Ning is a social networking site that lets you build your own social networking site(s).  It’s a fun concept and can be a real benefit to offer your camping groups.  It will also afford you much more organization and control prior to the group’s arrival.

It was my experience, when I was the Office Manager of a large campground, that some groups were better at self organizing than others.  It seemed the worst offenders were family reunions.  They were excited, making lots of plans, lots of emails, lots of phone calls to the office and might not have had a strong “point person” to facilitate information.

Here’s the concept I’m suggesting.  Let’s say you have a group of 12 sites coming in for 4 days in August.  You establish that they’ll be called the Braxton Family Reunion.  The group will probably consist of 2 motorhomes,  one pop-up, one cabin rental, three tents and 4 people staying in a hotel in town.  That’s all they know right now and will provide more information as people confirm.

You can now go to Ning and create a Social Network for them.  (first you need to create an account.  Do this for your park and spend some time filling in the profile)  Name it something like Braxton Family Reunion 2009.  You’ll be prompted to enter what you’d like the URL to be which is the online address to find the site (it will always end with ning.com).  Keep it simple such as Braxton2009.ning.com.  Ning will let you know if the address is available.  If it isn’t, try again changing it slightly.

Next we’ll go through the options for designing the page.  But first, I want to jump to the end when you send an email to the group leader.  Let them know that you want their experience to be wonderful and you’ve created a complimentary site online for them to communicate the details with each other.  Provide a link to the URL and ask them to forward the email to all attending.  Now, because you are the administrator of the site…you are behind the wheel.  You’ll also be able to broadcast messages to all the members which will be pure gold when you need it.  You have one place to gather everyone’s information and you can watch the conversations.  You’ll be able to see any problems cropping up and you can discover some real treasures.  You may learn of a 50th anniversary, a new baby on the way or a college graduation.  These tips offer you the opportunity to present the group with something special when they arrive.

Ok.  Back to designing the site.  We’ll cover this in a few posts but let’s get started with the basics.

I’ve started a sample group on Ning so you’ll be able to watch the process.  We’ll take it a step at a time.  You can see it here Sample Camping Group There are a ton of options for things you want on your group’s site.  You can pick the theme, color, add photos, add videos, you can also kill a lot of time so be careful and try not to get too detailed.  Ning also provides statistics which I think is very cool.

You’ll find all these options under the “manage” tab.  Go ahead, check it out.  Create a sample one of your own to test things out.  Get some of your employees to become members and follow the process.  Or create a few fake ones yourself to get a real take on how it’s done.

That’s a good start for today.  I’ll be back soon with a next step for Ning.  Thanks for reading.  Tracie

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