Blog

When should I start my social media efforts?

Posted on October 25, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

I get asked every single day by camp directors about the right timing for starting their social media efforts. The answer to this really depends on the camp and situation, but my answer always is "the longer you wait, the more you will miss out on." What I mean by that is: You will be missing many opportunities to promote your camp by not having a social media strategy in place You won't sign up new campers using these innovative channels that...

Read More

Pinterest and advertising for summer camps

Posted on October 23, 2013
in Social Tools
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

Last month Pinterest announced that they will be starting to provide promoted pins (also known as ads). They are currently testing this with a few companies and promoted pins will only show up in search results and category feeds. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before this is open to everyone and available in the Pinterest news feed. Of course, this is exactly how Facebook started out, first allowing a few promotions on their right hand side and...

Read More

Can you do it all?

Posted on October 21, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

I talk to a lot of camp directors who want to know if it's possible to do it all. What they really mean is, can a camp successfully run a social media program without a consultant. I've written before about how many hours a month you can save by hiring a social media consultant and I estimated that a full-time social media focused person would spend about 55 hours a month to accomplish everything that needs to be done. BUT, here...

Read More

If you could only do one social media activity, what would it be?

Posted on October 11, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

A lot of camp directors I talk to are VERY short of time. In fact, most of the times their entire staff is short on time. I totally understand that, which is why I am posting today about the ONE social media activity you must do. This means, if you are short on time that you shouldn't do ANY activities except for this one. It's better to do one thing very well then to have a mediocre Twitter/Instagram/Blog/etc. If you can...

Read More

Social Media Round Up For Camps: October

Posted on October 9, 2013
in Social Media Roundup
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

Here are some interesting articles on social media and summer camps from this past month! Mashable: Facebook has a quarter of a trillion user photos!! (How is your camp maximizing on the photo sharing capabilities of Facebook?) Huffington Post: A cute blog post about the Marriott family and their time at summer camp. Social Summer Camp: A blog post I wrote on "marketing" as a bad word and how camps can fulfill their missions in the world. Digiday: What to expect from Instagram ads. New...

Read More

Social marketing v. traditional print media

Posted on October 4, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

If your camp is doing a lot of traditional print media (newsletters, newspaper ads, magazine ads, etc.) then it is really important to measure your success against your social marketing. Most print media only has two measurement qualities: 1. Reach: How many people received your newspaper/magazine/newsletter? (There is no way to know how many people actually read it, but this is a good enough metric to lean on.) 2. Response to your call to action: How many people either dialed the number or emailed...

Read More

Executing and measuring your holiday plan

Posted on October 2, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

In the last week I've covered how to develop your holiday marketing goals and how to create holiday-specific messaging that maps back to your goals. All of this is great, BUT if you don't execute on your plan and measure your success none of that will matter. Executing your plan should be pretty simple because you know 1. what your goals are and 2. what messaging your want to use to reach your goals. Usually executing on your holiday related...

Read More

Creating holiday-specific messaging

Posted on September 30, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

I love the idea of creating holiday-specific messaging for your camp. Most camps have a good brand voice, but don't often change their brand voice to focus on timely events. We talked yesterday about how to set long-term and short-term holiday goals for your summer camp. Once you have completed that, it's time to figure out what messaging you are going to use to reach your goal. Usually when creating messaging I recommend figuring out the following first: What three main...

Read More

Holiday planning for summer camps

Posted on September 25, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

It may only be the end of September, but camps should definitely be thinking about the holidays already. Why is that, you ask? Because most moms decide what they are going to get their kids in the months of October and November. We all know that a summer at camp makes an amazing holiday gift, so it is very important to stay in front of these moms. I'll be doing a series over the next few weeks about how to...

Read More

Social media and summer camp video trainings

Posted on September 23, 2013
in Social Strategies
by Nick Middleton
0 Comments
0

I have a lot of video trainings available on my YouTube channel and I wanted to make sure that you all had access to them. I'm uploading more each day, so make sure and check out my channel here. Here are some of the most useful video trainings available: Top three ways to target Facebook ads for summer camps How to track social activity using the Google Conversion Tracking Pixel and the Facebook Conversion Tracking Pixel How to build Twitter ads for summer camps...

Read More