Adding a social media wall to your website or event engages your audience in a way that few other marketing tools can, as people buy from people, and 74% of people use social media for making buying decisions.
It is also super helpful for marketing because you can show appealing and authentic social media content to people who do not see your content on Instagram or other social platforms, as only 10% of your followers, on average, see your organic content.
As a result, you can quickly increase your reach and number of views. On top of that, on your website or digital service you get increased time on the page, up to 29% more conversions, and a better overall experience.
Impressive right? Wait till you hear how effortless embedding social walls for events, websites, or digital screens is.
In this blog, we’ll show you how social wall embedding happens in just six quick steps (as promised, with no tech skills required), but first, you’ll learn more about social walls.
Table of contents
What is a social media wall?
A social media wall is a widget that collects posts, images, and reels from your social media accounts and helps you to show them on websites, mobile apps, digital screens, and other digital services. With it, you can highlight your most impactful social media content to connect with your audience.
A social media wall allows you to
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Showcase your strong social media presence.
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Display social proof to add to your credibility.
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Integrate products into the posts for more conversions
You can choose your posts for display based on what will create the most impact or collect social media content (from different accounts) using hashtags to highlight a specific campaign. This allows event organizers to share community posts with hashtags or UGC campaigns to build buzz around the event.
Here are some examples of social media walls from different industries you should look at for inspiration.
#1 Travel and hospitality: HL Cruises
A social media wall on travel and tourism websites is a must. It helps people imagine their next travel experience with a peek at actual pictures of destinations. It also helps increase website engagement and encourages travelers to share their experiences on social media.
Hapag-Lloyd Cruises organizes luxurious cruise trips to France’s coastal towns, fjords in Norway, and palm beaches in the Caribbean. Their website, along with all the information about their services, features videos and images from their customers’ social accounts.
#2 E-commerce: Somerset Grill Company
Somerset Grill Company goes beyond selling grills on Shopify. It also serves as a culinary club that celebrates barbecue craftsmanship and builds connections in the competitive grill market. Their idea of not selling the product but the lifestyle has made them integrate vibrant social media reels on their website.
Their social wall in a carousel layout lets website visitors see the grills in action. The social content creates the feeling of a genuine testimonial, proving the quality of Somerset’s grills.
#3 Education: Harvard University
Who doesn’t know Harvard?
Harvard uses social media walls to keep students and aspirants updated on important dates and events. The wall includes content on student achievements, family reactions, and future visions to boost engagement.
Many other schools and universities are already using social walls for
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Course marketing
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Sharing Welcome/Alumni Days feeds
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Highlighting college events
#4 Sports: New Zealand National Cricket Team
The New Zealand national cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, collects the highlights from various social media channels and displays the content on the homepage using Flockler.
They use social media walls for sharing
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Official updates from the team
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Trusted news sources
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Players BTS
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Fans' reactions
Sharing such vibrant content on sports websites helps grow followers on social channels. This further helps drive conversions such as ticket sales, other e-commerce(team merchandise), and newsletter subscriptions.
#5 Consumer Tech: GoPro
GoPro, an industry leader in camera technology, is popular among people, influencers, and celebrities. Leveraging its popularity, GoPro has used its user-generated campaign and influencer marketing program from social media to social walls on its websites.
To increase engagement, GoPro's marketing team shares the best videos and pictures on its website’s social wall, which were picked from the GoPro Awards (UGC campaign).
Why use a social media wall in 2024?
About 4.9 billion people worldwide are using social media, and it's expected to grow to nearly six billion by 2027. Your current, potential, and future customers will likely have a social media presence.
Social media wall helps you engage your website visitors with your social media content even when they fail to discover you on social platforms. It lets visitors know about your previous customers' experiences, influencer integrations, real-life applications, and testimonials.
This will improve the appeal of your products, create a more attractive customer experience, and ultimately help potential customers make a quick decision.
The significance of social media walls increases when you know exactly what content to use for display for different phases. Still, many marketing leaders think of social walls for events but miss out on so much. Embedding a live social wall throughout will help you gain an edge over your competitors.
Today's consumers seek authenticity in the overcrowded marketplace, with millions of brands seeking attention.
Your social wall can be a digital window into a world where customers can access authentic experiences and reviews. This creates a genuine connection with your audience, establishing authenticity and making you stand out from competitors.
UNDRDOG ATHLETIX is an e-commerce brand that offers a range of sportswear and gear for durability, style, and optimum performance.
They needed a unique edge in the competitive world of athletic wear, and seeing their already-established Instagram account, they decided to integrate a social wall on their website.
Impact: It enhanced the visitors' sense of their brand as the embedded social wall
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It is a powerful form of social proof
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Shows real-world application of their products
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Allows influencers and loyal fans to feature on their Shopify store
Their visitors love the widget because it loads fast, is aligned with the brand theme, gives a quick view into authentic feedback, and makes the website more engaging.
Why do visitors and customers love social walls?
Your visitors love to see real-life applications of products to imagine their future experience of enjoying the products. With inspiring and fresh content on your social wall, you will keep them on your site longer. The embedded posts will cater to their curiosity, and adding social media to your website will also improve your SEO and Google search rankings.
Human decisions are often influenced by the opinions of others, and social proof is one such strong influence on potential shoppers.
VWO, an A/B split-testing firm, collaborated with UK-based WikiJobs to test the impact of testimonials on their sales page, resulting in a 34% increase in conversions with just three short text testimonials. Adding images to the testimonials increases the impact of your testimonials as the pictures create a truth bias to your claim, helping increase conversion rates.
With a tool like Flockler, you can collect these reviews by asking your customers to share feedback via a form or on social media with a branded hashtag or mentioning your account and later add these posts to your website wall for impact.
Snowballing social media engagement
When you display social posts on your websites, in-house screens, events, etc, it encourages organic reach and following. As this audience begins reacting and sharing your posts, it creates a chain reaction that the algorithm picks up on, pushing your account further into their network. This increases your visibility and engagement in social media channels.
Even getting a small number of new views and likes that your competitors miss out on can lead to social media algorithms to promote your content to new audiences and show it to more of your existing followers.
You can also use active strategies to increase your impact:
➡️ Hashtag Campaigns
With hashtag campaigns, the brand uses a specific hashtag and invites its customers and followers to use it. Using hashtag campaigns creates a buzz around your brand, as even one hashtag in your post increases engagement by up to 12.6%.
➡️ Influencer campaigns
Integrating posts from the influencer campaigns drives strong brand awareness as these influencers have a grip on their followers' mindsets. 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations and consider their testimonials as genuine.
➡️ UGC campaigns
UGC (User-generated content) influences 79% of people's buying decisions as it is created by users rather than the brand itself. Social media campaigns with UGC increase engagement by 50%. Buyers love UGC for its authenticity.
Recommended read: How to Create a User-Generated Content (UGC) Strategy with Examples
Where can you use social media walls?
Here are some social media wall ideas that marketers can use to create impact.
1. Live social walls for events, event websites, and screens
Social media walls are a proven choice for making your events more exciting and adding a sense of fun interactivity. In events, social media walls are integrated at multiple locations in the venue, such as – hallways, the main screen or jumbotrons, the lobby, the stage area, live streaming, etc. This social wall ensures attendees are not missing critical updates, insights, and information.
Event organizers also use social walls for interactive content, such as running contests and displaying real-time reactions and results.
It helps with engagement and fosters a positive experience among the audience for various use cases:
- Festivals and concert tours
- Sports and stadia
- Charity drives
- Theatre and the arts
2. Social walls for websites
Social media walls for websites increase the impact of web pages. For example, sometimes first-time visitors need more convincing and understanding of your products, and seeing people talking about their experience of your brand on their social media makes it easier for visitors to trust.
Also, for potential buyers who doubt their decision, these reviews on social media walls act as a gentle nudge.
You can use social media walls on websites for
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Adding social proof
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Displaying new product launches
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Showcasing brand community
3. Social walls for digital signage in retail and commercial real estate
Social walls in offices and stores encourage interaction and engagement in visitors and employees as they see real-time content about your work. It also helps in increasing social media followers on your page.
- You can show work updates, motivational content, and office trends. For corporate use, you can show content from your latest LinkedIn updates.
- Stores can display customer testimonials, the latest collections, and offer announcements.
4. Social walls for e-commerce
For e-commerce websites, a social wall is a window to real people, real stories, and real moments. It provides an edge over the competitors and drives conversions as a simple product display lacks a personal touch. Social wall adds trust, engagement, and inspiration to the buyer journey.
Marketers must display specific social media posts that give buyers the best look and feel of the product. Also, review posts and videos are a no-brainer.
Show shoppable UGC on your social walls
Like GoPro, UNDERDOG ATHLETIX, Harvard, and many others, SoHome, a modern decor e-commerce business, also uses Flockler. It leverages Flocker’s shoppable UGC galleries tool to tag products in social feeds. Sohome drives sales by showing their favorite consumer-generated content on the social wall with the 'Shop the look' element. It allows site visitors to view the tagged products attached to UGC. The 'Buy now' button leads visitors to purchase.
Are you wondering if this is the right way to keep visitors on your site for longer and get more conversions? Start your 14-day free trial to find out!
How to add a social wall to your website or event
Flockler helps marketers embed social walls on websites and other digital services with zero tech skill in less than 120 seconds. It provides custom design features for your social wall layout and additional products required for creating a great social wall, including tools to create a fantastic experience at your event or on your website with...
Here is a step-by-step guide for adding a social wall to your website with Flocker
- Sign up to your Flocker account.
- Create your first social feed.
- Choose the layout: Wall, Grid, Carousel, or Slideshow.
- Copy the embedded code.
- Add the embedded code to the website.
- Optional: moderate your posts.
Step 1: Sign up for your Flocker account
This is simple – you can create a free 14-day trial without adding credit card details and try out the product for free without strings attached.
Step 2: Create social feeds
After creating your free trial, you are greeted by a friendly chatbot that allows you to connect to your preferred social media channels.
For example, once you select Instagram and connect your account, you can display content from any Business Instagram account, a hashtag feed, or mentions of the Business you manage.
Flockler allows you to combine social media feeds from multiple accounts, channels, and hashtags to display them all in one place.
See the list of supported social media channels and content types you can display together.
Step 3: Choose the layout: Wall, Grid, Carousel, or Slideshow
After connecting your desired social media channels, the next step is to show your content on your website or digital screen.
To display your content, Flocker offers four different layouts for your social media feed: Social Wall, Grid, Carousel, and Slideshow. Please select one of them.
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A Social Wall layout shows posts in different sizes that stretch to fit the content. It is the go-to option for live social walls for dynamic events and showing off hashtag campaigns and contests on your website or shop.
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A Grid layout is a social wall where posts are all squares of the same size. It is a great choice when you want to have a clear and classical design and offer an experience that aligns with a more modern, luxurious or corporate website or event.
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A Carousel layout shows social media posts on a horizontal carousel with previous and next buttons. It is a popular option for your home page or on product pages for e-commerce sites like Shopify stores, where space is at a premium, and you want to have a significant impact while taking up as little space as possible.
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A Slideshow layout is preferred for large screens, jumbotrons, and digital signage at events and on-premise communication channels. It makes the content pop up and allows everyone to see it.
Step 4: Copy the embed code
You can add the embed code to any website, intranet, or digital platform.
From the embed code’s settings, you can edit the look & feel of your layout to match their brand and perfectly fit the context. You can also preview the social wall before embedding it on the website.
Additionally, you can pause a live feed, and your old content keeps showing.
Step 5: Add the embed code to the website
To embed a social wall on your homepage, go to Flockler’s Display tab and copy and paste the social media feed embed code into the field that your CMS has for adding custom code snippets. Here are the details for each major content management system:
Feel free to contact our friendly customer success team to help you if you get stuck because Flockler works with all digital platforms.
Step 6: Moderate your posts
You’ll be in complete control of whether social media posts show on your website automatically or if you review each piece of content.
Even in automatic mode, you can hide unwanted or inappropriate content from your social wall anytime by clicking the ‘Hide’ icon on the right.
There’s also an option to block content posted by a specific user or content mentioning certain keywords. You can set up blocked usernames and keywords by navigating to ‘Automated Feeds’ after login.
Quick questions regarding moderating social walls
Can I show live content without moderation with an automated feed?
Yes, Flocker allows you to show live content with an automated feed. Once you select the content feed, you can choose whether the content is displayed automatically or stored in your inbox for moderation/review.
Also, with Flocker, you can change automated feeds and sources anytime and hide and add posts manually.
How do I moderate content if I show a social wall on a website?
When setting up automated feeds, you can choose whether the content is published automatically or stored in your inbox for moderation. Each section has its own 'Inbox'; you can find it from the section editor. Click Inbox to see the list of content stored for moderation. Drag and drop the content to the stream on the right to publish, or click 'Edit' to preview the content.
FAQs
What are social media walls?
Social media walls show your social media posts from different platforms on your website, mobile app, intranet, or in-house screen with a brand-aligned themed layout. It helps businesses to showcase their social media presence for better appeal, display social proof, and integrate product pages into the posts.
How do I create a social wall?
You can easily create a social wall with Flocker with the following steps:
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Add social media sources by selecting channels and connecting accounts.
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Copy and paste the embed code onto your website for easy integration.
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Customize the layout and design to match your brand.
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Moderate content to ensure only relevant and appropriate posts are displayed. You can hide, block, or filter content as needed.
What is a social media wall at an event?
A social media wall at an event displays live updates, content from performers or experts, and social media posts from your community. It also is used to run content and showcase public real-time reactions and results. In events, the social media wall is integrated at multiple locations and helps increase engagement by adding entertainment factors.
How quickly does the social media wall refresh?
Once you select the automated feed option, by default, your social media wall updates fresh content every 5-15 minutes. But if you are organizing an event and need a faster refresh rate, please chat with us.
What is another name for a social media wall?
A social media wall can also be known as a social wall, Instagram wall, Facebook wall, X(formerly Twitter) wall, YouTube wall, and so on. Depending on which social media platform you primarily use to display a collection of specific social posts, you can refer to it as that platform's wall.
How do I collect customer content to show on my social media wall?
With Flocker, you can create review forms for your customers and publish them to collect customer reviews. Once you have enough reviews, you can embed your chosen reviews and testimonials on any website with the same process (of embedding a social media wall).
Can I measure the results of my social media efforts?
With Flockler’s Analytics add-on, you will get a broad understanding of your content’s performance across multiple social media channels and hashtag campaigns. You can also connect your Flockler layout with Google Analytics and similar services.
