What is a social media wall? Captivate your audience with engaging digital real-time signage

Amongst all of the vocabulary and niche phrases that surround social media, ‘social media walls’ is definitely a word you should know. Not only do social walls keep you connected to your demographic but they’re also ideal when you are planning an event and you want to drum up some digital buzz. 

The great thing about social media walls is that they are super easy to set up and do all the heavy lifting for you. Unfamiliar with the term ‘social media wall’? Don’t panic, this guide has everything you need to know! Read on to discover the basics, efficacy, and usage of this ideal tool to exponentially grow your marketing campaigns and social presence.

What are ‘social media walls’?

Social media in general can be very intimidating. It can be difficult not to get swept away in the current of daily content flooding your news feed, For You Page, or timeline. To keep it simple, Social media walls allow you to do four golden things:

1. Collect content from a variety of your favorite social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
2. Organize and aggregate content and combine it with your own. This is where you can curate it and filter out any undesirable content which maintains the quality. 
3. Customize your content into a visually appealing and striking display, something that can also reflect your brand’s creativity.
4. Finally, put it up on an enchanting, big screen and integrate it into a live stream or embed it into your own website as a social media feed and engage with your audience. 

This content is normally extracted using a specific hashtag, which is what makes this tool specifically useful for events. According to research, Tweets with hashtags have 2x the engagement rate than those without, the attraction of the hashtag algorithm is undeniable. Creating an innovative mantra or slogan connected to your brand in a format that consumers can plaster on their posts is a fantastic way of drawing attention to your company. Social walls take User Generated Content to the next level. 

Finding tools such as social walls is critical in not just keeping your brand bobbing along happily amongst a sea of other competitors, but standing out from the crowd. The feed refreshes automatically, constantly bringing in new and fresh content on your digital signage, also known as a digital display. Research shows that the average social media user engages with an average of 6.6 various social media platforms, which speaks for itself on the importance of integrating several platforms onto your social wall to fully take advantage of its benefits.

The beauty is in the idea that your consumers advertise your brand for you, eliminating a large proportion of tedious work for your team. It allows you to parade this social proof on a digital display for everyone to see and build confidence in your brand. Being another form of our friendly neighborhood User Generated Content, you really can’t go wrong. 

What makes social walls so effective?

With an exciting display of content fuelling your brand campaigns, users see an opportunity to get involved and are more likely to produce their own content in the hope of being featured. This all links back to the importance of UGC today. Users want to feel connected with the brands they use and seeing themselves displayed and represented by their favorite ones makes them feel seen and heard. This kind of customer engagement increase will also improve your ROI, which is always a nice bonus, plus this kind of earned media is lower in cost to work with.

Social walls reach not only existing brand ambassadors but also potential consumers, which is excellent for increasing your visibility and promoting brand awareness. It’s important to note that in general, with social media, there is always a possibility of going viral, which is basically winning the lottery when it comes to brand exposure. 

Social media is also notoriously difficult to keep up with when there is a constant bombardment of content every day to compete with. However, social walls have the ability to heighten public interest in your brand easily by displaying a constantly updated and curated stream of content. It’s exciting, engaging, and can help ease the workload and keep you on top of the high demand that comes with social media. 

An additional perk that comes with social walls, is that you can easily launch popular social media campaigns in a cost-effective manner. To really get the most out of your social walls, we recommend including your social handles in your brand’s rich visual display, this will help drive traffic to your social media, with a higher chance of conversions.

These are just a few of the benefits that come with enabling a good social media wall, and all of which make it an effective and simple way to entertain and interact with your audience, essentially giving your brand a well-earned promotion. 

Who can benefit from social walls?

So, you know the advantages but who can use them and reap the same rewards? Fortunately, it’s such a simple concept that it can be used by pretty much anyone with a social media following and a brand to promote. 

Take retail stores, for example, you want to make the in-store experience as exciting and engaging as possible. By utilizing a social media wall within your store, you can help better connect with your customers and also provide them with the social proof needed to invest loyalty in your brand.

Social media walls are also common within the travel industry. These days, the bulk of those on socials will take a quick travel snap – like a picture of fluffy clouds from a plane window or of some brown legs by the pool and post them online for followers to envy. Combine this with a catchy hashtag, and display the content rolling in on digital screens throughout hotels and resorts and you’ve got a sure-fire means of social reach and expanding your brand’s visibility from all across the globe. 

Due to the fact social media walls are fuelled by certain campaigns and driven by specific hashtags, for example, it is easy to see why they are so useful for specific events. 

Social media walls for events

Event organizers often take full advantage of social media walls as it’s a fantastic way to get your guests involved and engaged with the event itself and also your own social media channels. We suggest creating a custom hashtag that is catchy and memorable for the event, which consumers can use when sharing their photos and be featured in the feed.

Social walls act as a bridge between online and offline, bringing your event to life on your social media channels, perhaps so that those who cannot experience the event in person can still feel involved. Their ability to almost enchant the crowd with exciting visual displays is unparalleled by other forms of visual marketing. 

Due to being such a flexible tool, you can use social walls at literally any event, whether it be a wedding, a networking event, trade fair, product launch, or a conference. At any event, they can create a more profound live experience and induce stronger audience participation. You can display questions, replies, tweets, recommendations, competitions, and reactions, as a whole keeping the whole experience interactive because, at the end of the day, the consumer’s voice is the most valuable vehicle a brand can use. 

Curious about how UGC can transform your marketing strategy? Get your demo now!

How to use social walls for events 

Social media has provided us with a whole new, exciting world to explore. Research has also shown that social media produces 2x more leads than telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC. You’d be a fool to ignore these kinds of results!

Social walls act as a window of opportunity, an insight into your brand, it’s important to showcase this at an event. 

Here are some things you can do with your social wall at your next event:

1. Do you have sponsors? Guest speakers? Anyone else outside of your brand contributing? Give them a space on your social wall, showcasing their announcements, their ideas, quotes, what they stand for, even their own tweets and social media posts. This will give your brand more depth in the eye of the consumer and will boost your marketing campaigns on social platforms. 
2. Display a Q&A wall. This provides your audience with informational content as well as helping you to build relationships with them. 
3. As we mentioned before, create a unique hashtag that consumers can take advantage of, something that calls them to make an action. Perhaps taking a selfie in a specific place, using your product, something to keep them engaged and roll out the content on display! UGC never fails us. 
4. Connect your own socials to the event so that your attendees never miss a beat when it comes to your Twitter, Instagram feed, or Facebook timeline. Share schedule announcements, prize winners, etc.
5. That’s another thing! PRIZES. Always run competitions, polls, even raffles, something that can bring out the competitive side in your audience. There is nothing like some friendly competition to spice things up, especially when you can see the results on digital signage. 

Integrating social media walls into your website

Social walls don’t just have to be in a physical location either, they are available to integrate onto your brands website as well. This is also a handy way to keep your online store as exciting and stimulating as an in-store experience. You can create a live feed, using curated content from your existing UGC campaigns on your website to showcase authenticity.

Additionally, they can be likewise utilized for virtual events which, thanks to our clingy friend Covid-19, has since become more of a normality. Here is an example of how Tomorrowland, a popular Belgian electronic dance festival used social walls during their virtual event to engage their own audience. Virtual events are ideal for gaining further online exposure and social media walls can upgrade your social media events to then engage more consumers. 

By integrating social media walls into your eCommerce you can obtain a variety of benefits such as increasing shop revenue through authentic social content and boosting your social media engagement, which in turn increases conversion and brand awareness. Any time you are able to capitalize on UGC is a win!

Charm your audience with a fresh and exciting digital display!

It’s time to get creative! There are so many ways to use social media walls and this blog should be your successful guide to your next digital signage conquest. You know what social walls are, the extent of their advantages, where they are used, and how to use them. 

Increase conversions, ROI, and brand awareness and have some fun creating engaging, flashy, and stimulating visual displays for your audience to enjoy. Good luck!

FAQs

Which social media has a wall?

The social media platform Twitter runs independently as a wall, they practically created the definition of live social content! Instagram also takes advantage of hashtags, which in itself creates a social wall of beautiful pictures from a variety of users. Facebook is much more of a private platform so it is more difficult to retrieve information but you can still collect content from public pages and live URLs.

How do you build a social media wall?

Primarily, you will need a social media aggregator to compile all the desired content from various platforms and display it on a screen. At Flowbox, being the most advanced UGC platform on the market, we have tools that would make this very simple. Our technology boasts a speedy curation process and a Media Right Suite to help you automatically request the rights to content from customers so that you can easily use it in your marketing strategies.

What is wall media?

Wall media creates a focal point in a physical or even online space that attracts the attention of attendees, displaying visually appealing content, whether it be images, videos or social content. It combines entertainment with style!

What is an Instagram Wall?

An Instagram Wall is a display of purely Instagram content, normally printed but this can also be displayed digitally. As Instagram is becoming increasingly popular especially amongst younger generations, it is one of the platforms sought after to provide content for a social media wall.