Summer camps need to manage their online communities. Whether we are active in online social media (Facebook, YouTube, etc.), or not, our clients and our potential clients are VERY involved. That gives us lots of chances to be a part of the conversation.

When families are looking for a summer camp they are more likely to choose one that is active at online communication. Would you rather send your child to a camp that is cold and distant or one that is open and you can see talking to their families online?

I spoke with Rich from Posterous (the company that makes the backbone of the CampHacker website) about their new Posterous Groups feature. Groups allows you to create an easy online community. People involved in that community can talk back an forth via email, send pictures and video and have a website to gather all of that together in one place. That communication can then either be private or public.

Have a listen to our conversation:

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/camphacker/CampHacker-Special-Posterous.mp3]

(if you would like automatic updates when we post our interviews and CampHacker shows, subscribe to CampHacker in iTunes)

Camp Uses for Posterous Groups

create a Group for this summer's staff to get to know each other before June. You can also use this list to send out your most important information.
keep your LITs together. Like most of you, my Leader in Training summer (and the summer that I was the LIT Director) was one of my best at camp. By creating a Group for each bunch of LITs (or each year's LIT) they can keep in touch with the people with which they have shared those awesome experiences.
have a New Parent's Group. If you build a place where new parents can talk to each other and you can answer their questions, you will be giving your clients another reason to spread the word about your camp - great word of mouth value.

What do you provide for your camp community to talk amongst themselves?