Tag, you’re it! – The Art of the Facebook Photo Tag

September is big recruiting time for Taglit-Birthright Israel (A Free 10 day trip to Israel for Jews age 18-26) and my colleagues and I were trying to think outside the box when it came to using Social Media to recruit for the trip. We were posting on Facebook and asking past trip participants to post, but it wasn’t getting the job done.

In a nutshell, we created an album called “Picture yourself in Israel” on Facebook and promoted a contest, the picture that received the most LIKES within a certain time period, would receive a gift basket. We offered to take their picture and then photoshop their head on a picture we already had of someone either on a camel, or floating in the Dead Sea. One contestant decided to include a mustache in her picture, which may have contributed to the popularity. This student is well connected on campus, her picture received 105 LIKES and was our winner.

We had a feeling that the pictures would receive a lot of attention, so we put a piece of advertising on the picture, so when the image went viral, everyone would see “18-26? Jewish? Register for your Free Trip to Israel.” We had 6 or 7 participants for the contest, but the below picture received the most LIKES. You’ll notice that we put our link to register in the comments on the right side to make the link clickable.

Takeaways

1. Pictures, Pictures, Pictures! – Facebook gives more importance to posts that have pictures, links and videos. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine how many news feeds your post will apear on. If your page has 300 LIKES, that doesn’t mean your post will show up on everyone’s page. (Check back for more information on Facebook’s algorithm in a later post)

2. Think outside the box! – Your audience is on Facebook because they want to see pictures of their friends and family, not to be advertised to. Keep that in mind when making posts.

3. Connecters? It worked well on accident for us, but if you are to replicate this, make sure to use someone who is well connected and has a lot of friends on Facebook.

* One mistake that we made is that we didn’t measure the number of registrants we received from using this type of marketing. Ask everyone who applies how they heard about the trip or where they saw the link.

Please comment below if you have any questions!