Local companies and community organizations share a challenge: figuring out how to get the word out quickly and cost effectively.

Good news: ARLnow has you covered.

Our recently revamped Announcements feature lets you self-publish an announcement, with an accompanying photo, directly on the website and our email newsletter. Fill out one form, and you’re done.

For just $99 your message appears:

• On the ARLnow homepage*
• Below ARLnow articles*
• In the ARLnow newsletter*
• In search engine results

The homepage gets 100,000 to 150,000 weekly views while our email newsletter has 16,000 active subscribers. Also, for an extra fee, we’ll boost your announcement via our Facebook and Twitter accounts, with about 100,000 followers total.

Post announcements here or, if your announcement is a job opening, use this form instead. Jobs listed are posted as announcements but in a optimized format.

* For one week, potentially in rotation with other announcements

Amid the economic uncertainty of 2022, ARLnow’s advertisers (along with members of the ARLnow Press Club) have helped us continue to report on your community.

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank those that have advertised with us so far this year (as of Sept. 1). This list includes numerous long-term ad clients, who have supported us for many years.

To the long-term and new advertisers alike, we say: thank you for supporting local news in Arlington.

ARLnow’s 2022 advertisers include:

• Allied Title & Escrow
• Andors Real Estate Group
• Arlington Community Federal Credit Union (ACFCU)
• Arlington County Parks & Recreation
• Arlington Economic Development
• Arlington Festival of the Arts
• Arlington Initiative to Rethink Energy
• Arlington Realty
• Arlington Travel Baseball
• Arrowine & Cheese
• Backyard Homes
• Berry & Berry PLLC
• Betsy Twigg
• Buck & Associates
• CarCare To Go
• Classic Cottages
• Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization
• Compass
• Cook Bros
• Culpepper Garden
• Davis Ad Agency
• DC Bike Ride
• DC Fray
• Eli Residential Group
• George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government
• Groff Landscape Design
• Industrious
• Keri Shull Team
• Langston Boulevard Alliance
• Livesay & Myers, PC
• McEnearney Associates
• McLean Project for the Arts
• Monday Properties
• Natalie Roy | Bicycling Realty Group
• National Capital Bank
• National Landing BID
• Orange Line Condo | The Battle Group
• Rosslyn BID
• RSVP Catering
• Steelyard LLC
• SwimBox
• The Spa Clinic
• VIDA Fitness

Note that the list above does not currently include those that have advertised through our new Community Content Hub.

(Updated 3:45 p.m. on 2/22/22) A typo in a recent public hearing notice has had some larger consequences for Arlington County.

The error — an incorrect date printed on posters around town — also sparked a County Board discussion yesterday (Tuesday) about finding more effective ways to communicate with residents about upcoming hearings and projects.

This is a recurring conversation for Board members, who have now critiqued the county engagement processes for being neither penetrative nor inclusive enough.

Currently, the county posts signs at and near near the sites of future land-use projects, per its zoning ordinances. It also prints advertisements in the Washington Times newspaper to meet state public notice laws.

The fliers posted this time around bore the wrong date: Feb. 19, or this Saturday, instead of Feb. 12, when the County Board actually met.

As a result, most of the hearing items impacted — including plans for a church moving to Ballston, a new daycare coming near Clarendon and a private school opening in a church near Crystal City — will be rescheduled for a meeting on Saturday, March 19.

A hearing for the Marbella Apartments, a forthcoming affordable housing project near Rosslyn, will be heard at a special meeting on Monday, Feb. 28 at 6:30 p.m. so that the project can meet an early March deadline to receive tax credits from Virginia Housing.

Those who spoke at the Saturday meeting will have their comments entered and don’t need to return, officials said.

“Unfortunately, [for] this error — which anyone can make an error like that — we didn’t have redundancy, which is something we’re going to address immediately,” County Manager Mark Schwartz said. “We’re going to be immediately improving our process to address this.”

Only one person reviewed the dates before the printed placards went out, he said. The newspaper advertisement, meanwhile, had the correct date, but County Board members mused about whether putting legal notices in the Washington Times, a conservative daily newspaper with a circulation around 50,000 in the D.C. area, is effective.

“This invites the question of not just ‘What went wrong here?’ but ‘What could go better in the future?'” Board Vice Chair Christian Dorsey said. “Many have long decried our practice of advertising in the Washington Times, given its relatively low circulation in the county. While it meets the legal requirements, it doesn’t necessarily meet the spirit of broad notice.”

In Arlington, Board Chair Katie Cristol said, the challenge is that the county can choose broad circulation and additional expense with the Washington Post or low prices with the Washington Times.

She said she “would love” to advertise with an online news source, but state law mandates that such notices be placed in print publications.

“We have at least one of those where a lot of Arlingtonians get their news,” Cristol said. “We are constrained by state code from doing that — and some very effective lobbying from what I understand is the Virginia print industry, which is very interested in keeping that requirement the same.”

Virginia Press Association Executive Director Betsy Edwards says the current system “works very well for the majority of the citizens of the Commonwealth.”

Read More

ARLnow’s advertisers aren’t just reaching a huge local audience, they’re helping us serve the community with award-winning local news coverage.

It has always been our focus to find the intersection of highly effective ads (for clients) and legitimately useful and interesting ads (for readers). In other words, ads that you actually want to read.

That’s why we’re proud to officially roll out our new 2022 Media Kit today.

With a greater range of cost-effective options, we can deliver more value to our clients and more locally-focused ads to our readers, while also reporting more local news.

We’ve kept pricing in the new Media Kit largely the same as 2021, as local businesses continue to recover from the pandemic. But we’ve added a number of new options, including:

• Posts with embedded forms and buttons
• Contests and giveaways
• Sponsored job listings
• Social media-only promotion, including on our popular Instagram account

In addition to those options, available by contacting our account team (via email, phone or the form below), advertisers can now quickly book four types of sponsored content via self-serve options:

• Listing of the Day (real estate)
• Job of the Day (job openings)
• Community Post (announcements, promotions, events, obituaries, etc.)
• Promoted Posts (any topic)

All four include links in our email newsletter, homepage placement, and optimized search engine indexing. The Listing, Job and Promoted posts are also promoted via social media.

Those are in addition to revamped featured events in our event calendar, on our homepage and in our daily email newsletter.

Our ad options provide a viable, local and affordable alternative to social media ads, which are increasingly expensive on a per-impression basis, and print ads, which reach an increasingly limited audience.

Read More

Facebook ads are getting more expensive. Print advertising continues to reach fewer people.

If you run or manage marketing for a local business or organization, figuring out how to reach the widest possible audience for the lowest reasonable cost is hard. Luckily, ARLnow makes it easy by putting your message in front of a huge local audience.

With hundreds of thousands of readers each month, ARLnow reaches a diverse swath of the Arlington community — north and south, young and old. In fact, a survey commissioned by Arlington County found that ARLnow is the No. 1 source of local information for Arlington residents, above the Washington Post and the county government’s own website.

Our effective and engaging advertising options let your company reach those local readers for less than Facebook or print.

Book your ads now for the fall and you can keep that rate after pricing goes up in 2022. See our current Media Kit or fill out the form below and we’ll get in touch to discuss your marketing goals.

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It’s hard to believe, but Labor Day is just two short weeks away.

The holiday serves as the unofficial end of summer and, for ARLnow, represents the start of our busiest advertising season.

If you’d like your company’s message to reach the widest possible Arlington audience — young and old, south and north, renters and owners — while supporting essential local journalism, we should talk. And soon.

Despite the pandemic, much of the local economy has remained resilient. We anticipate running low on advertising inventory again this fall, as we have over the past couple of years.

Find out more about advertising with ARLnow here and reach out to our client team at [email protected].

Flickr pool photo by Tom Mockler

During the pandemic ARLnow has been thanking the small business and other sponsors that have stuck with us through these tough times.

Today we’re spotlighting Market Common Clarendon.

Normally around this time of year, Market Common Clarendon would be buzzing with shoppers, diners and outdoor events. Unfortunately, these are not normal times. Aside from the always-bustling Whole Foods, and the recently-opened Nicecream, Market Common — like so many other shopping centers across the country — has been quiet.

There are a lot of things that make a community great, including its people, its parks, its schools. But one of the most visible is its businesses. Going out to eat at a cool new restaurant, getting some stretchy workout gear on your lunch break, setting your wedding registry and then walking across the street to a brewpub for a cold beer — these are all amenities that, in their small way, make a place more livable.

Anyhow, this is all to say that we’re looking forward to all of the businesses at Market Common Clarendon reopening safely, whenever that may happen. Until then, you can still head there for some primo organic produce, some small batch ice cream, and — starting Friday — some margaritas on an outdoor patio.

https://twitter.com/ttt_cl/status/1266087960186765312

Thank you to Market Common Clarendon for continuing to support local journalism in Arlington.

During the pandemic ARLnow has been thanking the small business that have stuck with us through these tough times.

We are also thanking some of the other types of organizations that sponsor the site. Today we’re spotlighting one of our longest running advertisers, the Crystal City (soon to be National Landing) Business Improvement District.

The BID has been sponsoring ARLnow so long that when it started doing so people were still writing articles asking if Crystal City would ever be a “hip place to live.” Well, now HQ2 is arriving and, pre-COVID, the 22202 zip code became one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation. So there.

We always believed in Crystal City, and we’re proud to have the BID as a sponsor.

The virus has unfortunately temporarily put the kibosh on the BID’s signature events — a 5K Friday followed by a trip to the pop-up beer and wine garden would be nice right about now — but there’s plenty more that they’re doing, from commissioning artwork for local storefronts to hosting a new weekly video series “featuring a different local business owner who will bring tutorials, how-tos and entertaining content directly to you at home.”

Crystal City is also home to a vibrant collection of local businesses, from Freddie’s Beach Bar (recently in the news) to an empanada stand that bravely opened in the middle of a pandemic. To see which local businesses in the community are currently open, the BID has a handy list.

Thank you, Crystal City BID, for supporting local journalism during this crisis.

During the pandemic ARLnow has been thanking the small business that have stuck with us through these tough times.

We have more to thank, but we also would like to acknowledge some of our non-business sponsors, including George Mason University.

GMU’s (expanding) Virginia Square campus is home to the Schar School of Policy and Government, the Antonin Scalia Law School, and the newly-renamed Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. It also hosts master’s programs for Mason’s School of Business.

We’re proud to work with GMU and grateful for their support of local news in Arlington.

Be sure to check out GMU’s Juris Master program if you were thinking of bolstering your legal cred at your job, or the Schar School’s May 28 virtual open house to learn more about the master’s degree and graduate certificate programs in policy and government offered at the Arlington campus

ARLnow is a free resource for the entire community thanks to the support of our advertisers.

Our site is free of paywalls and popups because we have high-quality local businesses and organizations that advertise on ARLnow. All we ask is for a bit of your time and attention to consider what they’re offering.

Today we’re toasting VIDA Fitness, the D.C.-native health and wellness club, which is opening its newest location at 4040 Wilson Boulevard in Ballston early next year.

Here are some reasons we think they’re the GOAT:

• It’s really nice. I mean, have you been in one of the D.C. clubs?
• It’s a welcoming place for everyone and anyone
• There’s a spa and a smoothie-and-bowl bar, too
• Customized personal and partner training with top notch trainers
• Nutritional counseling with registered dietitians
• “The reason I like VIDA is that it is well-run and people are friendly. Each time I’ve approached the management, they were extremely helpful, effective and attended to me immediately” — testimonial from Justin
• They help ARLnow hire professional, full-time local news reporters and bring you the local happenings week in and week out

Please join us in thanking VIDA Fitness by starting a new habit. You can also contact them at [email protected] or to contact a specific gym visit vidafitness.com.

— The ARLnow business team

ARLnow is a free resource for the entire community thanks to the support of our advertisers.

We work hard to bring advertiser messages to you in a way that’s informational and not intrusive — no popups, no nonsense slowing down your computer, etc. — while making sure they’re actually seen. That way it’s a win for readers and a win for our advertisers.

While altruism isn’t necessarily the goal, our advertisers are providing a valuable service to the community by helping to support our local journalism, and we want to recognize them for that.

Today we’re toasting Elite Dental, a dental office at 1025 N. Fillmore Street, Suite C in Clarendon, which provides cosmetic dentistry including smile whitening, Invisalign, dental implants, orthodontics, veneers, crowns, bridges and general dentistry.

Here are some reasons we think they’re the bee’s knees.

• They accept all major dental PPO insurance
• SmileSIM capability (digital simulation of treatment results)
• Whitening for Life program (provides professional-grade whitening services)
• The ARLnow business team has visited Elite Dental and can say that Dr. Morrow was amazing! The entire staff makes visits quick and painless.
• “The service was excellent and it’s the first time that I can remember that I didn’t have any pain during the entire crown procedure! And no pain after the procedure was over the next day — another first! Dr. Hartman did a superb job!” – testimonial from Kenneth N.
• They help ARLnow hire professional, full-time local news reporters and bring you the local happenings week in and week out.

Please join us in thanking Elite Dental by touring their office or scheduling an appointment at [email protected]. You can also contact them at 703-988-6965.

— The ARLnow business team