We settled on a Halloween costume contest, and promoted it a couple of days before Halloween (admittedly, we should have promoted it earlier). We set up a little corner of our office with simple lights and a backdrop and invited parents to bring their children out during a three-hour window.
Children were welcomed in by Juan Lopez, writer for Clewiston News dressed as a phantom, Jenny Woods, our copy editor dressed as Morticia Addams, and Justin Diaz, our sports freelancer dressed as Bender. Kids grabbed a handful of candy, stood for a quick photo, and went on their way.
In total, we photographed 65 kids and adults in costumes. We posted an album of pictures on Facebook and invited the public to vote on their favorites. Kids smiled. Kids frowned (Juan scared half the kids to death). Some just outright cried.
We were able to get local businesses to chip in to our efforts, and offered a $30 Wal-Mart gift card for first place, a $20 certificate to a local Cuban restaurant for second place, and a punch card good for free slushies for third place. We asked folks to vote for their favorites (Melissa Agee’s suggestion).
Clewiston went goo-goo ga-ga over the pictures.
Our previous benchmark for success in a posting was 100 likes – an all-time high that came when we reported that the local team grabbed a hugely unexpected win against a rival school. The number of likes for our Halloween album, however, was nearly 2,500 in just two days.
It even helped us cross the 3,000 likes threshold for our page.
It was incredible to see our notifications racking up with hundreds of notifications, all of them likes. People loved the concept, congratulated us for pulling it off so well, and are already making plans to win next year’s contest.
We’d like to thank everyone who helped to make it happen and Amy McKown for the idea. Good work team!
