Turning Fans into a Community.

Who do you believe? A business telling you how great they are? Or, a past guest, repeat customer or ardent advocate telling you how great that business is in their own words and from their own experience? This is the major paradigm shift in marketing brought about by social media. The business's role in this space is to facilitate and respond appropriately to the conversation going on, not dominate it.

Since LHWH launched a Facebook page for Carolina Beach, NC, its fan base has grown from zero to nearly 17,000 in almost a year. The conversational tone of our postings has helped to engender a high degree of interactivity among fans. It's all about giving people who love this place a forum to talk about it, ask questions and share their vacation memories and photos with a group that also has an affinity for this seaside destination on the North Carolina coast.

"Are there public accesses to the beach if we stay off the beach?"

"Is that ice cream parlor still on the pier?"

"Who serves the best crab cakes?"

Our client, in fairness to all their member businesses, can't answer all questions. But, other fans can and do! And that's what it's about. Create a vibrant online conversation that's consumer driven and ultimately believable.

The success of our social media efforts on behalf of Carolina Beach (and neighboring Kure Beach) led LHWH to new social media responsibilities for both Wrightsville Beach and the Wilmington/Cape Fear Coast CVB. Extraordinary fan growth and fan interaction occurred within the first month of the new assignment.

With an Eye to the Sky.

LHWH Senior Art Director, Steve Ellwood, has combined incredible patience and creativity to become quite an accomplished photographer. He started out a few years ago with a small telescope and camera to get incredible shots of the moon from his back yard. He eventually moved on to larger telescopes and more advanced cameras and equipment and started shooting long exposure photography. That opened up the entire universe and so many fascinating deep-sky objects that include various nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. Doing all the things it takes to get the right exposure as the Earth is rotating was quite a long and steep learning curve, but the results show he's mastered them. Going from that to his bird photography is what he calls a breath of fresh air -- because it's not nearly as technical as telescope-assisted astrophotography. It's much more about being in the right place at the right time, understanding the behavior of birds, and waiting for just the right shot. In his nylon camouflage outfit, he can wait and crawl undetected in almost any birding locale to capture images of amazing quality and clarity. From Belted Kingfishers and Snowy Egrets to Roseate Spoonbills, his stunning collection now includes hundreds of species in their natural settings. His dream is to compile and publish a beautiful coffee table book sometime in the near future. Check out Steve’s astrophotograhy here or his bird photogrpahy here.