How to use a Social Media Wall when you are a news media ?
You are wondering how to cover a news or events by using the innovating point of view of social networks ? You are at the right place.
A social wall can republish in a second social contents from internautes and to use virality beyong your usual audience (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook posts … via hashtags or keywords).
Your work will focus on content editorial work / moderation, whether manually (highlighting, selections of pertinent posts ) or automatically (forbidden keywords, insults…)
Let’s begin by explaining the concept :
What is a social media wall ?
A social media wall is a social wall* aggregating, after journalistic moderation, posts with #hashtags from people assisting a news events, including photo and texts, coming from social networks such as Instagram, Facebook andTwitter.
*A social wall puts on a page all posts from social networks after approval, with the form of a thumbnails/vignettes including author name, share buttons, text and/or photo, source and link to the original post.
Example of social wall media : a French leading newspaper, Le Monde for a concert event Rock en Seine (100 000 visitors).
In order to cover the concerts of Rock en Seine, French newspaper Le Monde implemented the format of Dialogfeed social media wall:
In this example, the wall provided readers, after editorial, with a synthetic view of what is said on social networks about the festival (See it live).
How does work the social media wall ?
If your media wants to speak about a news or event, you can republish after moderation the contents from Twitter or Instagram users, posted with a # hashtag you identified (or any other content source coming from bloggers or service such as Scoop-it via RSS feeds).
On your management interface, you can enter the choosen #, and you will get a social wall which is automatically generated and updated.
Regarding editorial, about the contents to display, you have just to select the posts to display from the ones not to display. As option you can customize the wall design (color, background..).
Lastly, to implement the social media wall on your website, you just have to insert 3 lines of code in your text editor.
Which ROI to expect from social media wall ?
That depends on the sources you choose:
- As for a hashtag specially created: to get a sufficient number of posts, a hashtag promotion campaign has to be done, which requires investment before.
- As for a common hashtag: on the contrary, posts volume may be too high. Post moderation is the key point and requires work during and before event to select the right posts.
Social wall solutions by Dialogfeed
Dialogfeed social media wall has great features for a journalist:
- For moderation & editorial: you can select the posts to display, and display only these ones. This is quicker than hide one by one posts not to show.
- For social wall creation: all can be done online in a few clics which is great for a media topics that has been decided at the last moment. It is easy to generate and install a social media wall without having technical knowledge, in 10 minutes, after creating a Dialogfeed account.
