CWF-Tulips-300x225They say that Spring is here, but it appears to be more prevalent in some parts of the country than others. Just watching the news I see people outside in t-shirts and shorts. Haven’t gotten there yet in Western New York. Maybe this weekend!

For those of you that live or are traveling through the state of Virginia you will undoubtedly begin to see the iconic LOVE letters. The State of Virginia’s traveling LOVEwork sculpture ties into their tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers”.  We’ve been working with the marketing team at Colonial Williamsburg through our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, for about five years now and they are extremely excited to host the LOVE letters for the first time.

CWF-MS-LOVEThrough an agreement with the Virginia Tourism Corporation and working with the Garden Clubs of Virginia, they have timed the arrival of the letters during Historic Garden Week. The letters will reside on Duke of Gloucester Street in Merchants Square, April 17-23. In celebration of the sculpture’s arrival, Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square will be running the “Share the LOVE” photo sweepstakes during that week. Here’s how it works:

  • People are invited to take a picture of the LOVE letters
  • Then they must visit either the Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square website or Facebook Page and follow the links to the Sweepstakes entry form
  • Once there they fill out the form, upload a photo, and once it’s submitted and approved, the photo will be shared in the promotion’s photo gallery.
  • For those that would like to use Instagram, the can first post their photo there using the #LOVEMSQSweeps hashtag. Once on the entry form, they will have the option to upload their photo from Instagram.

CWF-Share-the-LoveEach photo submitted will count as an entry into the Sweepstakes for a chance to win one of three $800 prize packages, including a $500 Merchants Square shopping spree and two statewide passes to the 2016 Garden Club of Virginia Historic Garden Week. Many of the Merchants are planning special events while the letters are in town along with the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.

As with the Kiss Nail Products Dream Vacation Sweepstakes that I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago, we are also hosting and managing the entry form for this Share the Love Sweepstakes. So again we are using my favorite app for this, Shortstack. The app allows us to install the promotion to a tab on the Colonial Williamsburg Merchants Square Facebook Page as well as host it online so the Sponsor can link to it from their website and emails.

Shortstack just announced their new and improved analytic reports. Now you can easily know in real time where your traffic is coming from, whether it’s from search engines, websites, social media platforms or email. Also how people access your promotion, via Facebook vs. the web, or via a page embedded on your website. Or what device they used, a mobile phone, tablet or desktop, and what type of platform they came from.

So if you’re in the Williamsburg, VA, area starting next week be sure to check out the letters and take a photo. This is the first time that Colonial Williamsburg is including Instagram as an option, so we’re really interested to see how many participants use this platform and share their photos there. The letters, together with it being Virginia’s Historic Garden Week , should make for some great photos!  Can’t wait to see them. Welcome Spring!