We talk a lot about improving content designs for your big screens. Here are three strategic considerations that can help you boost the effectiveness of digital signage overall.
1. Understand your audience
We harp a lot on “engage and inform”, but this is critical to successful communications. You can’t inform people if you don’t engage them. You not only have to grab their attention – you have keep it long enough for them to absorb the information you’re imparting and to understand whatever action you want them to take.
In order to engage your audience, you have to understand them. You must know what excites them, what they care about, that they need from you, and what they’re willing to give up their time to notice, engage with and act upon.
Here are some articles that can help:
- Using Color Psychology to Design Digital Signage Messages
- Design Digital Signage Content with a Vengeance
- Intrinsic Social Motivation/Learning Factors Applied to Digital Signage
- Digital Signage Message Design: Emotional Triggers
2. Manage it like a product instead of a project
Don’t get bogged down in daily message creation tasks. That’s managing your digital signage like a project. Instead manage your digital signage as a product. It is a product – a communications product.
Project managers are responsible for the successful delivery of a one-time endeavor with a goal, scope, deadline, budget, and other constraints. Product managers are responsible for the overall and ongoing success of a product.
A project can be long-term, but usually has a final conclusion that you’re aiming for. Product management, on the other hand, is always long-term. It encompasses crafting the product, distributing it, measuring success and improving and updating it over time.
Your digital signage should be managed as a continuous communications effort with no end in sight. As you craft your goals, policies, messages and measurement tools, you need to consider past performance, present strategies and future needs at every stage.
3. Have cheerleaders
Most organizations have a champion who initiates the purchase and implementation of a digital signage system. However, you have to have people who continuously support and sponsor the system after it is up and running for it to be effective.
Cheerleaders should promote both sides of the digital signage equation – content creation and content viewing – up and down the ladder. If you don’t have someone encouraging people to contribute messages, your screens will become stale and boring. If you don’t educate new employees about the benefits of their contributing content, they won’t bother. And, if you aren’t motivating your audience to interact and react, there’s no point to any of it.
Be sure that your cheerleaders have a broad understanding of the benefits of digital signage, and not just the technology.