They’re looking for a photo blitz of Wilmington-area pride, the kind that will make outsiders want to experience it for themselves.
On June 30, the Port City is celebrating “Hashtag #spreadtheWilm Day” to highlight a social media campaign encouraging residents to take pictures and videos of their favorite local scenes to post to Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and other sites, with that namesake hashtag.
Promoted by the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), #spreadtheWilm is a “community-wide marketing initiative that recognizes the impact of travel and tourism on the local economy, the community, businesses and personal lives of local residents,” a summary explains.
“It’s up to residents and business owners to be the biggest and best cheerleaders and promoters of our area and spread the word to family, friends and visitors about this great place to live, work and play,” says hub website spreadthewilm.com. When residents snap photos of heartening local scenes on their smartphones or tablets, they’re asked to post them on social media sites with the #spreadtheWilm hashtag so their friends or family members can see what a convivial time they’re having here in the Cape Fear. Applying the #spreadtheWilm hashtag also enters the photos into a special gallery marketed by CVB.
(A hashtag is simply a way of making a topic out of a phrase, word or abbreviation. Social media users can follow topics that interest them via any particular hashtag. Examples: #ilm for Wilmington; #brunsco for Brunswick County; #ncfilm for the state’s film industry.)
Within 30 days of the hashtag campaign’s May 6 launch, the CVB’s #spreadtheWilm gallery, which collects all the #spreadtheWilm activity online, received more than 12,000 page views, said Shawn Braden, the CVB’s executive vice president of marketing. Click here and scroll down to see the gallery, called “Social Moments.”
Each #spreadtheWilm photo or video posted through the end of August is entered into a contest with weekly winners who receive a T-shirt and other promotional materials. Each winner qualifies for a grand prize: a stay-cation, with two nights at the Hilton Wilmington Riverside and paid-for access to local attractions among other perks.
“It’s kind of like a pamper-yourself type of weekend in town,” said marketing manager Ashley Murphy, noting locals don’t often get to explore what’s immediately around them, at least not as a tourist might.
Most of the images on spreadthewilm.com are posted via Instagram and focus on area trademarks like the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, the Bellamy Mansion, the Riverwalk, the U.S.S. North Carolina battleship and myriad water scenes.
But there are plenty of more personal moments in there, too: just-caught fish; backyard garden blooms, feet dug into the sand; downtown concerts; local-specialty meals about to be devoured.
One of the latest #spreadtheWilm images up Tuesday spied into a bag of doughnuts from Britt’s, the nationally ranked treat maker in Carolina Beach.
Braden said it’s a creative mix of users–not just the young and tech-savvy–participating in the hashtag.
“We really intended it as a local thing, but it’s actually really kind of mushroomed,” said Connie Nelson, CVB’s communications and public relations director. “In fact we’ve had retweets from as far away as Japan and the U.K.”
CVB says it’s producing new ways to keep the momentum going for the hashtag’s use.
“The long term goal that we would really like to see is developing photo ops within the community,” said Braden. That would entail the creation of backdrops or props specifically for photo-taking in a way that would market the area.
“People love to take those photos,” she said, “and when your name gets shared over and over again, you just can’t buy advertising like that.”
Wilmington City Council on Tuesday passed a proclamation designating June 30 “Hashtag #spreadtheWilm Day,” with Mayor Bill Saffo noting that travel and tourism brought more than $460 million into the local economy last year and supported thousands of jobs.
“Each one of the citizens in our community can be part of this social media and marketing campaign,” Saffo said. “It’s very easy to do. Just take a picture, tell people … what you love about this area and send it out to #spreadtheWilm.”
The CVB has produced a video with more information about the campaign here.
Ben Brown is a news reporter at Port City Daily. Reach him at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter:@benbrownmedia
