WHY?
Because Social Media are viral, when your audience posts something, all their friends, followers, fans, … can see it. Social Media is the perfect communication tool to: inform, animate, inspire, engage & highlight your audience. How to best Use a Social Media Wall for Event ?
HOW?
1. Create a hashtag and promote it
> Hashtag creation: use a short hashtag related to your event or company such as #JFD16. Example: for the international women day in France, what would you create?
Good: #IWD16 (short, focused on event and year)
Bad: #internationalwomenday (too long, too generic)
Advantages: avoid inadequate content, reduce moderation issue, known only by your audience
> Hashtag promotion: if no one knows it or is motivated to use it, your wall content will be poor.
Good: use your hashtag in all your social media, display it on ALL your event communication supports including all printed documents (flyers, programs, documents, posters, TV …), make a contest with a prize
Bad: to do nothing !
Advantages: get posts from your audience (photo and opinions), get questions for your conference
Photo: Huawei created a hashtag photo contest with #HuaweiPhoto on its booth during the international photo show in Paris
2. Display on big screens & TV located in strategic places
You have a conference? use your projector to add a social wall close to your presentation. You have a stand in a tradeshow? use a TV to display a social wall, as well as in the hall, in the coffee brak place, …
Good: a big screen on or behind the scene, a TV at public entrance
Bad: a screen lost in a corridor, a little screen
Advantages: inform your audience by your own posts, increase your public engagement, highlight & motivate your best influencers by showing them
Photo: PUF for its COP21 conference displayed a Tweet wall on its screen above the speakers and the same wall on the event website
3. Do community management
Regarding the event social animation, if you have community manager(s), ask them to tweet during your event with photo, short video or text.
Regarding the social wall, you can choose to let all posts be shown on it or have full control on them by selecting what is displayed.
Usually, you will let all go. But activate some filtering to avoid surprises: this will be enough for 90% of events.
Good: make an analysis at event beginning on your hashtag contents – identify spam existence , use automaticall filtering, only show photos (this avoids negative text posts), use keywords blacklisting (to automaticaly hide posts), spend 5 min per hour to check and hide some posts.
Bad: don’t spend a little time to analyse & check content quality: content is king !
Advantages: increase your content quality, reduce inadequate contents issues, improve satisfaction of your audience
Photo: Danone for its stand displayed only photo from its booth visitors. The visitors were happy to see their photos on screen.
4. Prepare and install the social wall
Once your social wall is created, you have to display it on your screens. It often requires some minor adjustements you didn’t expect once you are on your event place. So, schedule 1h during your event installation, to check and modify your design settings if needed.
Good: monitor the margin around your social wall (center it), check the text font size (if it is readable from visitors), get your event screens resolution and test it with your computer before to see a good preview, verify your Wifi / internet connexion quality, dedicate a laptop to the screens
Bad: use a non responsive social wall
Advantages: get the best looking social wall and show you are smart brand happy to engage & highlight your audience
Photo: Terrena has a giant screen on its booth and on its website. It requires easy design adjustments during booth setup.
5. Choose a social wall provider
Your main attention must be focused to the following features: content real time update, design customization possibilities, moderation tool, price, delivery time, useful advices et help.
As you know, Dialogfeed is among world pionners social media hub & social wall provider and powers hundreds of events throughout the world since 2012 !
You can test here Dialogfeed social media wall event.
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