Virtual events elevated out of necessity and quickly proved their long-term viability. TK Events, a Toronto and UK based event agency, is successfully breaking this new ground and using social media walls as part of their audience engagement. For example, they set up two walls for the Dell Technologies World 2021, a virtual conference that took place in May 2021.
For Dell Technologies World, TK Events utilized the Swoogo registration platform that integrates with their virtual venue. The design of the virtual venue incorporated the social feed via iframe into their virtual Canada House. The social wall design made it look like part of the virtual room and created a smooth user experience in a 3D space, making it resemble an offline event space.
We’ve talked to Nathalie Saikaly, VP of TK Events, to learn more about the benefits social walls hold for virtual events.
Could you tell us a bit about TK Events and the services you offer?
TK Events is an event company with offices in Canada and the UK, with a small team of dedicated and skilled marketing professionals, event planners, designers and developers. These days, the event industry is undergoing a deep transformation and we lead the way with our hybrid event model integrating both in-person and virtual events’ audiences.
We have used social media walls at in-person events in the past. It helped bring together attendees’ social engagement and created buzz around the event. In virtual events, it has been an integral interactive activation we have recommended to our clients.
Given its digital channel, audiences across the globe can check in to express themselves, take part in a live social media contest and have some fun with their virtual photo booth selfie. We expect social media wall integration to be a popular one within a hybrid events model too!
Walls.io makes the integration easy as it allows us to embed the social wall onto our virtual platform in very little time. In addition, our registration process equips us to send user data via Swoogo into our virtual event to give attendees a unique and personalized experience.
The key objective is to turn this social media wall into a living, ongoing attendee conversation.
Our clients adopt various social media campaign approaches pre, during and after the event. Including trackable hashtags in the invite and on the registration site, using them in internal communication helps to store all the content in one place. Besides, promotion could also be linked to an online contest where registrants are asked to participate in a challenge to win prizes.
We integrated a second social media wall into a “Virtual Patio” at our Dell Technologies World – Channel House virtual venue.
That space was a big hit. We invited attendees to take selfies with their pets at our virtual photo booth and post them on social media using #NAChannelHouse and #delltechnologies.
In addition, the social wall allowed our North American attendees to connect with each other and see what people had to say about Dell Technologies World.
Nora taking in some incredible inspiration from the amazing @AmyPurdyGurl #DellTechWorld #NAChannelHouse #PetPatio @DellTechPartner pic.twitter.com/roJpl5tKcA
— Caroline Scott (@CarolineTScott) May 5, 2021
A key best practice on this is that linking your social wall with an interactive activation drives a higher level of engagement.
Social walls enable you to capture the ongoing attendee conversations with the use of hashtags. They allow audiences to take part in a discussion centred on a particular topic and make information about your event easily accessible and searchable.
Whether you want to uplift your promotion on social media, increase audience’s engagement, evaluate your marketing efforts after the event, or simply create a live photo album at your event — hashtags come in handy.
Learn how to create a perfect hashtag for your event with our free Hashtag Marketing Guide. Make sure to leverage its power for your next marketing campaign!
It’s time for a change
We’re used to setting up digital displays of all sizes and resolutions at physical event locations to gather people around them. Today, with the industry shifting to virtual and hybrid events, social walls undergo a transformation too, showing how flexible the solution is. Cases such as Dell Technologies World show that you can organically fit a social wall into your virtual event venue and still use it to put the spotlight on your attendees, play ice-breaker games, run contests and much more.