Using social media to recruit members to Theme Park Lovers of Color
I made the following Instagram story to promote my Facebook group. I also made a version that says “Swipe up” in place of “Link in bio” for influencers with over 10k followers to share. I employed Christina Newberry’s technique of hiding hashtags (shrinking them to the point of invisibility) in the story so as to not detract from the look and main idea of the post. The hashtags I used in this case were #themepark, #peopleofcolor, #themeparks, #disneyland, #universalstudios, and #poc — staying between the average number of hashtags (1–3) and the recommended number (11).
Then, I reached out to a few influencers of varying followings to help me promote.
@jazziiraw is a gamer, cosplayer, and Disneyland cast member with a reach of 2,389 followers. My group gained two members in the hour following her post.
@idkaila is a podcaster and writer for various theme park and film publications with a reach of 3,533 followers. In the hour following her post, my group gained 3 members.
Kaila also graciously shared the Instagram story post to her SHE-3PO podcast page, @she3podcast. Kaila and her co-producer @tiawhitlow describe the podcast as “a female perspective podcast on all things nerdy.” Their topics of conversation often include theme parks and theme park source material and, as a podcast lead by two women of color, this was the perfect channel to promote my group too.
Finally, @francisdominiic is a theme park connoisseur with nearly 90k followers. My Facebook group gained 15 members in the hour following his post.
Completely coincidentally, I logged onto Facebook on Wednesday to find this post at the top of my feed. I became Facebook friends with Ryan McKibbage in 2017 during a “friending chain” in my Disney College Program Facebook group. I’ve never actually spoken to him, nor with any of our mutual friends, so I took this opportunity to reach a community of people I otherwise never would have had a connection to.
I also made a Tweet about my Facebook group encouraging folks to join. Once again, I made use of Newberry’s tip to hide hashtags by including them in a reply to the original Tweet so they wouldn’t take up valuable character space or ruin the clean look of the post. I did a quick search and found that the recommended number of hashtags for Twitter is 2, so that is how many I used. I included my keywords, “theme parks” and “people of color,” in both the original post and the hashtags, as suggested by Chidlow, in order to promote the proper search engine indexation of my Tweet. In 24 hours, the Tweet had 36 Retweets and 114 likes, and received a lot of positive feedback while my group continued to grow.
I reached out to Leslie Kay, creator of DisneyBounding (a fashion trend that involves creating outfits insired by Disney characters) and asked her to post about my group in her Facebook group, DisneyBounders Unite!, which has 25.8k members. She agreed, and in the hour following her post, my group gained 15 followers.
Finally, I made an Instagram reel to promote the group. In less than 24 hours, the reel accumulated over 300 likes and over 3,000 views, and my group continued to grow. I made use of the hashtags #poc, #disneyland, #universalstudios, #wdw (Walt Disney World), #peopleofcolor, and #facebook.
Over this last week, my group has grown from 170 members to 300 members. Engagement is at an all-time high as members continue to share their own content and uplift one another, as has been my goal since the beginning of this project. I am absolutely thrilled with the results and am hopeful that this positive trend will continue.