Facebook Engagement Trick: Blast from the Past

Over the last year, Camp Fire has been cleaning up its office and tossing old files. We found several shoe boxes of old photos – you know, the kind we all have in the attic, garage, or under our bed?

We weren’t sure use they could be, but they were fading and we wanted to do something with them. So any time the office manager had a spare moment or we had office volunteers and didn’t have more pressing work, we had them scanning the photos on the office printer/scanner/copier. Soon, we had hundred of digitized photo files.

Then what?

Share them

Amber (the executive director, camp director, and my lovely wife) started posting them to the camp’s Facebook page. Every week, she posts a couple dozen and titles them as best she can.

The amazing thing is that page fans come out of the woodwork to look at the yellowing photos, reminisce, and comment. They recognize themselves, their old friends, or the cabin they stayed in decades ago. Every time they comment or like a photo, their friends see it and come check it out.

The “Like” count has grown and the interaction rate has skyrocketed. Check out the two spikes for the first two times she posted photo galleries:

Lessons, Short and Sweet

It’s about sharing great content on a regular basis. The folks who run pray.nd.edu generate excellent new content daily and have steadily grown their subscriber count to thousands. Any top blogger will say the same.

It’s about giving people something they want, not pushing your own agenda. Press releases and announcements have their place, but that’s not what people are seeking out. They want stories, and in our case the photos help tell a story. They connect with our followers in a way that no press release ever could. Memories are re-kindled and word spreads to our lost alumni.

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