Communicators are always busy, and sometimes trying to balance your task list with the need for beautiful, engaging content can be a challenge. Fortunately, there’s some help available – five different ways to get stunning and up-to-date messages out to your audience with a minimum of effort. You’ll probably want to combine elements of all five for maximum impact. Each type of ready-made digital signage content has been designed by our award-winning team of talented multimedia artists to be attractive and effective while still allowing you some control over the final look.
1. Pick & Fill Templates
Just need to get some messages up quickly with no time or design training? Consider our series of 1000+ Pick & Fill message templates for the most common message types, like announcements, birthdays and employee or student recognition. There’s a lot of flexibility, with some being text only and others having an image placeholder for you to include you own artwork.
Choose the template, then customize it – they come in eight color options (plus black & white and transparent backgrounds) and six different aspect rations. You can create and manage everything in the CMS, which is web based so you can work on your content from anywhere with an internet connection. Then simply schedule your new messages into a playlist and you’re ready to go.
2. Signage Packs & Kits
If you want to get some up-to-the-minute information in front of your audience, go for one of our many digital signage content packs and kits. Packs give you artwork you can easily import into AxisTV Signage Suite and kits give you predesigned layouts that are ready to get mapped to your specific data source. Use our events, directory, menu boards and other kits for a foundation that you can then tweak to your specifications and branding.
Take these basics and make them your own with your logo, background image and so on, or just use the stock elements that are already included. When you’re done customizing in AxisTV Design, just sync with the CMS and you’re off and running with beautiful, accurate information that updates in realtime all on its own.
3. Subscription Feeds
If you don’t have time to create any content, or you just want to supplement your messages, we have easy subscription feeds that are specifically designed for digital signage. Curated content feeds give you beautiful, auto-updating visuals for a variety of topics for as low as 33 cents a day.
Choose from items like weather, traffic, sports, stocks, news in pictures, flight boards, social media, inspirational quotes, and health and wellness info. You simply point to a URL for the feed you want. Set them up once, then sit back and enjoy fresh content on your screens.
4. Media Directory
If you have multiple people contributing messages for your screens, there’s an option for managing content outside of AxisTV Signage Suite.
The media directory points to a shared folder stored someplace on your network. Contributors put their messages and media files in that folder, and the media directory widget just pulls right from there, importing everything into a playlist inside your layout. This is a perfect option if you have lots of people participating or if you’re already creating content outside of AxisTV Signage Suite’s design tools. After all, why do the work twice?
5. HTML5 Message Playlist Viewer
Increase your digital signage reach and real estate by sending message playlists out to many types of devices. When creating a playlist in the CMS, simply tick a box and just like that, your playlist is ready for playback on smartphones, tablets, your intranet or webpage, etc. And it’s all HTML5, so the messages scale to the size of the screen showing them. You’ll get a dedicated URL to share with your audience via email, or you can embed it in your own internal or external webpage for playback there using a simple iframe.
You have customization options here as well. Choose which files types to display (designed messages, videos, etc.). You can show or hide playback controls (forward, back, pause) and even control the style of those buttons. If you have transparent messages, simply choose a background color so your message stands out when viewed in a browser.
Again, you don’t have to duplicate your work to send a message out to remote employees or off-site stakeholders. Once you’ve created a message, you can schedule it to screens for those working on site and embed it in your intranet homepage for remote workers. Everyone’s now on the same page, seeing the same great-looking messages, and it’s less work for you.
Using these simple tools can save you a lot of time and effort, without sacrificing quality, content or branding standards. You might only use one, or maybe all five options make sense for you. Why not use every tool at your disposal to communicate better? If we can help you with content, let us know.