The End Of The Tweet Wall - A Focus On Visual Content For Events

Tweet Walls have been popular at events for a while, but here at Eventstagram we think social media walls should evolve to the next level and display what people really want to share at events: Experiences, enjoyment, and photos. Live Instagram slideshows make this possible, so here are 5 Reasons Why Live Instagram Slideshows are better than Tweet Walls:

1. Tweet Walls are So Last Year

Tweet Walls and Text-to-Screen services have been used at events and venues for a few years, but now we are in 2013 and social media has evolved. Many Tweet Walls feature a stream of plain text and don’t look very attractive to guests at an event, whereas our live slideshows stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of an audience. Guests feel more engaged as they share their own photos and also view photos shared by others, promoting social media engagement at your event and with your brand.

2. Photo Sharing on Social Media is Exploding

Social media and photo sharing has exploded in the last couple of years, and this explosion can be harnessed at your event.  Over 500 million photos are shared each day on social media, and that figure is only going to grow. With over 100 million users on Instagram and over 40 million photos shared each day on the service, guests at your event will be taking photos at your event and sharing them to social networks which you can capture with a hashtag and stream to one of our live sideshows at your event for everyone to enjoy.

3. Instagram has more daily active users than Twitter

In August 2012, a report published by comScore highlighted that Instagram has 400,000 more daily active users than Twitter. You can take advantage of this at your event by promoting social media engagement to your guests via photo sharing and stream the live photos to one of our slideshows. The beauty with Eventstagram is that guests at your event don’t need to install another app for their photos to appear on our slideshows; as long as they use Instagram they are set up and ready to go.

4. A Photo Speaks A Thousand Words

Trying to tell people how much fun you are having at an event in less than 140 characters is hard, but showing people how much fun you are having at an event with a photo? Easy. Guests at your event can share the fun and enjoyment of your event not only with their friends and followers on social media but also with everyone else at the event.

5. Photos are Positive

Tweet Walls at events can often be filled with negative comments about the event, but it’s much harder to take a negative photo at an event. People share photos to show their followers how much fun they are having at an event, and to promote others to engage with the event on social media. Streaming photos of people enjoying your event onto one of our live slideshows will encourage others at the event to do the same, increasing social media engagement with your event and your brand. If a user does try to post a negative or inappropriate photo, Eventstagram boasts moderation options for event organisers to manage the content streamed to the live slideshow.

@davidoff77

In summary, Tweet Walls have had their day. Plain, text-based streams are out and stunning, live, visual, user-generated displays are the future. People are sharing experiences, enjoyment, and photos more than ever, and you can utilise this opportunity to give your guests a more enjoyable and engaging experience at your event.

Eventstagram Launches Some Brand New Features

Over the last couple of weeks we have been working hard on building some brand new features that will make your live Instagram displays look even better, and give you even more functionality.

What’s more exciting is that our prices are not changing - so all these features are coming completely free!

So, here they are:

1. We Look Better

We want to ensure that Eventstagram remains the most attractive way to display visual social media content at your event. So our design team have been reworking our layouts to make sure this is always the case.  

       

- The standard Eventstagram layout (available on all slideshows) has been improved:

- There is a cool new Instructions layout with permanent instructions (Gold package)

- There is an awesome multiple photo layout including your own logo (Gold package)

2. We Can Amplify The Content Even More

The event is in full swing, your crowd are happily tagging Instagram photos and through Eventstagram the content is appearing instantly on the screen, but now we have also enabled an easy way for you to amplify these photos.

Select the moderation page in the your events page and beneath each of the tagged photos you now will be able to Tweet it directly from your own account or view the image on Instagram to like or comment.

3. We Can Provide An After Event Display

Once all the guest have left and everyone has returned home, you and they can now relive the highlights of the event.

Once your event has reached it’s end time, Eventstagram will automatically created a ‘View’ page. When you click here all the tagged images appear. You can decide to make this public and even share it on Twitter or Facebook - or just keep it to yourself!

4. We Can Cope With Even Bigger Events

We have developed a much more robust back end system that means that both our moderation page and slideshows can cope with huge demand.

So if you’re hosting a gigantic festival, exhibition, brand launch or even birthday party let us know. We can even create something innovative and unique for you in our Platinum package.

I hope these new tweaks and features help hosting a live Instagram slideshow even more enjoyable to you and your guests.

Keep smiling, keep tagging, and keep sharing content.

Yours

The Eventstagram Team

Brands Focus On User Generated Instagram Content

Over the last few months stories about established Brands taking to Instagram as part of their social media strategy have been hitting our web browsers more regularly than most of London's Techcity change their underwear. But Eventstagram have found that brands are not only creating their own content, they are also trying to build a social buzz through user submitted photos around a hashtag at live events.

'Eventstagram Was The Perfect Fit'

Elle, alongside Mercedes Benz, invited selected members of their network to an exclusive evening party in Stockholm. They displayed the images on a huge screen and saw hundreds of photos posted using the #ELLEEFTERFEST hashtag. Brand marketing agency Ibeyo Studio used Eventstagram for the first time with the view to get their crowd to feel closer to the brand and a larger art of the event. They were ecstatic with the result'  ‘Eventstagram was a perfect fit for our Elle event. It was fun, social and creative, giving our guests the opportunity to interact directly with our brand.’

@sososomajovenai

@hacan

'Sky High Live Photos For Air New Zealand'

In addition Air New Zealand hosted a rooftop launch in Sydney Australia to interact with new customers. By having a live display of the Instagram photos the crowd were taking the brand were able to encourage more content to be curated and enable it to become a viral message across Australia.   “Simple to set up, easy to use and really worked well in the rooftop open air cinema environment. It made certain that our selected invitees were publishing content and sharing it around the world.”

@talei_larson_fijianprincess

@bridie_williams

So by using a live Instagram feed at their events, brands are able to encourage more photos to be taken using their events hashtag, widening their exposure to their contacts networks rather than just their own.

Eventstagram CEO Dan Strang says 'Brands are coming to us, as uniquely we offer visual displays that can be fully customised to their identity. In our Gold package we have an online template editor. But for larger events clients can provide any artwork and our specialist development team will create a feed to match it'

Eventstagram have been supplying brands and major events with bespoke Instagram feeds since November 2012 and have already hosted over 2,500 individual events via their web application. Having recently been selected as one of the new cohort at the London wayra academy, the company have big plans for growing the platform. Developments include; a reporting dashboard for organisers to analyse the impact of the feed and interact with users at the event, a Web widget to display the photos that have been taken, integration with multiple social networks and video backgrounds.

Brands are constantly looking for a new way to engage their customers and it seems with live Instagram slideshows they have found something that is entertaining, rewarding for the user but crucially able to build a powerful user generated social media message.

What Hashtag Should You Use For Your Live Wall?

Social media managers spend days, months and even years making sure that their brand or organisation are doing the right thing to get 'trending' on Twitter or Instagram. However, often they have missed out on one of the key variables - the actual hashtag.

We at Eventstagram spend a lot of time working with brands, large events and venues to ensure they can amplify the Instagram photos that their crowd are taking. Our software has proven results in generating more content, but for the event to make the most use of this extra content we always advise them to take special care with the hashtag they are selecting.

Here are our top tips:

1. Be specific 
If you're displaying live photos from your event you want to make sure that the photos are actually related to your event rather than another brand. Perhaps include the year, or the event number, but always check no one is using your hashtag before you advertise it.

2. Be visible 
If you're a brand of crisps and you want to be get your name noticed by new crisp customers, don't just make your hashtag your brand name. If they don't know your name they are unlikely to search for it so going to find it impossible to find it. Try attaching a more common phrase like 'crisps' or a location like 'london' to the brands hashtag so it becomes more discoverable with people searching for the other terms.

3. Be Interesting 
Often it is more interesting on social media for users to discover the meaning behind Hashtags rather than being told by a brand what is best. Continuing the crisp brand example you could use the 'crunchy london' which is discoverable but not obvious. So when users find the tag and see the photos of of the crisp brand they are more engaged than an obviously manufactured hashtag.

4. Be Memorable 
Finally if you want to encourage crowds to take photos on your hashtag then you should make sure users can remember, spell and type the hashtag with ease!

When using Instagram at an event an Eventstagram live feed is a fantastic way to drive Instagram photos to be taken around your selected hashtag. 

But make sure that before you're sitting on thousands of user generated photographs you have fully analysed the best hashtag for those photos to be amplified and discovered. 

The Eventstagram Wedding

Let’s call it wedding perfection

Who wants to get married in the dead of winter? Well, Stephanie and Brian thought it was the perfect time to say I do and got married this past January in the heart of downtown Boston at the historic Park Plaza Hotel.  Their ceremony featured a 200-person candle-lighting and a ring-bearer on a tricycle, and their reception featured food stations and Eventstagr.am. Read about their advice and experience using Eventstagram at their wedding:

In addition to Gangnam style, I'm pretty sure the other clear marker that I got married in the year twenty thirteen will be Instagram. I'm sure 20 years down the road it will seem like the most antiquated invention on the planet. But for now, three cheers for Instagram…AND eventstagr.am.

Lisa, fabulous Lisa, (my maid of honor) gets all the credit for this awesome addition to my wedding.  I was verbally processing all of my wedding plans to her, which included my conundrum about a wedding photo booth. Wedding photo booths are also quintessential I-got-married-in-the-year-2013, don’t you agree?.  They seemed so fun, but also kind of pricey. Lisa had reminded me of a few friends who had DIY photo booths, but that seemed like a lot of work and my DIY projects only seem to have a 2 out of 10 success rate (turns out I’m not the domestic DIY goddess that exists on pinterest).  

THEN, she had this brilliant idea that there must be some way to stream live photos that guests took throughout the night.  This seemed like a fun alternative. I agreed that in theory this technology should exist,  but where and how--it was all too much for my brain.  She volunteered herself to do some research and with the help of hubby Jerry, voila: hello eventstagr.am, my new best friend.

Here’s how it works – you sign up, create a hashtag, decide when you want the live stream to run, set up a laptop and projector (oh, make sure there is wireless!), pull up the Eventstagr.am url and….that’s all! How easy is that? All pictures with your hashtag appearing in a live stream right before your eyes. See again, Eventstagram, my new best friend.

For starters, what bride doesn't want to have her own wedding hashtag? Secondly, we had the pictures streaming right behind the dance floor.   I couldn’t think of a better backdrop to the dance floor.  Let’s be honest everyone is a slight narcissist, so busting a move while seeing photos of yourself appear on a screen, well it’s a good ego boost for all of your lovely guests.   Not only was it so fun to instantly see pics from around the room that people were taking, but for days (weeks) after it was the best invention ever for my nostalgic and egocentric self to look through picture after picture and remember the wonderful day.

Lisa still gets the credit for believing that somewhere in the world this technology must exist.  And Eventstagram gets all the credit for being the place where it does.  If you ask me—and I’m entirely unbiased—I’d say my wedding was pretty stellar.  And Eventstagram, definitely helped to make that way.  Cheers.

To see all the Eventstagram photos click here

Stephanie blogs here at Tortoise in the Hair and spends the rest of her time here working in Cambridge with her neighbors from around the world.

Eventstagram Gets a Brazilian (Business Partner....)

Eventstagram is proud to announce a new partnership with 'Fun Content Brasil' - one of the leading social media agencies in Rio De Janeiro. 


Fun Content Brasil are passionate about social media, and work with brands, venues and events to ensure they are generating and amplifying productive content to their followers.


Eventstagram is a perfect fit to their business model. Our live Instagram feeds have already generated a buzz in some of their clients bars and restaurants but CEO Mateus has his sights set on even bigger targets; 


'We want to see Eventstagram at the final of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But before then we have countless Brasilian festivals and huge events we know that Eventstagram can play a big part at' 

For any clients wishing to display live Instagram feeds at their events in Brasil please get in contact with Mateus from Fun Content Brasil on mateus@funcontentbrasil.com

Eventstagram Receives Funding From Wayra

3 days in Slough, are not often described as inspiring, energetic and life-changing but for Eventstagram Wayra Week was all of that and more. 

The process began months ago when we first submitted our application to become part of next Wayra cohort. Wayra, part of Telefonica, invests in up to 20 UK technology startups each year. It provides 9 months of mentoring, funding and office space in return for a small percentage equity in each company. 3,444 companies applied to be considered and through a series of interviews and written applications they had whittled it down to a final 30 (of which Eventstagram was one) to be invited to Wayra Week. 

The first major realisation was that Wayra Week was actually only 3 days. As much as this was a relief to some, this only intensified the process. The three days were jam packed with inspirational talks, educational workshop and of course the grilling dragons den style pitch. 

Wayra Week In Instagram (by Eventstagram):

Bright and early on Tuesday 26th March, we arrived at the fantastic O2 offices, where we were to be hosted for the next few days.

However the skies didn't reflect our high spirits. And even without the Instagram filter, Slough and the UK lived up to it's continued, and thus far valid, reputation of constantly grey and dreary. 

@dmdstrang

The rules were not yet written,

 @eventstagr_am

but the schedule it seems had - all over some huge iPhones dotted around the room. 

Most of the first morning was spent going through this schedule, being officially welcomed by Simon Devonshire (Head of Wayra Europe), Charmaine Eggberry (Wayra UK Academy Director) and Feilim Mackle (Head Judge/O2 Sales and Service Director), as well as the nerve racking selection of the pitch times. 

@dmdstrang

@eventstagr_am

We were fully prepped for the pitch so the earlier the better. But, alas we were given the graveyard slot of 4pm on Wednesday, 7 hours into the judges marathon session. 

'Talks'

Across the three days there were some incredible workshops, and the first afternoon started with a bang. There were two pitching classes where we learnt to stand up straight like a royal guard, present like a kids TV presenter and whisper about our brand and idea!

Whilst we weren't polishing our pitch, we also had some talks from WAYN founder Pete Ward, Carrie Green from Female Entrepreneur Association and Oli Barrett from Start Up Britain, learning vital tips from those in the know. 

@eventstagr_am 

@eventstagr_am

We launched ourselves head first into these sessions, wanting to make sure even if we didn't get the investment we could learn as much as possible to progress Eventstagram, and it worked wonders. 

We not only got a very quick guide to the community, we even formed some relationships which will no doubt help Eventstagram up that starting ladder. 

'Pitching'

But, our 15 minutes to really prove ourselves came in the form of a 10 minute pitch to 7 top tech investors, entrepreneurs and analysts, with 5 more minutes of questioning. 

And so after practicing to family, friends, mentors, 'Wayra buddies' (thanks @mat_ankers), dogs, cats and anyone who would listen, we were finally up. 

The judges sat in huge Dragons Den style chairs waiting for us to set up. Not willing to engage in small talk, I quickly began: 

The pitch went perfectly; there were some tough questions, but we had anticipated most of them, so we were satisfied with a day (months) job well done. 

All to do now was to wait the evening out, or to go and see our potential new offices, drink some free beer, eat some tasty burritos and watch 'Don't Pitch Me Bro'. So we choose the latter, met some great people, and saw some awesome new products. 

 @eventstagr_am

@dmdstrang

The culmination of the three days was an agonising wait to see which of the 30 start ups would be selected to receive the seed investment and relocate to the fantastic Wayra offices. 


And it was hell. As each name was read out our hearts sank further and further into the chairs, and the pressure mounted more and more. 

But after what seemed like hours, the 14th name was read. With a huge cheer, and outstretched arms we bounced onto the stage to collect the trophy.



@eventstagr_am

I can't really remember what I said when I got the trophy but this is what I wanted to say:

'Spending three days with the Wayra team, in the O2 offices and meeting what seems like only a tiny proportion of the Wayra family we have already gained a huge injection into the knowledge and contact base of the Eventstagram business.

Imagine what we are going to learn in 9 months.'

@eventstagr_am

We can't wait to take our place in the Wayra offices on April 29th. We know there is a huge market out there for live Instagram feeds at events and we know Wayra are the right partners to help accelerate us. 

It's going to be a fun 9 months - we hope you enjoy it with us!

On another note we have already been incredibly resourceful with our trophy - it seconds as a great dummy:

@eventstagr_am