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Quick Tips for Engaging Your Parents with Stellar Visual Media

What’s the secret to effective summer camp social media marketing? The answer might not be as complicated as you think. It’s visual media. (Yes, really!)

Visual media – including photos, videos, infographics – are immensely more shareable and engaging than plain text posts, and there’s plenty of evidence to back up that claim.

For instance, according to Hubspot statistics:

  • People prefer to watch a video about your product than read about it. In fact, four times as many prefer video.
  • Facebook posts with images are 2.3 times more engaging.
  • Tweets with images get retweeted 150 percent more than those without.
  • Instagram boasts a better engagement rate than Facebook or Twitter in terms of visual media connection.
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The good news: Summer camps have endless opportunities for creating engaging content in the form of visual media (We’d even go out on a limb and say that no other industry presents as many photographable moments.) 

From beautifully wooded locales to fun activities and budding friendships, camp life is all about creating memories. And camps that can capture those moments in interesting and fun ways will stand out, as families look for a summertime retreat. Not to mention, during camp, parents will absolutely love you for giving them an insider’s look at how things are going.

But what types of visuals should you be sharing? And how frequently? This guide gives you some tips for creating stellar visuals for your camp that will engage and entertain your audience.

Quick Tips for Supercharging Your Visual Marketing Efforts

Want to take your social media marketing to the next level? Whether you have a nimble 3-person administrative team or your camp has its own marketing department and photographer, great visual marketing elements start with planning and preparation.

So begin summer with some clever ideas. Get your team the right tools. And make sure your staff knows how to create, share and publish your photos and videos. These tips can help you share your strategy:

  • Create a Content Team: Who handles your content? A marketing manager? A senior counselor? Encourage all of your staff to continue photos and videos, but make sure you have a chain of command in place to handle quality control.
  • Use Hashtags: Hashtags make your posts more searchable – by parents, as well as prospective campers looking at options. Use #(YourCampName) or a nickname if the name’s too long in your posts. And other camp hashtags like #summercamp #camplife, etc.
  • Generate Ideas for Content: Start each summer with a list of content ideas. A few favorites include:
    • “Throwback Thursday” posts from your archives
    • “Camper of the Day” images (with a quote from them about camp)
    • Visual camp trivia, i.e. your oldest bunk
    • Before and after photos
    • Stats over images, i.e.  our camp goes through 100 pounds of fruit per day!
  • Post Daily: You’ll make parents happy if you post daily, but if you have the bandwidth to post multiple times each day, you’ll blow them out of the water. Parents want to know what’s going on during camp; keep them engaged with a steady diet of photos and videos and other visual media.
  • Tell Stories Visually: Photos and videos get shared when they tell a story. So look for opportunities to convey a message with your images – i.e. during a team-building exercise, look for a photo-op that shows the spirit of the activity. With videos, use camper and counselor voiceovers to help you tell the story of your visual media.
  • Give a Behind-the-Scenes Look: Campers and parents want to know what the average day is like at your camp; so think about how you will convey those day-in-the-life moments. Photo collages, time-lapse videos – they can all help you share that story.
  • Use Photos and Video to Introduce Yourself: Use photos and videos to tell campers and parents who you are. Counselor interviews or staff photos with text quotes can help to show off your staff.
  • Use Visual Media to Educate: A downloadable list certainly gets the point of across, but does it actually get campers excited? Probably not. An education video, though, can help breathe some life into your what to bring, what to expect, etc. marketing a summer camp on s

Showcasing Your Camp’s Spirit with Photos and Videos

Camp – it’s a photographer’s paradise. There are just so inspiring moments, beautiful landscapes and vivid smiles to capture. Really, the biggest challenge of photographing camp might be finding enough memory cards to hold all your photos.

But here’s some truth: Visual marketing is a (relatively) low-cost way to supercharge your marketing, keep parents engaged, and grow your camp’s online presence.

So next summer, aspire to be Martin Scorsese. Then, watch all your hard work turn into skyrocketing social media engagement numbers.

Ready to get started but don’t quite have a vision? Check out these “11 Awesome Examples of Super Shareable Camp Social Media Posts” for some inspiration.