Campanion Tips - Campanion | Summer Camp Photos, Letters, News & More

We use Microposts to give context to what parents are seeing in photos when it might not be obvious. This includes special events and long-running traditions. At the same time, we don’t focus only on big events—day-to-day activities and candid moments help convey the overall camp experience.

You’ll always have campers who don’t want to be in photos (particularly older campers in our case). We use the Tagged Photo Report to see which campers haven’t been tagged in photos, and make a special effort to snap them.

We start using the app before camp begins to share pre-camp updates, staff arrivals, highlights of staff education week, and more. Doing this allows our team to get comfortable with the app and also provides our campers’ parents with an opportunity to sort out technical issues prior to their child’s arrival.

We spend less time curating our photos, which provides us with a more efficient process for our social media team. Facial recognition means parents don’t have to search for their kids, so there’s no need to worry about posting albums with more photos. If it’s a good image, we post it.

We limit who has admin access as a way to make sure that every album has a large number of high quality images, instead of dozens of smaller albums of varying quality. We also write and proofread as many Microposts as possible ahead of time based on predictable schedules and events. This saves time and ensures professional quality content.

We use social media analytics to learn about user behavior. Then we use these data to share updates when users are most active. We found that parents were more engaged with Campanion in the morning and late afternoon.

We have a dedicated tech support person at camper check-in who provides hands-on help to parents for downloading the app and adding a training photo. Additionally, instead of giving parents multiple photo-viewing tools, we make Campanion the single source for this content. Both tactics help with overall adoption and usage.

With facial recognition, parents will know if their kids aren’t in photos. An easy way we make sure to capture every camper is by taking bunk photos on the first day, and group photos of each activity in the first week. That way every parent gets at least one notification at the start of the session.

We had some parents note that the facial recognition was so accurate, it was finding their kids in the background of photos. The parents would get an alert of a photo when their camper was in the background of a shot. It helps to explain to parents before camp starts that the software will pick up campers, even if they aren’t the focal point of the picture, so they don’t expect that every alert will lead them to a shot that prominently features their child.

We use text-only Microposts in situations where we previously would have sent short, simple emails. We couple Microposts with photos for fun camp events. However you choose to employ this functionality, it’s helpful to communicate this plan to parents before camp begins. Also encourage parents to enable notifications so they know what to expect and how to get the most out of the Stream.

We know that whatever photo approach we start with, we have to maintain all summer. If we post 100 photos one day and 50 the next, parents are sure to ask why. We set up a Google Drive that all staff can contribute to, which helps us collect, group, and upload the photos in consistent batches.

We hire a photographer to come before summer and take stock images around camp, such as photos of a campfire at night and our lake on a beautiful day. This way, when we have Microposts that reference these locations, we already have high-quality photos to use. It means we don’t have to send someone at the moment to try and get the right image.