If you’re running an internal event and want people to post to and communicate via a social wall, you may find yourself facing privacy concerns. For social media posts to show up on a social wall, they have to be posted publicly, which can breach privacy laws in some companies. It can be tough to navigate, especially in large companies with strict social media rules.
Luckily, social media isn’t the only way to get posts up on a social wall. Walls.io has recently launched a Direct Posts feature, allowing customers to set up an easy workflow to let their users post on their social wall. Direct Posts circumvent social media entirely, and it’s a completely hands-off process, too!
Virtual event + Direct Posts + photo booth = success!
One of the first customers to use the Direct Posts feature was S&P Global Market Intelligence. They put a social wall with Direct Posts in place for MI Content Expo, a large-scale internal event with around 5,000 attendees. The wall was integrated into a virtual event platform and combined with a Snapbar photo booth.
We wanted to know more about how a social wall with Direct Posts helped S&P Global create a successful, multi-day internal virtual event for their employees. So, we jumped at the chance to ask Karina Factora (Senior Manager at S&P Global) and Kristina Thomas (Senior Social Media Strategist at S&P Global Market Intelligence) some questions.
Could you tell us a bit about the MI Content Expo?
S&P Global is a leading provider of financial information and analytics. S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global, held the first-ever “MI Content Expo,” an internal virtual event that aimed to elevate learning and collaboration experience by exploring other datasets, technologies, and career opportunities.
Attended by ~5,000 employees globally, MI Content Expo hosted several speakers’ sessions and showcases. The event was held for four days, from November 15 to 18, 2021. Each day of the event focused on four major themes — People, Technology, Client, and Data.
What was the tech stack that you used for the event? Did the tools you used easily integrate with one another?
To host a global virtual event, we partnered with 6Connex to build the virtual event platform (VEP) and then integrated Walls.io and Snapbar to drive engagement with high visibility to attendees.
Particularly with Walls.io, the process of integrating a social wall and Direct Posts into the VEP has been seamless and effortless on our side. In less than 48 hours, we had the social wall built into the platform.
Attendees’ thoughts and feedback mattered a lot to the event organizers and sponsors, and the social wall made that possible with transparency and efficiency. The level of engagement on various activities sparked greater interest amongst the attendees.
Their posts spoke about the learning takeaways, impact on their career aspirations, and their general experience of the virtual event, which is the first of its kind at S&P Global’s employee engagement activity.
While hosting an internal event, it has been critically important that we ensure data privacy and that social media policies are observed and upheld by every attendee. We leveraged Direct Posts on a social media wall in the 6Connex VEP, and voilá: we were able to gather thoughts from our attendees without worrying about any concerns regarding a breach in privacy.
We were so hyped to see attendees’ overwhelming messages on the social wall — something that was made possible by Walls.io and Snapbar so easily!
We ran a contest to boost engagement and draw key takeaways from attendees. The instructions were simple: post your favorite session of the day and tell us why it was your favorite. For three days, our committee picked three winners for prizes and announced them daily. It added to the fun and excitement, as can be seen in the inspiring and thoughtful messages posted by attendees.
Someone aptly put it like this on our social wall: “Thanks to the MI Expo Platform, which has given the feeling of being present in the office physically, not only with teammates but all the colleagues at S&P Global.”
We’re glad that we decided to tap into Walls.io and integrate it with 6Connex and Snapbar. The integration process has been swift and seamless, and through time, I can only expect continuous enhancements of their capabilities.
Our takeaways
Whatever your reasons are for privacy concerns during events, with Direct Posts, attendees can feel safe sharing messages and giving feedback. They don’t have to mix their work and personal lives by using their private social media accounts for a work event.
Using Direct Posts also means you don’t have to mess with hashtags and their promotion. You can keep attendees’ attention on the social wall during the event, rather than sending them off to their social media accounts where they might get distracted by other content.
Of course, it all has to be easy. Integrations that work together seamlessly make it more likely for people to participate. In this case, the Direct Posts feature, and the Walls.io/Snapbar integration, made it super easy for attendees at the MI Content Expo to upload their posts. It resulted in a lot of pics and posts on the social wall. Of course, providing incentives that motivated people to post also didn’t hurt.
A social wall, in general, is an excellent way for employees to connect across geographical distances, which is something that definitely matters to companies that act globally and want to create meaningful connections between colleagues who might never actually meet in person. In addition, social walls mesh well with video conferencing and virtual events.
Our new Direct Posts feature
You probably already guessed how it works from this showcase, but here’s a quick overview the Direct Posts feature:
What?
Our Direct Posts feature lets you offer your attendees a way to post on your social wall directly, without involving any social media accounts.
How?
When Direct Posts are activated, your social wall will sport a nice big “Create Post” button (the location of it depends on the theme you’re using). By clicking on that button, your users can create messages containing text and images that get posted directly to your wall.
When?
When you start your Walls.io trial, you get access to the Direct Posts feature. After the trial, upgrade to our Pro or Premium plan to keep using it.
Why?
As mentioned above, privacy can be the main factor in using only Direct Posts for a social wall at an event. But Direct Posts can also be used in addition to the standard social media sources on a wall — it’s a great way to include people who don’t have social media accounts or don’t feel comfortable using them for public events.
Where?
In your Walls.io Dashboard, go to Direct Posts in the Content tab and toggle to enable Direct Posts. Once you’ve saved your changes, the “Create Post” button will appear on your wall for your users to see and interact with. Your general moderation settings apply to Direct Posts as well, so if you have Manual Moderation turned on, Direct Posts will only appear on your wall once you have cleared them.