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Does your camp have open houses, city visits, home parties, etc? If so, you should be marketing them on Facebook. Here are a few quick tips for your camp to market an event successfully on Facebook. 1. Create a Facebook event with fun photos and information on the event 2. Add multiple admins and ask them to invite friends to the event 3. Invite fans in the event's location to your event 4. Encourage your fans to invite their own friends to the Facebook...

Snapchat for Camps

Posted on October 28, 2013

in Social Tools

Snapchat is a very cool real-time photo chatting app on iOS and Android. According to Business Insider, they have 350 million photo uploads DAILY. It may still seem like a little app to a lot of people, but the growing popularity among middle and high school aged students is something that most marketers (including camp marketers) can not ignore. I always like to look toward big brands for advice on what smaller brands should be doing when a new social medium...

When should I start my social media efforts?

Posted on October 25, 2013

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...

Pinterest and advertising for summer camps

Posted on October 23, 2013

in Social Tools

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...

Can you do it all?

Posted on October 21, 2013

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...

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

Posted on October 11, 2013

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...

Social Media Round Up For Camps: October

Posted on October 9, 2013

in Social Media Roundup

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...

Social marketing v. traditional print media

Posted on October 4, 2013

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...

Executing and measuring your holiday plan

Posted on October 2, 2013