The ubiquity of sharing virtually everything on social media has opened up the possibility for brands to pick up authentic and original content from their biggest fans, and the same can be true for you.

With a proper hashtag campaign, you're just a few clicks away from collecting tons of influential content from customers and converting them into powerful marketing assets to use in both your website and in physical settings.

If you already have a ton of user-generated content (UGC) in your hands, it's prime time to show it off using a personalised social media wall.

In this post, we're going to look at how you can use social media walls to promote your marketing campaigns, then show you how to create an eye-catching social media wall to capture everyone's attention and enhance your online and offline presence.

A social media wall is a real-time, curated feed of social media that gives emphasis to branded content created by you or your customers. The posts could be aggregated by #hashtags, @mentions or originate from a specific social media page or profile.

Since posts are typically aggregated through the use of hashtags, social media walls are especially popular and complement nicely with hashtag campaigns. That means you can run a hashtag campaign to collect UGC, then show off a collection of all the content you've collected using a social media wall.

Curious to see what they look like? Check out a live preview in the demo below.

Try clicking on the F key on the demo page to view the social media wall in presentation mode 😎

When done well, social media walls create the perfect opportunity to present your brand in a more authentic and relatable manner. The portrayal of UGC on your social media wall has a self-reinforcing effect which invites your customers to see your brand from a consumer's perspective and encourage the creation of even more UGC down the road.

That's a lot of brownie points for your social presence game 🍫

Social media walls are also extremely flexible marketing tools to be used in physical settings. You can port your social media wall to a live display and use it for any occasion.

Let's look at some examples:

Social media walls are perfect in retail settings such as restaurants, lifestyle stores and clothing stores. Depending on the import criteria, you can display a social media wall for different purposes. For example, you could feature:

• Curated posts from your own social media account to promote a new product line or offer
• Curated #hashtag or @mention imports to provide social proof from happy customers
• Let patrons know you are on social media and encourage them to share their own UGC

For restaurants, you could get patrons to snap photos of your tasty dishes then tag your restaurant's location or use a hashtag. This can help you trend on social media which will allow you to build interest and attract more patrons.

Once all those mouth-watering photos roll in, you can show them off with a social media wall at your restaurant:

If you run a retail store, you can also use social media walls to show off your community of die-hard fans and customers. Displaying social proof around your store will definitely assist shoppers in making a purchase decision, especially if they get to see photos of other customers happily using (or wearing) your product.

Showing UGC from other customers also provides real life context and gives shoppers the opportunity to see your products out in the wild. This can help drive higher conversions and increase the shopper's confidence to make a purchase.

Social media walls are perfect for live events because of their real-time nature. Having an automatic feed of social content is a great way to keep your guests entertained and help them stay up to date with your itinerary. This will be especially helpful if you have a large audience in attendance.

Furthermore, showcasing a mixture of branded and user-generated content will build hype and excitement, which can encourage more guests to snap and share their own photos. After all, who doesn't want a chance to be featured on the big screen?

And since your guests are swarming to social media to post photos about your event, chances are you'll build massive buzz and have spectators all over the world tune in to your event, even if they're not physically present.

To make social media walls more engaging for guests, you can opt for a slideshow format to automatically rotate through new photos and give everyone an exclusive chance to be featured.

Here's a demo in Presentation Mode:

As content producers we all feel the immense pressure to release high-quality content on a regular basis to keep our audience engaged. If you don't have time to commit to an editorial schedule, then social media walls are perfect because you can re-purpose existing content through social media and still create a highly interactive experience for your community.

If you already run hashtag campaigns or UGC contests to engage with your customers and fans, then chances are you're more than ready to publish your next social media wall. All you have to do is gather the right #hashtags and @mentions and you're good to go.

Now that you have a leg up when it comes to publishing exciting content at your venue, it's time to keep the ball rolling by encouraging even more guests to participate and contribute to your stream of social media content.

Here are some pointers when it comes to collecting social content at your venue:

To further encourage your guests to take part in your social media wall campaign, you can try offering incentives like door gifts and a chance to win some exciting prizes. Some live events even offer photo booths so it's intuitive for guests to take photos and tag your event accordingly.

To get more submissions for your social media wall, first you'll need to make sure your guests know about your campaign. You can promote your hashtags by displaying them on multiple signages around your store or event.

While it's all fun and games when it comes to snapping selfies, not everyone will remember to tag you in their photos, so you may lose out on valuable UGC from your guests. To maximise the chances of your guests tagging their photos, you should have a memorable hashtag that's short and concise.

If you are running an annual event, you might consider attaching the year at the end of the event's name. For example, #SXSW2019.

When it comes to gathering more social content, nothing beats having a charismatic and accommodating host. You can display signages filled with instructions and lay them all over your event grounds, but nothing will be as effective as implementing the personal touch.

While mingling with patrons or guests, you could verbally endorse your hashtag and remind guests to tag you in their photos. The personal request is far more likely to encourage guests and make them drive immediate action.

To install a social media wall at your venue, you'll need a social media aggregator tool that can compile your content from various platforms and display the contents on a screen. This is an incredibly easy undertaking if you use Gleam's Gallery app.

Our Gallery app allows you to import photos, videos and posts from major social media platforms and display them in a highly customisable gallery. You can pull in media from #hashtags, @mentions or even posts from your social media profile. What's more, you can moderate each post in real-time so your gallery is always up to date with fresh curated content.

To project your social media wall, all you have to do is connect your laptop or device to a digital screen. Our app is fully responsive and optimised for mobile, tablet and even TV screens, so rest assured you can project the social media wall onto any screen size.

To set up a social media wall, first you'll create a Gallery and configure some basic options.

Our Gallery app offers the following configurations:

• Enable Sharing: You can use this option to allow guests to share posts they find on your wall.
• Enable Voting: Guests can vote for any posts they find on your wall. This is a great option for running photo contests.
• Enable Moderation: Allow you to accept or decline each individual post before it is published to your wall. We recommend enabling this option.

Once you're happy with the basic configurations, it's time to consider where you'll be pulling in content from. If you run a campaign with the same hashtag across multiple platforms, then all you have to do is configure each of those import sources to include your common hashtag.

If you're pulling in content from Instagram you may want to consider getting users to also @mention you in their posts. You can then use our Instagram @mention import source with a #hashtag filter to pull in content from users who have tagged you and used your hashtag.

The advantage of using @mentions is that you will be able to capture additional user data such as @usernames and timestamps which Instagram no longer allows you to import from #hahstags alone.

Additionally, you can also add posts from your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter profile without the use of hashtags.

Our Gallery app is incredibly customisable and we have a live preview feature to help you build the perfect social media wall. We allow you to customise each element of your Gallery so that it matches with the look and feel of your brand.

Have a play with a demo we built for Australia's Rainbow Serpent Festival:

Displaying the social media wall is an incredibly easy task, and you don't even have to embed the widget anywhere. Using our Hosted Gallery Page option, all you have to do is access the Gallery campaign via your web browser with your unique campaign link.

Here's an example: https://gleam.io/g/0frRu

Here are two options for displaying the social media wall on an external screen:

• Access your Gallery through your laptop's browser then connect it to an external screen
• Access your Gallery through a smart TV using the browser app

When you're using our Hosted Gallery Page option, you can switch over to the awesome Presentation Mode whenever you want. The gallery will automatically feature and scroll through all the social posts on your wall at a designated interval (between 1-60 seconds).

And if you sort content through the Most Recent option, then new media will be updated and show on your wall at real-time, meaning you don't have to switch back and forth between each batch update. All you have to do is enable the Live refresh option under the Advanced tab.

To maintain the consistency and quality of your UGC, it's essential that you keep a close watch throughout the event and moderate each individual post that's being shared.

Hashtags are crowd-sourced so anyone on the platform can tag their content freely, which means unrelated content will surely find its way into your stream.

Here are some things to look out for:

• Posts that are not related to your campaign
• Troll posts
• Low quality or inappropriate submissions

Our Gallery app comes with a highly intuitive moderation process so any social media manager can easily browse through incoming posts and approve whichever they see fit.

This is easily done through the up, down, left and right arrow keys on your keyboard:

With a proper moderation process, you should now have a curated stream of beautiful photos and videos that are presentable on any live display that's bound to attract spectators and drive conversions.

Create A Social Media Wall With Gleam Gallery

Learn more about our Gallery app in our documentation or go ahead and set up a social media wall for your venue right now!