A health centre located at the Federsee lake in Germany uses a social wall combined with digital signage software and a large screen to create a one-stop information hub for all its guests and visitors.
Gesundheitszentrum Federsee consists of a thermal spa, a spa hotel, two rehabilitation clinics and a conference and events centre. The digital signage hub has been set up in a corridor connecting the spa and the hotel. It brings together all kinds of information, video content, the centre’s social media posts, as well as photos and posts guests have tagged with the hashtag on social media — all in one place.
The social wall is also embedded on the centre’s various websites, where it adds atmospheric impressions that appeal to potential guests and visitors.
We wanted to know a bit more, so we talked to Stefan Schreiber, Head of Marketing at Gesundheitszentrum Federsee.
We want to present our guests with a wide variety of impressions from Bad Buchau. The social wall makes this easy because it allows us to collect and use the excellent content our guests create and display it next to our posts and images.
You use Walls.io in combination with Xibo, a digital signage provider. How does that work?
We use Xibo to organise and display content on a screen in the corridor connecting Adelindis Thermal Spa and the Gesundheits-Bad Buchau Thermal Spa Hotel. Guests can upload content to social media using our hashtags and immediately see it on the large digital signage screen. Setting up Xibo and Walls.io was very easy and quick to do.
What content mix do you show on the screen?
There’s a video in the middle of the screen. The moving images help catch our guests’ eyes as they approach from the entrance, encouraging them to take a look at the screen.
Aside from the video, we’ve added the social wall with all its content to the screen. We also have various sections that provide information for guests, such as the restaurant menu or important schedules and offers for the spa and the rehabilitation clinic.
How do your guests react when they notice the digital signage screen? How do you get them to interact with the content?
Our guests react very positively and use the screen quite a bit. They stop at the screen on their way to and from the spa and check out the offers on display. Our rehab patients also use the screen. This way, they always know what’s happening at the clinic.
We’ve defined some hashtags and have included instructions on the screen explaining that when you use the hashtag, for example, on Instagram, your photos will show up on the social wall. By explaining how it works, we’re getting great content from our guests.
What works best are scenic landscape photos combined with short captions. Another thing that works well are photos where the caption is already integrated into the image.
Create a social wall and add it to your digital signage!
Gesundheitszentrum Federsee consists of Adelindis Thermal Spa, Gesundheitsbad Buchau Thermal Spa Hotel, two rehabilitation clinics, and a conference and events centre with an attached café called “Badstube”.
We wanted to use the social wall sensibly in multiple places. That meant that we needed to be very deliberate when choosing the Facebook and Instagram accounts and hashtags to use as sources for the social wall.
We managed pretty well, but we still occasionally check the walls and deactivate individual posts as needed using the moderation feature.
Our takeaways
You can embed your social media posts in many different ways, but a social wall lets you display the valuable content your guests and visitors are posting as well. Content from other customers acts as social proof and shows other website visitors how much people are enjoying their stay at your spa or hotel.
This showcase also demonstrates how well a social wall works with a digital signage screen. By combining a social wall with other media components, you can provide visitors with all kinds of content.
Digital signage brings various media types together
A video catches their eyes as they walk past and draws them to the screen; text components allow you to share pertinent and current information. And the social wall adds an entertainment factor and encourages interaction. Of course, there are plenty of other media types you can include on your screen, depending entirely on what you need and what your digital signage software of choice supports.
With digital signage software, you can easily, quickly and remotely update what’s shown on the screen. So when the menu is new or the spa opening times have changed, your visitors will always know at a glance. They’ll also enjoy uploading their posts and photos to social media and seeing them pop up on the wall.
Digital signage boosts engagement
To make it super easy for people to use the social wall actively and engage with it, it always helps to post the instructions on the digital signage screen, just like Gesundheitszentrum Federsee does.
And, of course, you can create posts that will specifically encourage your visitors — both online and offline — to engage with it, post replies and create their own content in response to it.
Here, Adelindis Thermal Spa is asking followers, “What does a spa day mean to you?”
Don’t want to rely on social media to post to a social wall?
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