In today’s world of technology and social media, communicating about upcoming events with a broad group of people has changed. The days of individuals receiving information from the newspaper or mailbox, have fallen to the wayside of technology and social media. As a result, the 4-H team in Christian County looked for alternative ways to promote 4-H summer camp and reach a broad range of people.

Traditionally, 4-H summer camp promotion has occurred via mailing 4-H camp enrollment packets to every 4-H member and previous camp participants. Agents also did in-school promotion whether it was through assembly or classroom meeting, followed by distributing 4-H camp enrollment packets. While this has proven successful, the 4-H team desired to reach beyond the youth to those parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles that may have attended 4-H camp as a youth and may not be part of the direct clientele at this time.

Christian County 4-H utilizes social media on a regular basis to communicate with our clientele and the general public about events and upcoming programs, including information about 4-H summer camp. This year, in order to reach individuals outside of our regular clientele we utilized the Facebook promoted post. Between the dates of April 5th and May 25th, four promoted post regarding 4-H camp registration was made that targeted men and women ages 18-65+ in the Hopkinsville, Kentucky area.

As a result of the promoted post, a total of 2,011 people were reached with at least one of the four post. Out of the 2,011 people reached, 144 post engagements were made with 244 views of the two videos shared. All promoted post were also shared to Christian County 4-H Instagram page, increasing the number of people reached.

For a total of $21, 2,011 individuals on Facebook saw information regarding 4-H summer camp 2018 in their newsfeed. As a result, the Christian County 4-H Facebook page received 37 new page likes, and youth that may have otherwise not been given the experience of attending 4-H camp were given the information. By finding a way to capitalize on the technology that we use every day the 4-H team was able to reach their camp attendance goal and take new youth to camp.