Most retailers already do a great job posting interesting content on their social media channels and even running successful hashtag campaigns. But how about using social media to engage visitors inside the stores?
To make the most of social media for retail, stores need to bring their social media campaigns into the physical stores. Creating a hybrid online-offline in-store experience will help engage buyers across multiple channels, and it will surely increase awareness for your brand.
And what better way to show authentic user-generated content in your retail store than using digital signage and a social media aggregator? In this article, you will learn:
- How to use social media for your retail store
- How social media screens can help you boost sales
- How to set up a social media screen with Walls.io and digital signage partner Yodeck for free in minutes
Content published by consumers on social media is a goldmine for the retail industry. Nothing is more convincing than authentic content. That’s why every retailer out there should be focusing on social media.
Create an official hashtag for your brand
Encourage your customers to use your official hashtag and post about their experience with your products, stores or customer service. People really enjoy sharing amazing products with their community on social media, and that is powerful authentic content that you can then use in your marketing.
Run an ongoing reward hashtag campaign
Create a hashtag campaign and ask buyers to post on social media about how they’re using your products. Offer incentives, like a coupon or a free product. Campaigns like that are excellent for introducing your business to new potential buyers while engaging existing customers as well.
Collect the content that your customers are sharing on various social media channels and display it in your shop using digital signage. With Walls.io, you can collect content from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other social platforms.
Display authentic content on a social wall!
Make visits to your store a fun experience
Install a photo booth and encourage customers to take a picture, print it, and share it on social media. Collect the photos on a social media display, and showcase it in your stores. Encourage them to use the hashtag when sharing the picture and make sure that your brand shows on the pictures. You can add it to the background deco or configure the photo booth to use your logo.
Use a social media screen to display content published by your customers across multiple social platforms. Make your employees more aware of how their commitment to work and customer service is appreciated by fans of your brand.
According to the Cisco IBSG study, over 40 percent of shoppers say that digital displays, such as video walls, have an influence on what they buy. You can use digital signage to provide relevant information near the point of purchase.
Just imagine a screen showing social media posts shared by influencers or just other happy customers who already purchased that item. The value of user-generated content is trust, and that translates into marketing gold. Nobody can ever resist it.
Examples
Multiple brands are already using Social Walls inside their stores. A well-known Austrian chocolate brand Zotter has implemented a physical display of the social media wall at the visitor area on their Zotter tasting tour and a brand social hub on the Zotter website.
Apart from displaying their own social media content, Zotter pulled every user-generated post from their Facebook page, tweets, and Instagram posts containing #zotter. According to Florian Figl, content manager at Zotter Austria, a physical display has encouraged people to upload their images from chocolate tasting right on the spot and share photos of the social wall itself.
Zotter has also discovered that the best side-effect of a publicly displayed social media wall is that Zotter employees could see how their hard work affected customer happiness. That, in turn, motivated them and made them happier in their work.
- Go to Walls.io to start your free trial.
- Follow the steps in this quick start guide to set up your social wall in less than 5 minutes.
To get started even faster, just watch this 2-minute video.
Customize your digital signage solution
Yodeck is an all-in-one digital signage solution that offers a wide range of free widgets and professionally designed templates to make your communication with customers, students and employees engaging and efficient. The platform supports any screen resolution and makes it easy to manage and schedule your content remotely.
You can get started with one screen for free and always add more screens as you need them. Using the Walls.io app integration in Yodeck, it’s very easy to add and configure a social wall. All you need to start is the link to the wall itself.
You can find detailed instructions on how to set up your social wall with Yodeck in this help article.
Over to you
We see many potential uses for social media displays, from displays at conferences to screens delivering information to the public in train stations. Digital signage is great if you need to set up and remotely maintain dynamic content on one or multiple screens, and social media walls extend that content.
The way the power of social media unfolds in retail stores is incredibly captivating. By bringing your social media campaign offline, you engage customers on a whole different level and foster authentic content for your brand.
Let us know if you’re already using Walls.io and Yodeck for your digital displays. We would love to learn more about your project and how you reap the combined benefits of social media and digital signage.