Today's summer camp activities are a long way from making a duct tape wallet and singing "Kumbaya." Campers today can enjoy everything from rock wall climbing to cooking classes to tennis clinics and beyond.

The Arlington Parks and Recreation Department (APRD) hosted a record number of campers this summer, which is a testament not only to the exciting mixture of offerings on their camp roster, but also to the way that APRD promoted these programs.

"Through week 8 of 11 we've had 3,640 camp registrations in our five day camps," said Ryan Hegreness, Marketing and Enterprise Development Manager. "This [number] is up 5 percent from 2013, our previous record, and up 28 percent from 2010."

Hegreness counts the wide variety of available activities and engaging camp counselors as two reasons for their success.

"We offer camps for nearly every interest: sports, cooking, dance, music, art...you name it. The thing that makes our camps most popular is our outstanding staff."

The APRD also attributes its success to recognizing social media as a powerful marketing tool.

"We've increased our social media presence over the last two years in order to better engage and communicate with our residents. We utilized advertisements on Facebook and YouTube that were targeted to users within a certain radius of Arlington and utilized ads on Google, to ensure that our programs were showing up in the search results when people from the area search for summer programs for their kids. We want to have information about our parks, programs, the 'Naturally Fun' brand and healthy/active lifestyles present on the platforms our customers and community utilize," said Hegreness.