As our society embraces technology and reduces the number of face-to-face interactions, digital signage has become an essential tool to fill in communication gaps. With digital signage, companies can display messages for employees, clients, and visitors virtually anywhere. Not only does this simplify and streamline the exchange of information, but it gives companies the opportunity to leave a lasting impression and ensure that people are engaged with their environment.
However, creating a worthwhile digital signage experience requires an effective content design strategy. A study from the market research group Nielsen discovered that Americans spend over 11 hours a day watching, reading, and interacting with media. As a result, those that choose to implement digital signage must create content that people genuinely want to see. Otherwise, it will fade into the background amongst all the distractions vying for their attention.
To create engaging content and reap the full benefits of this technology, use the following strategies to maximize the impact of your digital signage.
Identify Your Primary Audience
Before creating content for your digital signage, establish where the digital signage will be and consider the needs of your audience. If the signage is in the lobby, its purpose may be to entertain waiting clients or let them know what information they may need to give the receptionist. In other cases, you may require digital signage in the breakroom. Companies often use signage in these spaces to inform employees about current events or other vital announcements.
There are several different goals that may influence your strategy:
Increased productivity. Utilizing digital signage as an informative tool for announcements, information, or wayfinding streamlines administrative tasks and decreases the number of questions your staff must stop and address during their normal duties.
Increased sales. As with most aspects of your business, a primary goal that companies hope to achieve with digital signage is increased revenue. Content of this nature will raise brand awareness and provide information regarding your company’s products or services.
Increased customer engagement. Some messaging can be used to boost audience engagement with your brand. Use digital signage to direct viewers to your website, display videos from your online channels, or encourage them to interact with company social media pages.
Supporting brand image. Client-facing digital signage is also an effective way to solidify your brand’s reputation. For instance, sharing educational or innovative content positions you as an industry authority and thought leader.
Once you understand your audience and your goals, you will be able to better strategize what type of content will satisfy both their interests and yours.
Understand Your Content Capabilities
Although digital signage was once exclusive to big businesses only, smaller companies have realized the benefits of using digital signage to deliver engaging content. Fortunately, professional audiovisual integrators are able to work with teams of any size to choose digital signage solutions that suit the company’s needs.
However, when it comes time to create content, companies with limited financial resources often find themselves working with a small budget or limited experience. As such, they must realistically assess what kind of content they can execute well to make the most of their signage installations.
Consider the following when assessing your company’s content creation capabilities:
Staff Expertise: Who will be creating your content? What is their skill level in creating slideshows, graphics, or video assets? How can you make the best use of their abilities?
Scale: How large are your signage displays? What kind of content will be most visible and impactful? How much text can be reasonably displayed?
Budget: What time and resources can you allot to content creation? For instance, can you afford to hire a videographer to create high-quality video, or would you be better served by focusing on a well-executed slideshow? High-quality videography is a wonderful way to express your message but requires more effort and a more substantial budget than other types of content.
While you may aspire to cutting-edge content to display via digital signage, be honest about what you can accomplish. Ultimately, it’s better to finish simple content to a high degree of polish than to attempt complex content that exceeds your capabilities.
Integrate Existing Content Assets
Digital signage has the power to increase efficiency and productivity and strengthen the connection between your company and its audience. However, you don’t need to create entirely new content for a worthwhile digital display.
In many cases, internal audiences can view content that may have been sent in an email, such as policy changes, announcements, and employee success stories. You can even include content from training videos or internal presentations. External audiences may view existing content such as imagery or video taken from marketing campaigns, slideshows from conferences or seminars, and information borrowed from brochures.
By incorporating existing assets, you can minimize the extra time and effort required to create compelling content for your digital signage.
Create an Achievable Update Schedule
Unlike static signage, digital displays have the ability to update as often as you like. You can create one set of content to play continuously for weeks or months, or you can customize your digital signage to display different content based on the day or time. Of course, these variables will depend on the audience, purpose, and goals of your signage. But if the same viewers are likely to encounter your signage on a regular basis, it becomes important to update it regularly, or they may start ignoring your messaging.
Many companies choose to change their content three times a day. This may sound frequent, but people will want to see different content in the morning, afternoon, and evening. To accommodate this schedule, you always have the option to automate these processes to ensure that your content updates automatically. Furthermore, digital signage software allows you to optimize your displays with features that share real-time weather updates, event news, performance KPIs, emergency alerts, and other updates that support a dynamic content experience.
If you’re interested in employing these features but are not sure where to start, audiovisual integration experts can help you find the best digital signage for business and learn how to harness your display’s capabilities.
