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Social Media Roundup for Summer Camps- August 1st

Posted on August 2, 2013
in Social Media Roundup
by Nick Middleton
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Here are some interesting articles on social media and summer camps from this past week! CNN: Facebook enables embedded posts- This will allow you to embed Facebook posts directly on your webpage. This will be very cool for summer camps where parents and children share their favorite camp memories on your Facebook page. You can now have those embedded on your webpage. Mashable: 50 digital media resources you may have missed- There are a lot of interesting resources and articles about social...

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Facebook insights for your Facebook page

Posted on July 23, 2013
in Social Tools
by Nick Middleton
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Almost every summer camp has a Facebook page and it is extremely important to take advantage of the insights that Facebook provides you to grow and optimize your page. I am going to quickly walk you through my page's insights so you can see what metrics are important to track. On the main page of Facebook insights there are three panels available: page likes, post reach and engagement. The most important of these three to take a deeper look at is post...

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How often should you update parents during camp and where?

Posted on July 19, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
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During camp it is absolutely imperative for camps to keep their parents and community updated, but it can certainly become a daunting task when you have to update your internal camp software (campminder, bunk1, etc.), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and the list goes on. I've posted before about how to best create content during camp, but I wanted to share a few additional tips on how much you should be updating your social entities. 1. Update twice a day, collect content...

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Promoting your camp’s crowd funding efforts

Posted on July 17, 2013
in Social Tools
by Nick Middleton
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A couple of days ago I wrote about how camps can use crowd funding platforms to raise money. Today I am going to go over a couple of ways that camps should promote these crowd funding efforts. 1. Social media platforms: This seems obvious, but you should heavily promote your project on your own social media platforms. Use photos of camp activities and messaging that clearly describes why you are asking for money and allows your community to connect with your cause. 2....

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Resources on social media and summer camps

Posted on July 16, 2013
in Social Tools
by Nick Middleton
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I've been reading a lot lately about social media and about summer camps in an effort to always be up to date on various ideas. I wanted to quickly share some books and blogs I've been reading for your enjoyment. Books: How Children Succeed by Paul Tough: This book was recommended to me by one of my camp partners as a great way to learn more about child development at summer camp. It goes in depth on developing non-cognitive skills. So far a...

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Google Search Insights for Camps

Posted on July 10, 2013
in Social Tools
by Nick Middleton
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Google offers summer camps some great tools for learning more about what prospective parents are searching for. One tool, Google Trends, allows you to see what search terms are being searched for at certain times of the year. The image below shows last year's trend for searches using the following terms: summer camp texas (red), summer camp maine (blue) and summer camp new york (yellow). Understanding Google Search Insights could help you boost your website's traffic. The trend lines show what...

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Updated – Save time by hiring a social media consultant for your camp

Posted on July 3, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
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Social media marketing for summer camps is a full-time job! In fact, when I built out the chart below to estimate how many hours per month a camp should spend on social media, I was stunned to see my estimations top out somewhere around 55 hours per month! This is why hiring a consultant to do social media is so important. In general, the services of Social Summer Camp can take the time spent down to around 15 hours per...

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Measuring social media success for summer camps

Posted on July 2, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
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As part of the Social Summer Camp social media program for summer camps, I work with each camp to put together a short, medium and long-term measurement plan. A solid measurement plan is one of the most important aspects of a great social media program. Many summer camps are using social media, but have not figured out how to measure success. If you are running a social media program and not measuring results, try some of these short-term measurement ideas: Using Google...

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