Summary
- UGC adoption is now mainstream, with 86 percent of companies using user-generated content in their marketing, making it essential for brands to display social media feeds that stand out with authenticity and visual appeal.
- A well-implemented social media feed boosts social proof, helping brands increase engagement, time on site, follower growth, and even conversions by showcasing real customer voices instead of static, brand-crafted content.
- Embedding a social feed turns your website into a dynamic, always-fresh experience by automatically pulling posts, photos, and videos from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and more, eliminating the need for manual content updates.
- Using Flockler streamlines the entire process, from curation and moderation to layout selection and embedding, enabling scalable, brand-safe social feeds that integrate seamlessly across websites and digital displays.
If you’ve been thinking of incorporating UGC into your digital marketing, you’re not alone. Roughly 86% of companies already use UGC in some form or another in their campaigns.
So, how do you make your brand stand out from the rest? By optimally displaying a visually appealing, trustworthy social media feed, you can boost social proof, increase engagement, and grow followers, leading to better conversions.
We’ll walk you through how to do this by choosing the right layout and streamlining curation, moderation, and embedding without writing a single line of code.
What Is a Social Media Feed (and Why It Matters)
A social media feed, sometimes called a social wall, is an embedded stream of posts from one or more social networks, displayed on a website or digital screen. It pulls content such as Social media posts, photos, videos, and other user-generated content dynamically and presents it in a coherent, branded format. This feed automatically updates as new social content appears, so you don't need to manage content manually.
Why should you display a Social media Feed?
Keeps your website content fresh: It provides dynamic, low-maintenance content. This ensures your website stays lively without requiring constant manual editing.
Builds authenticity and social proof: Showing real posts from customers, fans, or community members adds authenticity and trustworthiness compared to polished marketing materials.
Boosts engagement and visitor time on site: Visitors are more likely to stay longer when they see dynamic visual content rather than static text or images. Social feeds create a sense of discovery and community that encourages browsing.
Drives follower growth and conversions: Exposing website visitors to engaging social content can encourage them to follow your social profiles, subscribe, or take other conversion actions. A live social feed provides social proof, which can influence purchase or sign-up decisions.
📕Learn: Understand everything you need to know about social media feeds in our detailed guide.
How to Embed a Social Media Feed with Flockler: Step-by-Step Process
Building your social media feed and integrating it into your website doesn’t have to be daunting. Here's a very simple step-by-step workflow to embed a social media feed on your website or digital display using Flockler.
Before you begin, sign up for Flocker’s free 14-day trial to get building!
1. Choose your social media sources
Connect Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and more to aggregate content via hashtags, mentions, or account handles. Flockler's smart bot guides you through connecting social content in just a few clicks.
2. Set up a moderation mechanism
Use Flockler's dashboard to select or filter posts and set up an automatic moderation workflow. Flockler’s Garde AI ensures brand safety, content relevance, and alignment with your visual and communication guidelines.
3. Select layout type
One important consideration in displaying your social media feed is the layout you will use. Based on your site design and goals, pick Social Wall, Grid, Carousel, or Slideshow. Flockler provides unlimited layouts across all subscription plans, with no extra charges per widget.
4. Customize look and feel
While choosing the right display layout is paramount to ensuring a visually appealing feed, it doesn’t stop there. Flockler lets you customize everything in your social media feed at a granular level, creating a feed that truly reflects your brand.
Click 'Edit style & settings' to customize colors, fonts, spacing, animation, and more without coding. Ensure the feed blends seamlessly with your site design and maintains your brand identity.
5. Generate embed code
Flockler removes the hassle of tedious coding and provides an HTML/JS snippet that is compatible with most CMS platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, and more.
Embed this snippet into the page via HTML block, embed widget, or plugin. For digital signage or screens, use a compatible media display setup.
Test your feed to ensure it looks good and functions well across devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile, and across screens of varying sizes. Flockler's layouts are mobile-responsive by default.
Last, but not least, make sure you update layout settings based on metrics and maintain them to ensure relevance and quality.
How to choose from the best social feed layouts
Different display goals, design needs, and audience behaviors demand different layout types. Here are the main layout options and when to use them:
Social Wall Layout
A Social Wall aggregates posts from multiple social media platforms into a single unified feed. It's ideal when you want to showcase a broad range of content, including brand posts, user-generated content, and campaign-driven posts, all in one place.
Best for: Homepages, about pages, community pages, event pages, and places where breadth and social proof matter.
Example use case: A brand that wants to showcase customers using its product aggregates Instagram posts, TikTok videos, and X posts from specific hashtag campaigns to create an inspiring community wall on its homepage. Visitors see real stories, videos, and testimonials from actual customers, all updated in real-time.
Real life example: Harvard University uses a social media display wall to showcase images at their original aspect ratio, creating a vibrant look and feel on its website. Harvard's schools collect and display social media feeds on their websites, on campus TVs, and on digital screens at events.
Grid Layout
The Grid Layout displays social posts in uniform, structured boxes (similar to a social media profile or traditional portfolio grid). This layout is clean, visually organized, and easy to browse.
Best for: Product galleries, lifestyle or travel sites, portfolios, and UGC galleries, in any place where visual content is the focus and visitors want quick, scannable content.
Example use case: A hotel chain displays Instagram photos from guests using their property hashtag in a grid on their "Guest Experiences" page. The uniform layout showcases beautiful room photos, dining experiences, and activities, creating visual inspiration for potential guests.
Real life example: GoPro needed to showcase a slick library of UGC in the most visually appealing style. They integrated a grid layout on their website, creating a clean look that showcased what users could shoot with their cameras. This helped increase feed views by 34k, and they saw a social media boost with 270k posts on the #GoProAwards hashtag campaign.
Carousel Layout
The Carousel Layout is a horizontal slider where posts slide automatically or can be navigated manually. This layout is especially useful when vertical space is limited or when designing for mobile-first experiences.
Best for: Hero banners on homepages, footers, mobile-first sections, or compact page zones where a continuous scroll isn't desired.
Example use case: An e-commerce fashion retailer uses a carousel in their homepage hero section to showcase customer outfit photos from Instagram. As visitors land on the site, they see real people styling the brand's clothing, creating immediate relatability and social proof.
Real life example: Duncan Hamilton ROFGO uses Flockler’s carousel layout on their website, where visitors can flick through images to the left and right. A carousel feed of the latest social media posts is an excellent option for homepages or product pages when you don't have too much vertical space available.
Slideshow / Slider Layout
The Slideshow Layout displays posts one at a time (often full-width) and rotates periodically. This format is ideal for storytelling, highlighting featured content, or showing a single post prominently.
Best for: Feature pages, landing pages, promotional banners, digital signage, or environments where one post, such as a testimonial, review, or highlight, should stand out.
Example use case: A conference displays a full-screen slideshow on digital signage throughout the venue, rotating between live tweets, Instagram posts, and LinkedIn updates from attendees using the event hashtag. Each post receives focused attention, fostering real-time community engagement.
Real life example: Colorado Eagles, a local ice hockey club, uses this format to create an engaging slideshow display of social media posts that can be embedded on websites or shown on digital platforms. The team curates branded hashtag content from fans and configures the slideshow with customized visuals to keep fans engaged with dynamic, rotating social media content. This helps reinforce community and brand presence.
Best Practices for displaying social media feeds
When embedding social feeds, apply these best practices to ensure the feed adds value without hurting UX or brand integrity.
Use Flockler to streamline your social feed display
Embedding a social feed manually, especially across multiple channels, can quickly become unmanageable. That's why Flockler has got your back with the following features:
- Unified aggregation: Flockler collects posts from multiple social platforms into a single dashboard. No need to pull posts manually or juggle multiple integrations.
- Flexible layout options: Choose from Social Wall, Grid, Carousel, or Slideshow to match your design and use case. Create unlimited layouts with no page view limits.
- Easy embed & deployment: The platform provides embed codes that work with most CMSs, websites, and digital signage, with no heavy technical skills needed.
- Moderation & curation tools: Vet content before it goes live to ensure brand safety, content relevance, and quality. AI-powered moderation through Garde AI provides additional brand protection.
- Auto-updating feeds: Refresh automatically as new social content appears, keeping your website or screen current without manual maintenance.
- Scalability across channels: Use the same feed (or different filtered feeds) across multiple touchpoints, including the website, microsites, digital signage, and social hubs.
Ready to embed your first social media feed and bring live social content to your website or screens? Try Flockler free for 14 days and see how easy it is to launch, manage, and scale social media displays.
FAQs
Do I need technical skills to embed a social media feed on my website?
No. With Flockler, you can generate an embed code with a few clicks and paste it into any HTML block or embed widget on your site, without advanced development required. The platform handles updates, layout, and content delivery automatically.
Can I display content from multiple social platforms at once?
Yes. Flockler supports cross-platform aggregation. You can pull posts from Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more into a unified feed (social wall), giving a broader view of your brand's social presence without separate embeds per platform.
How do I maintain control over what appears in the feed and avoid spam or irrelevant posts?
Use Flockler's moderation and filtering tools. Choose to manually approve content or set filtering rules by hashtags, accounts, or keywords. Only curated, relevant posts go live, ensuring brand alignment and content quality.
Where on the website should I place a social feed for maximum impact?
Ideal placements depend on your goals: homepages for brand impression and social proof, product or landing pages to boost conversions, or footers/sidebars for social engagement and follower growth. Choose layout and position based on visitor behavior and design constraints.
Can I customize the look and feel of my social feed to match my brand?
Yes. Flockler allows you to customize colors, fonts, spacing, and layout styles to ensure the feed blends seamlessly with your site design. You can create a cohesive visual experience that maintains your brand identity without any coding required.
How does a social media feed help with conversions and business goals?
Social feeds provide social proof by showing real customers using and endorsing your products. This builds trust, reduces purchase hesitation, and creates a sense of community.
