Taking your business to the next level can be a challenge. That’s when having a strong social media marketing strategy can come to the rescue. Social media marketing tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are not just accelerators of growth for a business but are drivers of social change.
It has been estimated that by 2018, 2.44 billion people will be using social networks, up from 970,000 in 2010. With this kind of reach, social media networks are changing the nature in which we interact with each other the way we do business.
Whether it is our interpersonal relationships or the work we do, every minute we collectively send more than 30 million messages on Facebook and almost 350,000 tweets. For businesses looking to expand their visibility and connect with customers, social walls can act as a valuable tool to display consumer recognition and brand identity.
Social walls are an engaging, ever-changing display of content created by aggregating information from various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Using an administrative website, you can control what messages appear on the wall and even integrate marketing messages with user-generated content, such as photos, social media messages, and videos.
This interactive tool gives you the power to set trends. Using data that is very user specific, social walls can play a significant role in making optimal use of your existing marketing tools. They do not rely on the company’s marketing policies, but rather they play to enhance the strategies already in place.
Using the right keywords will put your website on the map and depending on what you want to achieve with your social wall, you can plug the appropriate information to position your brand accordingly.
There are two types of feeds that you could use:
- The hashtag feed, where you choose a hashtag and posts made public using that hashtag will appear in that feed
- The account feed, which displays posts coming from a particular account
This can create a space that allows customers to identify with your brand on a more personable level, encouraging brand engagement.
The social media wall is a reflection of the spirit, mission, and vibrancy of the brand and should be mirrored as such. This is why it is important to know the best way to use the social media wall.
As a marketing tool, social walls can greatly enhance the interaction between consumer and company. Not only can it just build the brand image but cements the relationship between the two. This convergence of a steady flow of data from the company website and its social networking sites can be used by companies in several ways.
- Boosting the use of hashtags
With the advent of social media, the desire to be in the limelight and set trends has multiplied tenfold. Customers are looking for ways to boost their social profiles and expand their network. Keying in on this can be a great way for a brand to develop their own social profile and relationship with the consumer and a good way to do this is by using hashtags. Reposting a topic from a social feed using a hashtag can drive likes and followers to the consumer’s site as well as boost brand image. You can also use it for promotional purposes with a branded hashtag and set your company trending.
To celebrate its 50 years of operations, Capgemini used social walls to display all its celebratory messages across social media with the #Capgemini50 hashtag.
- Creating a buzz
Often enough, companies need to generate a buzz about events they might be holding or inform their audience of the kind of work that they do. Social walls, with their extended social networks and real-time feeds can reach a large number of people in a very short span of time and this can be the most opportune way to relay brand information as well as generate good press for the company.
Luxury hotel The Arch London, for instance, creatively uses social walls on its website to display the experiences that its guests share on social media.
- User-generated content
What better reflection of your brand than to have your users represent it with their content? A social wall of user-generated content can be a fun and creative way to engage your audience, drive likes, gain more followers and all the while enhancing your brand image.
