I've said it before and I'll say it again: the summer is the best time to market your summer camp. If you have ever wondered when the best time to start a social media program is, the answer is right now! Here are some of the benefits of marketing during the summer: 1. You have a large audience- Parents, friends, aunts and uncles are all online looking for information about what their camper is up to! This is your best chance...
Read MoreAdvertising is such an incredible way to spread the benefits of summer camp to people all over the world. Unfortunately, we have limitations in the advertising world as to who we can reach with our messages. Even for some of the richest people in the world, reliable internet access is often not available due to infrastructure in their countries. Facebook is working to give internet access to everyone all over the world in a move I think could significantly impact...
Read MoreUsing the right image for your Facebook ads is really important! It is one of the most important levers you can pull in making sure that your ads reach more people and perform well. 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...
Read MoreFacebook announced yesterday that they have over 200 million active advertisers. Are you one of them? Facebook ads are extremely effective in reaching your target audience of moms who are looking for great summer programs for their children. I don’t think many people realize that there is a very specific formula for setting up a successful Facebook ad. The reason that most people don’t realize this is because Facebook makes it very difficult to actually set up a successful ad. I...
Read MoreSummer Camps typically hire Social Summer Camp for our Facebook advertising expertise (I did work for Facebook for three years after all), but let me tell you...
Read MoreI really think that Tumblr will be a huge opportunity for camps in 2015. To give you an idea of some Tumblr blogs that are very popular, here are the top 25 viral Tumblrs from the year. Tumblr is dominated by a younger, female audience, which makes it perfect for a lot of summer camp's target audiences. From their webpage: "Tumblr has over 200 million blogs to date. Tumblr was one of the fastest growing platforms in 2014. Its audience is 51% female and 55% between the...
Read MoreOne of the biggest questions I get asked by summer camps is "What is my Camp's Brand Voice?" For each camp this means a different thing, but most often they are asking...
Read MoreA lot of camps have recently been asking me about Promoted Tweets on Twitter. These are essentially just Twitter ads that are promoted to reach a specific target audience. Twitter recently analyzed 200,000 promoted tweets and shared some best practices with the public that I am now sharing with you. 1. Be brief: "Stay under 100 characters per tweet, which Twitter says gets 18% more engagement. For an even more effective campaign, Twitter suggests aiming for three to six Promoted Tweets...
Read MoreFor summer camps that are interested in expanding their reach on mobile, the launch of the Facebook Mobile Ad Network could be a huge deal for you all. According to Mashable: "Audience Network, which was first announced in April, allows businesses to use Facebook's ad targeting tools to better serve ads on mobile applications not named Facebook. In one example offered by the social network, Shazam used Audience Network to sell native ads in its own app, including an ad for...
Read MoreThere was a really interesting article in the NY Times a few weeks ago about how Facebook's news feed is giving a huge boost to video. According to the article, "Since June, Facebook, which has about 1.3 billion monthly users worldwide, has served up an average of a billion video views a day, two-thirds of them on mobile devices. About 100 million new videos are uploaded every month. While that is a small fraction of YouTube’s traffic, it is up significantly...
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