Events thrive on social media exposure. Whether you’re planning a gala, in-store promo, or street marketing event, the people attending can help you get in front of thousands of other viewers just by posting about the event. To inspire them to share, make a social media wall part of your strategy.
Your social wall adds instant credibility to your event. It displays social proof and showcases the event unfolding in real-time. It encourages attendees to become part of the buzz and lets them share their experiences with others. Plus, you get to expand your event’s reach in a way that’s nearly effortless.
Want to become a social platform master? Read on to learn our best practices on how to use a social wall and see how other brands are getting it right.
Table of Contents:
What Is a Social Media Wall?
Why Should You Use a Social Wall?
When Should You Use a Social Media Wall?
How to Use a Social Wall
Successful Social Media Wall Examples
What Is a Social Media Wall?
Let’s start with a social wall meaning. A social wall is a curation of social media posts (largely user-generated) related to a specific event. An aggregator automatically collects relevant posts to display. You can moderate this collection so that only the most relevant content appears.
Social walls usually involve an internet-connected digital screen that gathers, filters, and displays content from your social media channels.
For example, a new restaurant using a #GrandOpening hashtag might pull all social media posts using this hashtag to display on the social wall.
People at the event can see the social content other people have uploaded from the event using that hashtag. This not only serves to inspire others to share their own content but also shows them the right hashtag to use.
Within minutes, a person uploading content to a brand’s Instagram or Facebook might see their content appear on the social media wall.
Our social media wall definition involves the practice of blurring the lines between online social media and physical engagement via a digital screen. Users can take to the social media airwaves to talk and share about an event in real-time. They'll reach not just their own audience but also anyone else who is attending the same event.
Why Should You Use a Social Wall?
Social media walls are an underutilized element of social media marketing. With one tool and a few clicks, social walls can pull content from all of your channels, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more. Your audience interacts with your event in real-time and gives you a clearer picture of your event’s reach and engagement.
As a whole, social media functions like a two-way street. It’s an outlet for brands to share content, news, and updates with an audience. But it’s also beneficial for a brand’s audience to share content, too.
Increase Engagement
A social wall pulls users into the moment. Attendees engage with the wall by posting content and will see their posts displayed on the wall shortly after.
Maximize Content Marketing
With increased engagement, brands get a bevy of user-generated content on their social feeds. Companies can embed the wall on their website to amplify the impact of the event. This way, the content isn’t “lost” after the event and continues making a statement to website visitors, prospects, and customers.
In our Meltwater offices, we have screens that display social media posts from our employees using a particular hashtag. Those same social posts are also displayed on our corporate website; take a look.
Create a Sense of Community
User-generated content has an innate way of sounding more authentic and less like sales jargon. When customers and attendees are doing the talking for you, you reach a wider audience that’s in tune with the conversation.
When Should You Use a Social Media Wall?
You’ll find social media walls at live events of all sorts and sizes, from music festivals to in-store openings. While there are no hard-and-fast rules about when to use a social media wall, the general guideline is to use a social wall to build a buzz.
For example, let’s say your next event is a new product launch. A social wall can help to build hype around what the product might be or what new features it will include. Once the product is unveiled, your social wall can display attendees’ first reactions. This is a great way to help your media partners get “sound bites” for articles and press releases on your event.
As part of your event, you can include a hashtag campaign to grow your event on social media. Ask people to use a certain hashtag when they’re posting about the event. That hashtag will be the trigger for users’ content to appear on your social wall.
You can also use a social media wall as part of your social listening strategy. Are people complaining about a certain feature or service? Are customers making suggestions on how you can improve? Do you want to keep tabs on a specific hashtag? A social wall monitors all of the above on your behalf so you can collect feedback in a central place.
Make a social wall part of your content calendar so you can maximize every opportunity.
How to Use a Social Wall
Considering using a social wall as part of your strategy? You can approach this in different ways.
The best place to start is by exploring social media wall tools and their features and functions. From there, you can see how those tools can enable your social engagement strategy.
P.S. The Meltwater platform offers a newsfeed functionality for brands to curate and display UGC on TV screens, dashboards, or websites as a part of social media marketing activities.
Display Sponsored Posts
Use sponsors to spearhead your social wall strategy by promoting your hashtag campaign. These posts can also provide examples and inspiration for others to follow. This could be an ad for a product or your favorite influencer posting a selfie, for example.
Livestream Your Guest Speakers
If your event includes guest speakers, post highlights of their talks on your social wall. This allows people who aren’t at the event to take part in the conversation.
Run a Contest or Poll
Put social proof and engagement on rocket fuel by promoting a giveaway, contest, or poll that gets people talking. This is a direct ask for customer engagement and makes it easy for anyone to participate because you’re telling them what to post. Get ready for full social feeds!
Host a Q&A
Another easy way to gain user-generated content is by asking a question and sharing the answers. Ask a question and let your audience post their answers with your chosen hashtag.
Or you could do the inverse: if you have a guest speaker, ask the audience to share their questions and let the speaker answer them.
Provide Real-Time Updates and Reactions
Social events aren’t limited to your in-person events. Your non-attendees can stay in the loop when others are sharing updates to your social feeds.
It's similar to giving a play-by-play at a football game. Your audience members are your very own commentators who can share all the best moments of your event in real time.
Successful Social Media Wall Examples
The fun part about social walls is that no two ever look quite the same. This can also be the biggest challenge, especially if you’re preparing your first social media wall.
Get inspired with these social media wall examples from brands that got it right.
Tampa Bay Lightning
NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning unveiled a new video wall for maximizing digital and social interactions. Dubbed Bolts Social Central, the wall was designed to aggregate fans’ Twitter and Instagram posts into a single display for all visitors to view. For fans that check into the Forum via Facebook, their Facebook profile photos will also be displayed.
To accompany the new video wall, the brand also launched a new digital photo booth that lets visitors take photos of themselves in a mock-up penalty box. Fans can upload their photo to the digital video wall via IG or Twitter, along with other user-generated content.
Tomorrowland
The highly anticipated Tomorrowland music festival introduced a social media wall to its virtual event in 2020. The event already had an impressive social media following, including more than 9.8 million YouTube subscribers and 7.4 million IG followers. It uses social media to engage its attendees and connect them to events across the massive event space.
For its virtual event, Tomorrowland created a new hashtag and encouraged attendees to use it across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Featured sponsors like Pepsi Max and BMW also used the social wall to promote their products as well as the event.
The big takeaway from Tomorrowland's social wall is how customizable and curated the social content can be. The look and feel of the wall made the ads blend in naturally with the user-generated content.
Harvard Kennedy School Class of 2020
In a time where social interactions were needed most, Harvard stepped up to honor its 2020 graduates with the help of a social wall. Using the hashtag #HKSGrad, the virtual event garnered more than 100 unique social media posts. Each post is displayed on the school’s website on a page dedicated to honoring 2020 graduates. It’s one of our favorite university social feeds to-date.
For more examples on how universities or higher ed institutions can leverage UGC, download our UGC for Universities & Higher Education guide.
Rebel Ice Cream
No event? No problem! Rebel Ice Cream shows that you can include a social wall on your website for any occasion, even if it’s just to add social proof to your brand.
The rapid growth creamery got its start on Kickstarter and quickly rose to fame for its low-fat, low-carb ice cream. It shares its handle and hashtag on its home page and pulls user-generated content from its social feeds for its website visitors.
Investing in a hashtag campaign? Trying to build social proof? Want your event to gain as much exposure as possible? Social walls offer unlimited potential. Reach out to our team today to start crafting your strategy by using our social media listening platform in combination with a Newsfeed integration!
