, so we ask partners to provide an opportunity for their users to sign-up for our newsletter. Usually this means an opt-out checkbox on a webform. We promote our partners in many ways, some of which may include: bringing members to your events, including partner events and announcements in our newsletters, and promoting partnership work on our social media channels.

We like to work together with partners over a period of several weeks or months to ensure that we’re building strong and effective relationships, call it the dating part of relationship building.

We love hanging with peoplewho are curious about new things — especially if we can do it in a place we’re excited to help them explore. We host occasional field trips around the city, and we’re always on the hunt for the next great thing. We look for places in town where we can hang out, explore something, get drinks or some food, and/or chat. If you have an idea, email [email protected] and let us know.

SO YOU WANT COVERAGE OF YOUR THING

If you are thinking of a question that goes along the line of “Can you share our my event/restaurant opening/campaign on your website?” then we have some explaining to do. We get alot of these requests, because well, we like sharing things. But that’s not quite what we do…

We founded Norwalk 2.0 to catalyze the conversation about issues facing Norwalk and to show how you can effect change, by being the change you want to be. Kinda like our tag line. Anyways, we wanted to be part of a community that desired a cool and connected civic life. So we really like to help Norwalkers see new things, connect with like minded people, and explore the undiscovered or underreported. What that means is that we have a mission to help people who are making things, creating change, and proposing solutions to Norwalk’s challenges; and those are the things we feature on our website. We don’t do food, drink, book, or show reviews or event coverage. But we do feature new things happening around town in our newsletter and on our social media accounts. If you’ve got a suggestion for a story, ping us at [email protected].

We have a space on our newsletter for the coverage of cool things in other media venues, and we enjoy when people suggest things to share with our readers. If your thing got a great write-up somewhere else, send it over to [email protected].

There’s also our community dispatch. This is a place for things like calls for applications and civic campaigns. It is not a place to advertise your business or event. For that, see promotions above.

SO YOU WANT TO PITCH A FREELANCE ASSIGNMENT… 

We like to support our local creative economy in many ways, but we have a limited freelance budget. Freelance writers and photographers are always welcome to pitch their story ideas. Just ping us at [email protected] with a brief pitch, a couple clips, and a potential timeline for the piece. If it is longer than a graf, edit it please!

STILL HAVE A QUESTION…

Seriously? OK. Ping us at [email protected] and we’ll help you out.