Table of Contents
Churches are always looking for ways to create community and build bridges at any special event. One relatively simple approach we’ve had success with is doing a photo booth.
1. Determine the Type of Photo Booth You Would Like to Use at Your Event
Here are some examples of photo booths we have done:
Mother’s Day
Christmas
Tailgate
Father’s Day
Sisterhood
Baptism
Candypalooza
Green Screen at the event
A green screen creates more work to add the background graphic to the photo, but it can also create more anticipation because the event attendees don’t know what the photo will end up looking like until they see it on your Facebook album.
(Links to other examples at the bottom of this article.)
2. Recruit Volunteers to Help You Throughout the Photo Booth Process
This is a great way to utilize more volunteers at your church in one weekend and an easy event to onboard new volunteers.
Volunteers you might consider –
- Hospitality
- Creatives
- Decorators
- Photographers
- Designers
- Administrators
Church Fuel resources for recruiting volunteers –
- Volunteers Fuel
- How to Recruit Volunteers in Your Church All Year Long (Without Really Recruiting)
- One Trick to Recruit New Volunteers in Your Church
3. Promote That You are Having a Photo Booth at Your Upcoming Event
Families love opportunities to make memories. Some families will never be able to afford family photos.
4. Set up a Facebook Album on Your Page for People to Find Their Photos
- We normally title ours with the event name and the year. We use the event graphic for the first pic in the album. You can also take some fun photos of the team setting up the booth to kick start the album.
- In the description for the album, we put information about our church, a link to our website, and either a general invite to services or a specific invite to the next big thing that’s happening.
- Click on the timestamp of the album so that it opens the album on its own page. Use the URL from the album to create a bitly link for the album so people can easily get to it.
- Develop a handout telling people where they can find their picture using that bitly link.
5. Create a Way to Collect Contact Info
You can use a signup sheet. A tablet works great. (Let them type their information in.) You can also perforate the handout to use it as a way to collect people’s contact information. This is great to do while people are waiting in line for their photos. Let people know you will email them their picture.
6. Take Tons of Photos at The Event
There are a few ways you can do this, depending on budget and manpower. Ideally, you have a church photographer (either paid or volunteer) who would take a photo with a professional camera. Additionally, you would have another volunteer that would offer to take photos from the guests’ mobile phone at the same time.
Bonus: Then encourage people to tag the church in the photo. This allows the church to connect with people on Social and show them some love.
7. Edit Photos
After the event is over touch up the photos or add your graphic or background to the photos if you are using a green screen.
This is important because this is what most of your attendees can’t do. Editing the photos is what makes their photos feel more professional. This will incentivize them to go to your photo album to get their photo. And hopefully, if they love their photo it will give them one small reason to come back to another event that you promote a free family photo at.
8. Load All the Photos to Your Facebook Album
Bonus: Add a photo album description to each individual photo. This takes a bit of work but it’s worth it because your description travels with your photo when people share it. We also put the church location on each photo.
9. Load the Contacts into Your Database
Load the contacts into your database and segment them into a photo booth list or tag. Create a fun email and send it out to that list. Use the bitly link to drive traffic directly to the Facebook album. The sooner you can get this album up and the email sent out the better. It’s amazing to me how quickly people start tagging themselves and sharing the pics once we get them out there!
10. Post on Your Facebook
Post on your Facebook event and/or page when you have photos ready to be viewed.
11. Upload the Photos
Upload the full quality edited photos to Dropbox or similar program for storage. Wait a couple of days. (You can also consider including the Dropbox Download link in the original photo album post on Social. Or create a series of new posts announcing the full quality download option.)
12. Follow Up
Send a second follow up email with a link to view and download the high-quality photos directly from Dropbox. You don’t need to send them a link to their specific photo, just a link to the album on Dropbox. Use this email to invite people back to church that next weekend.
13. Use Contact Info to Develop Deeper Relationships
When you have an upcoming event or a new series be sure to let them know about it.
14. Create a Custom Audience
To keep the momentum going, take the contacts and create a custom audience from it. Upload this list to your Facebook Business Manager and you will now be able to target these people with Facebook ads using that custom list.
Have you done a photo booth at your church? Let us know at success@churchfuel.com and we’ll include your ideas here as well!
Additional Example Photo Booth Designs
- Baby Dedications
- Baptisms Graphic
- Baptisms Wood Wall
- Christmas Frozen
- Christmas Graphic
- Christmas Grinch
- Christmas Trees
- Easter Basket Booth
- Easter Banners and Bunny
- Easter Rustic Backdrop
- Father’s Day Gray
- Father’s Day Cars
- Mothers Day Flowers
- Mothers Day
- Mothers Day Sign/Flower Arch
- Sisterhood
- Tailgate Weekend
- Examples from Church Fuel Members 1 2 3 4 5
