There’s More Value to

Event Social Walls

Than Projecting

Awesome Selfies

EventTechBrief.comArticle by Autumn Thatcher

Attendees love social media. Their pics,tweets, posts, and Likes have become anintegral part of the live-event experience. So,why not leverage these treasures of personalinsight and expression?

Social walls—applications that aggregatesocial media activity for display on the eventwebsite, mobile app, or large screen—aren’tjust fun and games, they can help eventorganizers realize some important goals.

Cvent, an event-management software provider, is one of severalcompanies to recognize the value of amplifying social mediaactivity in and around events. Cvent’s SocialWall app allows eventorganizers to compile and display the Twitter and Instagram posts produced by attendees in real time at the event.

Audience Promotion

“SocialWall has three big pieces offunctionality: aggregation andmoderation of user content, and acurated gallery that allows organizersto manually approve every post beforeit is displayed on the big screens,”explains McKneel Keenan, manager ofstrategic initiatives for Cvent.

Audience Promotion

Event marketers can use SocialWall to generate online discussionsprior to an event by simply emailing the event hashtag to attendees.“We saw it as a big opportunity to leverage social content and betterpromote events. You want to keep people coming to the event, and getmore people to post and share. Attendance has always been a hugefocus for our clients,” says Keenan.

Audience Promotion

#AwesomeEvent

Event-Mobile app developer QuickMobile took a more analytical approach to social media activity. In October of 2014, the firm released Concerto, a Twitter-based mobile app thatenables event organizers to capture and categorize all event-related Twitter activity, revealing which topics are trending aroundthe event and who the most active users and influencers are. Theapp also includes templates for producing fully branded (largescreen) visual displays and analytics reports.

Event Analytics

Event Analytics

"The vast media demand is in Twitter,and Concerto surfaces the Twitter activity

embedded in your actual events. Thisallows organizers to understand what’s

happening and take action."- Jeff Epsetin

director of product marketing atQuickMobile

Content Generation

Event-Mobile app developer QuickMobiletook a more analytical approach to socialmedia activity. In October of2014, GenieConnect by Lanyon likes to lookat their Event Wall app as a “virtual mixingdesk” that helps organizers generate theirown content and control what is posted.

Content Generation

“With Event Wall, you’re able to promote sponsors, put in yourown posts, put in your own types of content; you may want youronsite blogger there. You control the impact and what isstreamed,” says Michael Douglas, founding director of GenieConnect.

Content Generation

Keeping attendees interested in event content between sessionsis one of many reasons for organizers to take an interest in

social wall apps. “Our overall mission is to use technology toimprove events for everybody, starting with attendees. Event Wall

is interactive, nicely animated, and looks great on the bigscreen,” Douglas adds.

Content Generation

While social-wall apps aren’t entirely new—Twitter walls and "What’s On" displayshave existed for a number of years—thebreadth and value of these apps hasexpanded. The current iterations are yetanother manifestation of the expandeddimensions of events.

Content Generation

“We sourced a solution that is virtual anddigital, as well as physical. We aim toguide and delight our clients through thebest event experience that they can haveand recognize that events are virtual,”says QuickMobile’s Jeff Epstein.

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