A social wall is a live, curated content feed that collects posts from social media platforms and displays them together in one place. This could be on a screen at an event, embedded on a website, shown on an office TV, or hosted on an intranet. Rather than asking people to visit five different platforms to follow a conversation, a social wall brings everything together in one place.
This guide covers all aspects of social walls, including what they are, how they work, what you can do with them, and how to maximize your use of them.
A social wall collects user-generated content (UGC) and social media posts from various sources, displaying them together in a visual feed. It updates automatically as new content arrives, and you can control what appears using moderation tools and filters.
For example, a social wall could show Instagram photos tagged with your event hashtag, LinkedIn posts from speakers, Direct Posts from attendees, and a live poll with real-time results, all on one screen.
Depending on the context, social walls go by several names: hashtag wall, social media wall, live wall, fan wall, UGC aggregator, or digital content hub. All of these names refer to the same underlying technology.
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When you create a social wall with Walls.io, you can connect it to your desired content sources, such as social media platforms, direct submissions, RSS feeds, and other integrations. Walls.io continuously monitors these sources and pulls in new posts as they’re published.
Before anything appears on your wall, the content must pass through your moderation layer, where it can be reviewed manually by you, filtered automatically by keyword rules, or screened by AI. Once approved, the posts appear on the wall and update in real time.
Then, you can display the wall wherever you need it: as a full-screen display at a venue, as an embedded feed on your website, as a widget inside your intranet, or as all three simultaneously from the same wall.
One of the most important decisions in setting up a social wall is choosing your sources. Walls.io connects to 14+ platforms and content types.
Instagram — content is pulled from hashtags and business profiles. This is the most common source for event walls and UGC campaigns, particularly for photo-heavy content.
X (Twitter) — content is aggregated using keywords, hashtags, profiles, and lists. Useful for conferences, industry events, and real-time commentary.
LinkedIn — content is collected from pages, hashtags, and keywords. Increasingly popular for B2B conferences, thought leadership events, and internal comms.
TikTok — content is aggregated through profiles and hashtags. Relevant for consumer-facing events and campaigns targeting younger audiences.
Facebook — aggregates content from pages, mentions, albums, and hashtags.
YouTube — content is pulled using keywords, hashtags, and profiles. Useful for video-heavy campaigns or conference recap content.
Bluesky — collects content using keywords, hashtags, lists, and profiles.
Mastodon — aggregates content from profiles and hashtags.
Flickr — content is collected using keyword-based search.
Pinterest — aggregates content from user-defined boards.
Vimeo — content is pulled using keyword searches.
Reddit — aggregates content using keywords and specific subreddits.
Tumblr — collects content using keywords and blog sources.
👉 Want a branded social wall?
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Direct Posts is one of Walls.io’s most-used features at enterprise events: it lets employees, attendees, or customers who don’t have social accounts (or who don’t want to post publicly) still contribute content to a social wall.
RSS — integrates content via RSS feeds from websites and blogs. Useful for pulling in news, company updates, or press mentions.
Zapier — connects Walls.io with thousands of other apps (e.g. Discord, Dropbox, Facebook Messenger, Twitch, Spotify, Donately, etc.) to automate the flow of user-generated content from non-standard platforms. Check out even more sources.
Social Media API— use a single API to integrate and manage content from multiple networks and platforms. Ideal for custom workflows, apps, or internal tools.
Social wall features: what you can do with Walls.io
Moderation and content control
The most important thing to get right on a live social wall is what actually appears on screen. Walls.io gives you several layers of control.
Smart moderation — review every post manually before it goes live, or activate automated settings and let the social wall manage itself.
AI Moderation — AI Spam Filter and AI Sentiment Filters keep your social wall professional and on-brand. The AI Spam Filter detects irrelevant or promotional content. The AI Sentiment Filter screens for negative or inappropriate language. Together they dramatically cut the moderation workload without sacrificing brand safety.
Keyword and blocklist filters — block specific words, phrases, or accounts from ever appearing. Useful for filtering competitor mentions or inappropriate language automatically.
Allow list — show only content from pre-approved accounts. Useful for internal events or controlled campaigns where you want total content predictability.
Unlimited admins and moderators — Add as many team members as you need to manage content across events, websites, and displays.
Audience interaction features
A social wall is more than just a display board. Walls.io has several features that transform passive viewers into active participants.
Polls — gather feedback from your audience. Create single-choice or multiple-choice polls that display live results directly on the wall. Great for Q&A sessions, product feedback, or ice-breakers at events. For inspiration, see our poll question ideas guide.
Reactions — allow visitors to engage with posts by reacting to content. Emoji-style reactions let your audience show their response to posts on the wall.
Photo Booth — generate branded photos from your audience. Attendees take selfies or group shots through a digital photo booth interface that applies branded overlays, frames, and stickers. The resulting images can flow directly onto the wall, creating a stream of on-brand audience photos without any production effort.
Direct Posts — lets people post text, images, or videos directly to the wall without needing a social media account. Via QR code or link, anyone at your event or on your website can contribute content instantly.
Lead Generation — collect leads and user-generated content in one go. When people submit a Direct Post, you can require them to fill in a name and email address first, turning content submissions into a lead capture workflow.
Echo — lets you generate pre-event excitement, and drive registrations. In just a few clicks, your attendees, speakers, and sponsors alike can spread the word leading up to your event.
Design and display
Custom Design — personalize your feed design to match your brand’s identity. Choose from multiple layout themes, adjust colors, fonts, background images, and post styling to match your brand guidelines.
Layout options — Walls.io offers several display formats including a scrolling waterfall grid, a full-screen slideshow, a marquee ticker, and a map layout that plots posts by location. Choose based on your display context: a large event screen typically calls for a slideshow or grid; a website embed usually suits a grid or carousel.
Website Embed — show reviews and keep visitors updated. Embed your wall on any website as a responsive widget using a simple snippet of code. Compatible with all major CMS platforms and website builders.
Accessibility — Walls.io social walls adhere to WCAG 2.1, making them accessible to people who use screen readers or require high contrast and other accessibility accommodations.
Call-to-Action Buttons — convert viewers into buyers of your product. Attach CTA buttons to individual posts on your wall, useful for product showcases, campaigns, and eCommerce use cases where you want social proof to link directly to a product page.
Analytics and reporting
Understanding what happens on your wall is as important as managing it. Walls.io provides analytics for all types of content and display sources.
Post and impression metrics — see how many posts appeared on your wall, which sources they came from, how many impressions the wall generated, and which individual posts performed best.
Echo Viral Boost — a unique Walls.io metric that shows how far attendee-created content spread beyond the event’s own audience. A Viral Boost of 10x means the content your attendees created reached over ten times more people than your brand’s own social channels could have reached alone.
Export and download — export all posts and analytics after your event for reporting, archiving, or repurposing content in future campaigns.
⭐️ Related: Social Media Wall Analytics
Security and compliance
Enterprise organizations need to ensure that a social wall passes IT and legal scrutiny, not just marketing approval.
GDPR & CCPA compliance — Walls.io is the most secure social wall complying with EU & US/Californian data protection laws (GDPR and CCPA). Walls.io is hosted on EU servers and offers a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) out of the box.
Cookieless embedding — the Walls.io website embed works without dropping tracking cookies on visitors, removing a common blocker for IT and legal teams.
Role-based access — assign different permission levels to team members. Contributors can submit content; moderators can approve or reject posts; admins control wall settings and billing.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) — protect your Walls.io account with 2FA, a requirement for many enterprise security policies.
Events
A social wall creates visible social energy in the room — whether it’s a 50-person team offsite or a 50,000-person trade show.
Attendees post to the event hashtag on Instagram, X, LinkedIn, or any other platform, or submit content privately via Direct Posts. Everything appears on large screens around the venue in real time, creating a feedback loop that replaces the flat, low-energy feeling of a passive audience with visible participation.
Common event use cases include:
Conferences and trade shows — aggregate posts from attendees, sponsors, and speakers into a single live display. The wall keeps energy high on the show floor and gives exhibitors a reason to encourage social sharing.
⭐️ Related: Social Media Displays Draw Attention at the 77th World Health Assembly
Festivals and consumer events — turn attendee content into part of the experience itself. When people see their posts on screen, others want in.
⭐️ Related: How Event Fest Drove 250 Organic Shares with Walls.io Echo
Sporting events and fan engagement — give fans a way to be part of the show, not just watch it. Social walls at sporting venues drive hundreds of organic posts per event.
⭐️ Related: Oklahoma City Thunder’s Social Wall Boasts Hundreds of Fan Posts
Corporate events — all-hands meetings, town halls, award ceremonies, and product launches all benefit from a live content stream that makes large audiences feel like participants rather than spectators.
⭐️ Related: How Event Options Used Walls.io to Spark Community at the Festival of Eventing
Website and digital presence
Embedding a social wall on a website adds real-time social proof without requiring a production budget. Rather than selecting testimonials or purchasing stock photos, your website displays actual posts from customers and followers.
Common website use cases include:
Careers pages — embed an employer branding wall showing employee posts, office culture, and team events. Several large enterprise customers, embed Walls.io across multi-country careers pages to show an authentic workplace culture to prospective hires.
⭐️ Related: How ÖBB Enriches Employer Branding and Hashtag Campaigns With Walls.io
Product pages and campaign pages — show UGC from customers using your product. Real customer photos and videos alongside product listings consistently outperform stock imagery for engagement.
⭐️ Related: IFOAM – Organics International Helps Farming Community Create User-Generated Content for Hashtag Campaign
Newsrooms and press pages — aggregate branded social content and RSS feeds into a live digital newsroom. Companies like Zeiss and Erste Bank use Walls.io for ongoing corporate communications.
⭐️ Related: Ingolstadt’s Social Media Newsroom Keeps the Community Connected
eCommerce — connect social proof to purchase decisions using Call-to-Action Buttons that link from UGC posts directly to product pages.
⭐️ Related: User-Generated Content for eCommerce
💸 Take a look at Social Wall Pricing 2026
Internal communications and employer branding
Not every social wall is outward-facing. In fact, many of Walls.io’s enterprise customers use them inside their organizations on intranet platforms, internal apps, lobby displays, and employee portals.
Internal use cases include:
Employee engagement campaigns — run internal hashtag campaigns where employees can share work moments, team achievements, and company milestones. Direct posts are especially valuable here because many employees don’t want to post publicly on social media but will contribute if there’s a private internal channel.
⭐️ Related: How Insperity Uses Walls.io to Connect 4,500 Employees
Hybrid and global events — for companies with offices in multiple countries and time zones, a social wall allows everyone to participate simultaneously. While a global company with 600,000 employees can’t fit everyone in one room, they can all contribute to the same social wall.
⭐️ Related: How Sandvik Coromant Achieves Year-Round Employee Engagement Across 150 Countries With Walls.io
Office displays — display a company culture wall on screens in reception areas, break rooms, and shared workspaces. Direct Posts allow employees in any location to participate without requiring social media accounts.
Employer branding — content collected during internal events can be used for external recruitment campaigns. Employee-generated content on a careers page is far more credible than produced video, and it is owned by the company.
⭐️ Related: Social Walls for Employer Branding
Digital signage
A Walls.io social wall can run directly on any screen with a browser, so no additional digital signage software is required. Content rotates automatically, and you can configure the refresh rate, transition style, and how long each post remains on the screen. For displays without keyboard input, the wall runs in kiosk mode, which is full screen.
Here are some use cases:
Conference rooms and office lobbies — replace static slides with a live feed of company social content, internal announcements, or branded campaigns. A digital bulletin board that actually updates itself.
⭐️ Related: How to Create a Digital Bulletin Board for Your Office
Retail and hospitality screens — display UGC, brand hashtag content, or curated social feeds in-store or in-venue to reinforce brand identity and encourage guests to post.
⭐️ Related: How a Spa Hotel Uses a Social Wall as Digital Signage
Campaigns and activations — run a branded hashtag campaign on screen at a physical location, turning passersby into participants.
⭐️ Related: How Cadbury Used a Hashtag Marketing Campaign to Drive UGC
Step 1: Create your wall
Sign up at Walls.io and create a new wall. Give it a name and choose your display language.
Step 2: Connect your sources
Add the social media accounts, hashtags, or keywords you want to aggregate. Connect Direct Posts if you want people to submit content without social media. Add an RSS feed if you want to pull in blog or news content.
Step 3: Set up moderation
Decide how strictly you want to moderate. For live events, pre-moderation (manual approval before posts go live) is safest. For websites, a combination of AI Moderation and keyword filters usually covers it. Set up your blocklist with any words or accounts you want to exclude automatically.
Step 4: Customize the design
Apply your brand colors, select a layout that suits your display context, and upload a background or logo if needed. Custom Design lets you adjust nearly every visual element without touching code.
Step 5: Add interactive features
If you’re running an event, turn on Polls and consider enabling the Photo Booth. Set up a Lead Generation form if you want to capture contact details from Direct Posts submissions.
Step 6: Publish and display
For events: copy the full-screen display link and open it in a browser on the display hardware you’re using. No additional app or software is needed — any browser on any screen will work.
For websites: copy the embed code and paste it into your CMS or website builder. The wall is responsive and adapts to any column width.
For intranets: Walls.io integrates directly with platforms like LumApps and Staffbase via embed code or API.
👉🏼 Related: Social Wall for Conferences
Choosing the right layout for your context makes a significant difference in how the wall looks and how much engagement it generates.
Fluid: the default layout. Built on a fluid grid, tiles expand to fit their content — images, text, and mixed posts all display at their natural size.
→ See a Brand Hub with a Fluid layout.
Carousel: a horizontally scrolling widget suitable for website embeds, particularly in a single column or section. Often used on product pages and careers pages.
→ See an embedded Carousel layout with testimonials.
Bricks: a dynamic layout that gives more space to high-quality images and large text, and less to lower-resolution content. Adapts to what’s being displayed — works well at events, venues, and on websites.
→ See an example of the Bricks layout.
Grid: a structured, uniform grid where every post takes up equal space regardless of content. Clean and predictable — good for branded displays that need visual consistency.
→ See a Pride social wall with the Grid layout.
Kiosk: displays one post at a time with 3D transitions. Designed for kiosk-style screens at trade shows, showrooms, and similar environments where the wall is the focal point.
→ See this seasonal wall with a Kiosk layout.
Billboard: posts appear one at a time, full-screen. Best for event screens and TV displays where each post deserves full attention.
Map: Posts appear as pins on a world map, showing where contributions are coming from. Built for global hashtag campaigns that want to visualize reach across regions.
→ See an example of the Map layout.
Need more inspiration? Explore ready-made custom layouts built by the Walls.io team. Each layout is designed for a specific use case and can be applied to your social wall in one click.
A social wall only works if people contribute content. The difference between a wall that looks alive and one that looks abandoned often comes down to getting participation right.
Put your hashtag everywhere. Print it, put it on screens before the event starts, include it in the event app, and say it from the stage. If people don’t know the hashtag, they won’t use it.
Use Direct Posts for private or non-social audiences. In some cases, people don’t want to post on personal social accounts. Direct Posts removes that barrier entirely. Put a QR code on every table, on the screen, and in the event app. They scan once, their post shows up almost instantly!
Show the wall early. Display the wall before the event officially starts. Early arrivals see their content going up, which builds momentum. By the time the room fills, there’s already a visible stream of content.
Give people a reason to post. A vague “post with #OurEvent” prompt gets ignored. A specific prompt — “Post a photo of your team’s home office setup” or “Share your biggest takeaway from today’s keynote” — gets responses.
Recognize contributors from the stage. If a speaker or MC mentions a specific post they saw on the wall, the person who posted will feel special and others will be motivated to post.
For a full breakdown of more participation tactics, see how to get people to post to your social wall.
👉 Engage your audience like never before
Display a social wall at your event
Without measuring the success of a social wall, it becomes difficult to justify the investment next time or improve it. Here’s what to track:
Post volume — total number of posts that appeared on the wall. Baseline metric for participation.
Source breakdown — which platforms contributed the most content. If LinkedIn is dominating at a B2B conference, that’s an insight for your next event hashtag strategy.
Impression count — how many times the wall was viewed. For website embeds, this is standard web analytics. For event displays, Walls.io estimates impression counts based on display activity.
Echo Viral Boost — how far attendee-generated content spread beyond the event audience. A high Viral Boost score shows that your event created content that worked as earned media, not just an internal activity.
Lead capture volume — if you’re using Direct Posts with lead generation, the number of leads collected during the event.
Hashtags connect what people post on social media to what appears on your wall. It matters to get it right.
Keep it short and unambiguous. A hashtag that’s easy to remember and spell will get used more than one that isn’t. #GlobalSummit2026 is fine. #GSummit26AMS is not.
Check that it doesn’t already mean something else. Run your hashtag through a quick search before committing. The last thing you want is to share a hashtag with an unrelated (or inappropriate) existing conversation.
Combine a broad hashtag with a specific one. Use a general brand hashtag (#Walls.io) alongside an event-specific one (#WallsConnect2026). The general one builds long-term brand UGC; the specific one makes it easy to filter the event wall.
Start before the event. Launch the hashtag in your event marketing, speaker announcements, and pre-event comms. The best event hashtag walls have content flowing before the first attendee walks in.
For a full guide to developing a hashtag strategy, see hashtag campaign examples and best-practice tips.
Higher education
Universities and colleges use social walls for orientation weeks, graduation ceremonies, alumni engagement, campus culture walls, and athletics. The map layout is particularly popular for student hometown campaigns. Champlain College, Case Western Reserve University, and Rochester Institute of Technology all use Walls.io for ongoing campus engagement.
See social walls for higher education.
Financial services
Banks and financial institutions use social walls for internal events, CSR campaigns, employer branding, and office displays. The GDPR compliance and EU-hosted infrastructure are important factors in this sector. BearingPoint and Erste Bank are long-term customers of Walls.io.
Manufacturing and industrial
Global manufacturing companies face a specific challenge: employees spread across dozens of countries who don’t all have corporate email accounts or social media presence. Direct Posts solve this by letting any employee contribute to a company-wide wall via QR code, no account needed. Danfoss, Netzsch, and Sandvik Coromant are representative customers.
Sports and entertainment
Fan walls at stadiums, arenas, and sports events aggregate posts from fans on-site and watching at home. The NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, Ski World Cup events, and FIFA all use social walls for fan engagement. The Reactions feature works particularly well in sports contexts — fans can respond to live moments directly from their phones.
Tourism and hospitality
Tourist boards and hospitality brands use social walls to aggregate guest and visitor content, turning customer photos into destination marketing. The Austrian National Tourist Board operates multiple walls in different languages for B2B trade fairs and B2C landing pages simultaneously.
Nonprofits and associations
Nonprofits use social walls for fundraising events, advocacy campaigns, awareness days, and member engagement. The community-building angle of a social wall format fits the nonprofit culture well.
See social walls for nonprofits.
Although these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there’s a distinction worth understanding.
A social media aggregator collects content from multiple platforms and displays it in a single feed. That’s its core function.
A social wall not only performs this function but also displays the content visually on a screen, website, or display. It adds interactivity with features like polls, reactions, and photo booths. It also includes moderation and brand safety controls.
Walls.io is both: it aggregates social media and direct content and displays it across any surface with the interactivity and controls you’d expect from a display platform built for that purpose.
What’s the difference between a social wall and a hashtag feed?
A hashtag feed is a specific type of social wall that aggregates posts by hashtag. A social wall is a broader term that can aggregate posts by hashtag, profile, keyword, direct submission, or any combination of these sources. Therefore, all hashtag walls are social walls, but not all social walls are hashtag walls.
Can I use a social wall without social media?
Yes. Walls.io’s Direct Posts feature lets people contribute content without any social media account. You can run a wall entirely on Direct Posts if you want to, or use it alongside social media sources. This is particularly useful for internal company events where employees don’t want to post on personal accounts.
How do I stop inappropriate content from appearing on my wall?
Walls.io gives you several options: manual pre-moderation (review every post before it goes live), AI Moderation to automatically filter spam and negative sentiment, keyword blocklists to block specific terms, and allow lists to show only content from pre-approved accounts. Most customers use a combination of AI Moderation and a keyword blocklist, with manual review for sensitive events.
How many social media sources can I connect?
Walls.io connects to over 14 social media platforms and content types. The number of active connections depends on your plan. You can aggregate Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, and more simultaneously.
Does a social wall work for virtual and hybrid events?
Yes. Walls.io can be embedded directly into virtual event platforms or displayed in a browser window shared during a live stream. Remote attendees can post to the same wall as in-person attendees using the event hashtag or Direct Posts. For more on this, see our guide to embedding social walls on virtual event platforms.
Is Walls.io GDPR compliant?
Walls.io is EU-hosted and GDPR compliant. The platform supports CCPA compliance as well. It offers a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) out of the box and the website embed is cookieless, which satisfies common IT and legal requirements without special configuration. See GDPR & CCPA compliance for the full details.
How long does it take to set up a social wall?
Connecting sources, choosing a layout, and setting up basic moderation takes around 15 minutes for a straightforward wall. More complex setups — custom design, multiple sources, Lead Generation forms, API integration — take longer, but most event customers have a wall live within an hour of signing up.
What display hardware do I need?
None specifically. Walls.io runs in any modern browser, so any screen connected to a device with a browser — a laptop, a media player, a smart TV, a tablet — will work. No proprietary hardware or additional software is required.
Getting started with Walls.io
A social wall works best when it’s part of a deliberate strategy rather than an afterthought. The most successful Walls.io customers start with a clear focus — one event, one campaign, or one website section — and then expand.
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