Substance in a Screen: How to Optimize Content in Your Company’s Digital Signage

Digital Signage Screens refer to the large display technologies that use LCD, LED, and projection to display content such as digital images, video, streaming media, text, infographics, and other information. They can be found in public spaces, transportation systems, museums, stadiums, retail stores, hotels, restaurants, and corporate buildings. These magnificent screens can serve various purposes: announcements, advertising, entertainment, or education. For corporations, these screens can even be further maximized by making it interactive, and utilizing it for company surveys, food order and delivery, welcoming visitors, showing meeting schedules, weather reports, or attendance recording. More and more campuses, government institutions, and corporations are finding their own ways to benefit from this increasingly affordable technology.

Digital signage screens’ popularity and usefulness are out of the question since this spectacle has already proven itself. In this day and age, only companies who live under the rock haven’t considered using this precious little thing.

Now that you have this notification system, or is considering to purchase, the next question is how to optimize content in your company’s digital signage screens. Here are some tips to make sure that your content is worth your audiences’ while:

1. Identify your target audience

Who needs to see this announcement? Who needs to answer the survey? To whom are you selling the lunch menu that you will be posting? Gather all the necessary viewing preference of your employees and use it to strategize your content. If your employees are a bit on the younger side, make sure that your content is short but sweet. If you want to convey it to executives, make sure that your language is sophisticated. Furthermore, make sure that they will see it on their free time. It would be no use to create a very catchy announcement for your executives and managers, only for the entry-level employees to see. Make sure that the right employees see the intended message real time.

2. You only have 15 seconds to fame

The employees don’t have the whole day to stare at those bright digital signage screens, and read or watch as they please. If you’re going to make a complicated message, make sure that the words are just enough and comprehensible enough to be read in one long glance.

3. If you have new protocols, use graphics and scenarios

The protocol is meant to be followed and you implemented it so others will have a behavior change inside the office. For instance, earlier call times, shorter lunch breaks, new rules on use of equipment- those are all protocols that aim behavior change. Instead of just writing it down, a narrative will retain longer and deeper into the audiences’ hearts and minds, having a higher chance of it being followed more than forgotten.

4. Think outside the box

As digital signage screens are innovative and highly technological in nature, the content to be flashed should be as forward-looking. Instead of the traditional advertising or announcement techniques, explore other methods such as three-dimensional displays, water screens, or reverse screen: using the signage as a camera for the audience to co-create content.

5. Make a content calendar

This is to ensure that your audience or employees only get to see the same announcement, advertisement, or information for an ample period. Having been able to view it either for a very short or long time will not be efficient. They can forget about what’s on the screen, or be bombarded with the same thing, causing distress or irritation. A content calendar should document which information or clips will come out on specific hours, in specific days, and who are the audience in each.