Tips to use hashtags in social media walls

Social media walls are all the rage judging from their growing popularity at music festivals, rock concerts, product exhibitions, conferences, fundraisers, fairs and expositions, trade shows, and even the long lines at the supermarket.

But what is a social media, exactly? A social media wall is a live curation of posts from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram presented on a digital signage display at an event site, or on a webpage. Posts tagged to specific #hashtags or @handles are broadcast on the display, which updates new content automatically.

The reason for the popularity of social media walls is because it’s easy to see. Social media walls transform those who post on them into celebrities, not only in social media but in the real world where an event occurs. This fling with fame fans a user’s engagement with the product or service being promoted by the wall.

Attendees at an event that see themselves on the social media wall’s huge digital screen are encouraged to post more posts in real-time. Trending now becomes a possibility. Viral, too.

And that’s what social media walls do best: engage customers and guests with your brand by encouraging them to share posts and photos that appear within seconds on digital screens.

But more important from the marketer’s viewpoint is that people who take the time to whip out their smartphones and post text and photos tagged with your event’s hashtag, take it upon themselves to promote your business to their social media followers.

Attendees become your event’s best marketers. They become goodwill ambassadors for your company and push it online by posting about it on their social media platforms.

It’s free social media publicity, and it works!

But, as with any tool, the effectiveness of social media walls hangs on a lot of small details falling into place. Details like the software you want to deploy (with or without analytics?), the digital signage firm to engage, training the team and hashtags.

Hashtags in social media have the potential to make or break a social media campaign, so choose them wisely.

The use of hashtags in social media  started in year 2000. They’ve been used to transform phrases and words into searchable online links, and are still a great way to unite social media posts.

Hashtags make it easy for attendees at your event to post online and for those online to easily access your event by organizing or grouping social media posts together.

Just click on a hashtag and all the posts from your social media wall event become visible.

To promote hashtags in social media, you need to advertise the hashtag or the handle throughout the event site. Promoting the event’s branded hashtag should be a priority.

It would be a great idea to set-up colorful posters displaying the hashtag. Millennials, who are very tech savvy, will appreciate the reminders to use the hashtags, and in so doing allow them to post text and photos of the event to their followers.