It is one thing to set up a social wall, but another to get an audience to post to it. Lucky for you, in this article you’ll learn 6 easy ways to make it super easy for people to post to your social wall. With little to no effort, you’ll collect plenty of user-generated content on your wall.
1. Use the Direct Posts feature
The Direct Posts feature is your gateway to more content on a social wall. This new feature allows your community to directly publish image and text posts to your wall without having to use any social media platform.
This feature is our way of inviting absolutely anyone to interact with your social wall. People who aren’t on social media or prefer not to post on social media to submit to a wall will now have a chance to do so without compromising their privacy.
Learn how to use it and why it’s great for all types of events in this video:
Let your community post directly to your social wall!
2. Promote your hashtag everywhere 👀
When I say everywhere, I mean make stickers with the hashtag, add it to the header of your social wall, share it all over social media, and get a huge banner on-site. Make your hashtag as clear and visible as possible for your audience to remember.
During a conference, Zeiss displayed a social wall on a huge screen on-site, as well as big banner with their branded hashtag. This way, it was clear for everyone how to make their content appear on the wall.
Collect UGC on a Social Wall
3. Use the Sponsored Posts feature to show instructions on the wall
Sponsored Posts also offer a way to promote your content. You can use these tiles to explain how your hashtag campaign works.
Add an image that stands out from the other posts with clear and concise instructions on how to post to the wall. The image below displays a sponsored tile with the words Post & Tag followed by a hashtag. People watching the wall will be promptly informed of how to contribute to the social wall.
Another option to display instructions on your wall is to add them as a Custom Post, just like the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition did. They set up a custom post that says, “Use the hashtag #NYIOOC to see your post here.”
Try out the Sponsored Posts feature
4. Break the ice by posting first
If your audience is reluctant about posting photos on social media, set an example by being the first to post. Show everyone how uncomplicated it is to snap a pic, add a short caption, use a hashtag and show up on a social wall.
To keep up the motivation to post, have your friends, colleagues or anyone you trust post regularly to the wall. This way, your audience will want to continue posting.
5. Offer incentives
Who doesn’t like free stuff? Plan a giveaway to motivate people to post to your wall. Get a bunch of branded swag or gift cards and give them away in exchange of content for the wall.
The social media campaign #KidsInTheKtichen aims to get families to cook together and children to eat more vegetables. Canadian eCommerce agency Northern Commerce developed the campaign for NatureFresh™ Farms, a family-owned supplier of vegetables in the US and Canada.
Apart from displaying the hashtag very clearly on their website and ads, they incentivized people to participate in the campaign by offering $50 grocery gift cards for five random winners. To win a gift card, entrants were asked to share a photo of their children in the kitchen or a photo of their creation on Instagram, tag @nature_fresh, and include the hashtag #KidsInTheKitchen.
At first glance, Champlain College set up a fairly simple microsite for graduates. The page is just a nice header and an embed of the social wall.
But once you click through to the separate ceremony pages for on-campus and remote students, you’re rewarded with a wealth of articles — stories from graduates, but also informative posts like How to Set Up Your Tech to Watch Champlain’s Virtual Commencement or How to Plan Your Virtual Commencement Ceremony Party.
Particularly helpful is also the article How to Get Your Content Featured on the #ChampGrad Social Media Wall. It includes useful information on what a social wall is and what kind of content to post. The article even includes existing social media posts by students as examples.
Information like that can be worth its weight in gold when people who may not be used to hashtags are involved, e.g. parents and grandparents of graduates. To cover all bases, the Champlain media team also offered options for those who don’t have Twitter or Instagram accounts or have them set to private. Photos could be shared via DM or email and then uploaded to the team’s social wall as Native Posts.
Collect amazing content!
Over to you
Try these 6 tips out to make it super easy for people to post to your social wall. You’ll see how simple it is to make your audience post content on social media. With minimal effort, you’ll have enough user-generated content to fill up your wall.