How to boost your event ROI with a social media wall

A social wall is one of the best strategies to boost live events in both visibility and engagement. It is a visually appealing grid that aggregates all social interactions with a subject, a hashtag, or a handle.

Updated in real-time, it can include the audience in the event and make them feel part of it. It is a powerful tool, but how to make it stand out and reach even better results?

To help you improve the social media wall ROI — especially on digital live broadcasts —, we will explain the main points to consider when planning your event. 

Keep reading!

Set a goal for your social media wall ROI

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers do regarding social walls — actually concerning live experiences and other events as a whole — is doing things just because they should be done.

Having a social media wall just to have it won’t do much in terms of ROI. You need an endgame.

What is your goal with each live event or broadcast? Do you want to raise numbers on your social profiles? Do you want to collect data? Do you want to generate leads and obtain some email addresses? Do you want to sell something directly?

Each one of those possibilities brings a different kind of planning. The key question you need to answer is: what do we want the audience to do after interacting with our wall?

By having a clear path for them to follow, you can start creating a social media wall that will make them want to participate.

Know your buyer persona better

Of course, many goals and the ways to reach them will come from the knowledge you have on your buyer persona.

If you already have a fictional character that embodies your audience, you need some extra info like how they usually interact with events overall and what they expect from it.

This idea will help you with all parts of the planning, which we will present below, as well as with the visuals and the structure of your social media wall.

After all, the appearance needs not only to be engaging but also attractive. The perfect layout and visuals can even make the wall itself shareable — an extra return for your strategy.

Choose the right channels

When we talk about ROI, we refer to being efficient and on-point. In this context, it means you have to think about the social media channels that will bring the most meaningful and engaging content to your event.

This will be determined by two main points: how your audience likes to interact and what kinds of interactions you want from them.

Let’s say you want a highly visual wall for your event. Maybe it is a culinary show for a restaurant, and you want people to present their versions of a recipe. In that case, focusing on Instagram could be the best approach.

Maybe you are showing a new product or service and need to build hype. In this case, you want a lot of opinions about it. Twitter is a quicker, broader way of getting those interactions.

Of course, you can and should use all channels at your disposal. But focusing on those that make more sense to your goals will help you get a better ROI. Less effort, better return.

Find the perfect hashtags

Hashtags are the most used way of creating a cohesive, dynamic social media wall. But not all companies think about how good decisions here can change the outcome for engagement.

A good hashtag should be a promoter itself of the event but unique enough so people quickly connects them to your brand afterward.

It also needs to be easy to say and write, so you avoid losing interactions because you can’t track all variants and typos people accidentally use.

It seems like a difficult balance: simple, intriguing, and recognizable. However, the time spent on finding the right hashtags always pays off. 

You improve engagement by making the audience want to use it. 

Use the live event to engage your audience

Talking about engagement, the hashtags and handles should always be a constant in the event itself. If you have a speaker, make them mention these terms a lot and ask viewers to interact.

If not, make it visible all the time as overlays or set pieces, and create appealing CTAs. 

Having a social media wall is not enough if you want the engagement to happen. The more you talk about it, the more return you have.

Moderate the content

Social media walls usually collect and display interactions automatically. 

The system recognizes a message with a hashtag or a handle and updates the grid with new ones whenever they are available.

But even with sophisticated filters, some of these messages can harm the experience for the audience and make them stop using the hashtag — even stop watching.

So you need moderation, ideally, one person dedicated to monitor the wall and stop inappropriate content from being seen live.

Interact with the social wall

Another huge mistake companies do when they promote a live event is treating the social wall as just another secondary element, part of the background.

People interacting with an event are also probably watching it. And they love to see themselves on the screen.

This means that showing the wall, as well as reading and interacting with comments, will inspire a passive audience to become active.

Doing this exchange right can significantly boost the volume of user-generated content linked to your brand. 

This is a great thing for a live event and also has an immense ROI when we talk about permanent online presence.

Measure the results

If your investment’s return is always tied to good planning, why not use an event’s experience to get even better results in the next?

Every time you do a social wall, you need to measure its performance. It includes verifying the number of posts with a hashtag, the number of interactions, likes, and shares, and even how many leads came from those channels.

It will help you better understand what moves your audience and what makes them get closer to you.

As a great engagement strategy, the social media wall ROI is deeply tied to how efficiently you convince your buyer persona to participate. 

By using these tips and focusing on the right plan, you are ready to do a lot more with the tools and resources at hand.

Now that you know how to get better results from social walls in events, learn more about how to use them to engage the attendees!