This is a list of social media case studies that will give you the opportunity to learn the basics of running great hashtag campaigns and get some great ideas for your next project.
I am adding new social media case studies to this list every day, so feel free to bookmark this article. For ease of navigation, I grouped the case studies by industry.
Authentic user-generated content curated and displayed on a website can help turn user-generated content into sales. Here’s a great example of how beyerdynamic, a German manufacturer of audio equipment, is using a social wall as part of its eCommerce website. The social feed connects user-generated content to the products in beyerdynamic’s online store.
Life is Good: A hashtag campaign for donations
Hashtag campaigns are an excellent tool when it comes to raising donations for a good cause. They boost awareness for an issue and offer an easy way to donate money. The method works well for businesses setting up a donations-for-posts type of campaign, where they donate X amount of money for each post published with a specific hashtag.
One such campaign was the #SomethingGood campaign by clothing brand Life is Good. For every Tweet with the hashtag #SomethingGood, the company donated $1 to the Life is Good Kids Foundation (to which the brand already donates 10% of its profits). The Foundation works to help disadvantaged kids heal from trauma. Read the full #SomethingGood case study.
Kids in the Kitchen: Our best practice for hashtag campaigns
We loved the #KidsInTheKitchen hashtag campaign from NatureFresh™ Farms. The great thing about it is just how much it did right, which makes it an excellent best practice example for those who want to learn more about hashtag campaigns.
Among many other things, I love how clear the campaign was about what kind of user-generated content they were looking for. The #KidsInTheKitchen campaign used the campaign microsite as well as various posts on Instagram to very clearly lay out how to take part in the hashtag campaign. This is something that makes it a lot easier for people to submit user-generated content because they know what the brand would like to see from them.
There’s a lot more to be said about this awesome campaign, and you can read all about it in the #KidsInTheKitchen case study.
The Case Western Reserve University campus in Ohio has set up a large-scale social wall in the campus’ main social hub. At this point, the wall has been up for almost three years, bridging the gap between online and offline for the university’s students, staff, alumni, and university sponsors.
The multi-storey, two-part LED media wall is the first thing you see when walking into the building, and it prominently shows the two CWRU social walls. The media wall serves as a point of information and connection for the campus community. With content supplied from various departments around the university, there’s always something new to see on the wall.
There’s so much more interesting information about how CWRU uses the social walls and what they’ve learned and improved over the years of using them. You can read all about it in our CWRU case study.
The State University of New York engages students in a university-wide initiative
SUNY uses a social wall for events connected to a university-wide initiative that aims to provide support for victims and survivors of sexual and interpersonal violence. Students and community members post photos and messages which are shown on the social wall during events. This helps attendees engage individually and collectively with the program in real-time.
DMEXCO, an annual trade fair for the digital marketing and advertising industry, displayed social media content posted by visitors using their official hashtags on various points throughout the sprawling event location. Among them were two social walls incorporated into big digital signage screens along the DMEXCO Boulevard.
The large displays hung from the ceiling on this thoroughfare of the trade show were clearly visible to visitors and introduced the social wall and hashtags.
Walls.io excellently lends itself to being displayed on big screens. We even have some layouts created especially for big displays, like our Bricks layout, for example.
Janssen, a pharmaceutical company, is using a social wall to share information about their latest news. They display the social wall prominently on their homepage to allow their visitors to easily explore their latest achievements and activities. By using a real-time social feed, they keep their website up to date with content they already created for their social media channels. Read the full case study.
Rochester Regional Health, a health services organisation in the New York area, has used a social wall to build a digital neighbourhood that brings hope, warmth, and a spirit of kindness to everyone in their community during the COVID-19 outbreak. They encourage their community to post and interact, which creates a sense of belonging. Especially during times of isolation, the social wall offers a way to maintain engagement with the community and to uplift their mental well being. Read the full case study.
University Hospital Münster stands for cutting-edge medicine within the German hospital landscape. They use a social wall on their homepage to educate the public, provide a behind-the-scenes look into their work and disseminate information about their latest progress in research. They also use it for fundraising and to encourage people to donate blood or goods.
People on social media can help increase the visibility and support of the sometimes forgotten frontline workers — those who are taking care of vulnerable neighbors experiencing homelessness.
The team at Miriam’s Kitchen continues to provide vital services to the homeless in the D.C. area. Part of the effort is a campaign to drum up support, both financial and material, to ensure Miriam’s Kitchen can continue to work.
We’re happy to support them with a social wall and we talked to Mei Powers, Chief Development Officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, to find out more about how the microsite and social wall are helping the charity continue to do its work. Read the full case study!
The official online travel guide for the city of Vienna offers information about sights, event and hotel bookings, and historical information. They are using a second social wall on a microsite that is dedicated to Viennese modernism to engage with visitors and citizens alike. They display stunning visual content on their social walls that makes you want to visit those places in the city. Read the full case study.
Ultimately, a great campaign happens because you put everything you’ve got into it. You plan properly, you execute well, and you stay on your toes to manage whatever comes your way during the run of the campaign. However, our case studies have shown us that there are a few things that can help campaigns stand out.
For one, drawing attention to your social wall helps boost people’s awareness of the hashtag. And one way to do that is to display your social wall on big screens at the location where they’re most likely to draw attention.
Both DMEXCO and CWRU have implemented big walls, albeit in completely different ways. For a short-term event, you will likely have to use what’s available at your location — from digital signage to whatever displays are feasible.
Meanwhile, if you’re setting up a social wall long-term as CWRU has done, it can absolutely make sense to create a specific solution that works for the space you have. The media wall in the Tink building is impressive, but it is also absolutely clear that a lot of work and planning has gone into its creation and maintenance.
beyerdynamic combines user-generated content and eCommerce into social commerce, but they will definitely not be the last to do so. Social commerce is a big trend, and we believe it will continue to be just that.
We already know that user-generated content is effective at convincing potential customers to buy, so it makes sense to use UGC to actually fuel purchases. Make it easy for your fans to get straight from another user’s recommendation to the product they’re praising. Shorten the journey and start converting better.
Hopefully, you will let our showcases inspire you to make your own campaigns even better. And, who knows, maybe it’ll be your own project being praised in this blog post.