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Today, I am starting a short series on how to make your Facebook posts more engaging. The first part of the series is going to cover imagery. Luckily, summer camps have great images from their summer photographers, which means they always have an arsenal of photos to use for Facebook posts. Still, I see camps all of the time using images that don't perform well on Facebook. Here are five quick tips to make your Facebook images more engaging: 1. Pictures...

Social media planning sessions

Posted on August 9, 2013

in Social Strategies

With the summer season winding down, it is time for your camp to hold an annual social media planning session. Here is an example of an agenda for this type of meeting: 1. Complete an audit of current social media activity, tools, and analytics 2. Decide if you are going to hire a social media consultant. Does your program need help? Or are you in a good place with the current staff? 3. Brainstorm your main marketing objectives for next year 4. Set a...

LinkedIn Ads for Summer Camps

Posted on August 7, 2013

LinkedIn ads recruiting camp counselors always spike a couple of months before camp starts. Recruitment agencies run most of these ads, but camps have the opportunity to run their own ads to recruit the best counselors. Here are a few things to think about when running LinkedIn ads for counselor recruitment: 1. Targeting is key: Most students use LinkedIn specifically to find jobs. Make sure you layer on the best targeting possible to maximize results. For example, if you are a camp in...

What should summer camps blog about?

Posted on August 5, 2013

in Social Strategies

When camp is in session blogging every day comes more naturally than it does the rest of the year. But when camp is over it is extremely important to continue blogging regularly. Regularly meaning at least 1-3 times a week when camp is not in session. It can be hard to come up with interesting and inspiring topics, but here is a quick list of ideas: 1. Repurpose blogs from during the summer to remind everyone of the amazing time they...

Social Media Roundup for Summer Camps- August 1st

Posted on August 2, 2013

in Social Media Roundup

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...

Setting a Camper Growth Goal

Posted on August 1, 2013

in Social Strategies

Before starting any social media program, it is important to build out your marketing objectives and understand the main goal your camp is trying to reach. Most camps I work with are looking to grow their number of campers, but have never set an actual goal around what that looks like. I often encourage my camps to build a chart to map out exactly what 25%, 50% and 75% growth looks like. For small camps it can be a very...

My Night at Camp Champions

Posted on July 30, 2013

in Camp Inspiration

Last week I had the extreme pleasure of spending the night at Camp Champions, a traditional overnight camp located on Lake LBJ in the Texas hill country. Given that I am a life-long lover of camp, I was really looking forward to being back out at camp. Here are a few things I learned while I was there. Attitude is everything: There are a few words I can think of to describe the energy and attitude at Camp Champions: encouraging, loving, grateful....

Facebook insights for your Facebook page

Posted on July 23, 2013

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...

How-to set up Facebook ads for summer camps

Posted on July 22, 2013