EPISODE 5 | Guest: Ellyce Kelly, client relationship manager for Visix
Content is king in communications, and with digital signage it is literally the entire point. Sure, your screens might look good, but if what’s on them has no value to the audience, they’ll just stop paying attention.
It can be difficult to come up with something new to show on your screens every single day, but that’s the goal. We’ve put together this podcast to help give you some digital signage content ideas and inspiration. There are some things you can create on your own, but you also probably have a lot of existing content that can be repurposed for your digital signs, and a lot of great sources for content within your organization.
- Understand how to source and convert PowerPoint presentations for digital signage
- Learn about turning your print materials into digital messaging
- Recognize when and where to use videos on digital signs
- Explore interactivity for engagement, with or without touchscreens
- Get 11 more great ideas for digital signage messages that will engage viewers
BONUS: Get our Digital Signage Cheat Sheet with 100 content ideas
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Learn more about this topic in our Masterclass Guide 3: Digital Signage Content
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: Content is king, they say. And sure, your screens might look good, but if what’s on them is of no value to your audience, then they’re just not going to pay any attention. And I know it could be quite difficult sometimes to figure out, “Gosh, what can I do – put up on my screens? This constant need for content. I need inspiration and ideas.” You know, actually it’s all around you. You already have this stuff probably in your own organization. You’ve got people that you can tap. There’s actually quite a bit out there. So, today we’re going to talk to Ellyce Kelly, client relationship manager for Visix. Hi Ellyce.
Ellyce Kelly: Hi Derek.
Derek DeWitt: How are you?
Ellyce Kelly: Great. Thanks for having me.
Derek DeWitt: Marvelous. Thank you for being on. We’re going to talk about some of these ideas, and I’d like to thank Ellyce for joining us and thank everybody for listening.
Derek DeWitt: There’s really no limit to what you can put on digital signs, right? I mean, you can kind of put anything you want. I think you kind of need to know the audience. You don’t want to put up a bunch of stuff about, I don’t know, Vietnamese pig farming practices if nobody cares.
Ellyce Kelly: No one cares. It’s a great point. You do need to know your audience.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. Right. You have to be able to do that so that you can figure out what motivates them, what interests them. And I’d like to take this opportunity to mention that you can also download our content guide, which is the Masterclass 3 guide. And we also have a digital signage cheat sheet infographic, which you can find the link below in the transcript. It’s a hundred message ideas.
Ellyce Kelly: It is awesome.
Derek DeWitt: It’s a lot of ideas. We’re going to talk about some of those. So, let’s do this like a game. I’m going to throw something at you…
Ellyce Kelly: Oh, I like it.
Derek DeWitt: …and you tell me how I can leverage that into digital signage messages.
Ellyce Kelly: You could do this with your digital signage messaging. Make a little game out of it. Okay, I like it. Let’s roll with that.
Derek DeWitt: And again, if you have any – because you deal with clients a lot – and so if you have any examples, how awesome for us, because we can see some real-world examples. So, let’s talk about sort of DIY content – leveraging stuff that’s already around the organization.
All right, so…PowerPoint. Everybody’s got a PowerPoint or 10 or a million. What do I do? How can I turn these into digital signage messages?
Ellyce Kelly: You’re right. Everybody has PowerPoint. So, if you already have PowerPoint – great, you can just import it and schedule it. However, if it’s a really lengthy, wordy PowerPoint, let’s scale that down, the text down. Maybe get a little few more graphics in there if you don’t have a lot of good graphics. And I’m not talking about clip art – nobody wants to see any clip art. That’s a thing of the past. Let’s just get the critical information that I need to know for that message to be relevant. You’re not adding text; you’re removing text from the PowerPoint nine times out of 10.
Derek DeWitt: You’re subtracting, getting down to the bare essentials.
Ellyce Kelly: Just to the bare essentials. But that is a quick way to get content on your screens. I have a lot of K-12 customers, even, that will use Google Slides. So, they might have a PowerPoint that several people are contributing to, or have access to, to maybe make tweaks to, make changes to, or they can add a new PowerPoint to Google slides. We can just simply point to that URL, and content automatically updates when they go in and make a change.
Derek DeWitt: Okay. What about printed material? A lot of companies, schools, everybody, they’ve got tons of printed material hanging around.
Ellyce Kelly: Lots of PDFs.
Derek DeWitt: True. Also electronic, the electronic version of printed, yeah?
Ellyce Kelly: The electronic version of printed typically is going to exist somewhere. You could import that. But again, if I made a flyer, let’s say that I posted around campus…
Derek DeWitt: Under windshield wipers.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, under windshield wipers, perhaps in a break room area. I’ve got lots of flyers. Sure, if you’ve got the electronic version or you can scan it, you can import it. Is my audience going to look at that? Print is a little bit different than digital signage. We need to, again, scale the content down. You can copy and paste it, put it into a very quick Word document, PowerPoint, whatever you need. Just make it short, sweet and to the point. You can get that up on your signs really quick.
Derek DeWitt: Or if your CMS has design tools integrated in, right? You just take the basic essentials. Let’s say, for example, both PowerPoint and let’s say we have, I don’t know, a trifold brochure. There’s a lot of info on there. A trifold brochure is going to have a cover and a back that you don’t need. It’s going to have four long pages of information. A PowerPoint presentation is going to be, what, 10, 15, 20 minutes long, dozens of slides? What about taking the main elements of that and turning them into a series of connected messages? So, you’ve got three or four or five messages that all sort of together tell a narrative or tell a story. Do people do this?
Ellyce Kelly: They do. You don’t want them to stay up on the screen too long. Again, you want to keep the content short, sweet, and to the point, because your audience…keep in mind – transient audience. They’re walking by nine times out of ten. Sometimes you’ll have them in a waiting area. It depends on where the screens are located. You might have them at an elevator where there’s a little bit more time, unless you’ve got some really fast elevators. So, you don’t want to make something too long to where they don’t get the whole point of the message you’re trying to get across.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Make sure that you’ve designed them in a way that creates cohesion.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes.
Derek DeWitt: Okay. What about community news? I think very often we forget that this is people communicating with people. And, if it’s a corporate campus or university or hospital or whatever, everybody who’s there, they live in the community. They work in the community. They shop. Kids go to school there. How can I pull that information in.
Ellyce Kelly: You’re probably already getting that information from somewhere. You’ve maybe signed up for a community newsletter, your chamber of commerce. You’re probably getting that information to your email, which you have a thousand emails, right? But what if you can take some of that information in that newsletter that you might be getting, copy and paste the pertinent information, or you can just go to their website if you know something that’s happening. You know where to get that information, if you’re not getting it delivered to you. Copy those details, put them into a quick message.
Again, you can use your software to do that. Very easy. You can even – if you already have fill-in message templates created, oh boy, those are the way to go. Because that’s just copy and paste, schedule and you’re done. As quick as PowerPoint if not quicker. It is quicker.
Derek DeWitt: 15 words – boom.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes. Less than 60 seconds, sometimes less than 30 seconds to get that scheduled.
Derek DeWitt: “Butch Walker performing here, this date, $15.”
Ellyce Kelly: Yes. And then recycle days; DEA take-back days for your unused medication. I love to know when there are farmer’s markets that are opening – those are seasonal. That’d be great to be able to see that on the screen and say, “Oh, it’s opening this weekend”, or whenever.
Derek DeWitt: Now what about the arguments that, let’s say – I always imagine this big sort of like the monopoly guy boss, you know, saying, “We make widgets. What does that have to do with widgets?” What’s the argument for putting stuff not about our organization on our digital signs? Why? Why involve community information?
Ellyce Kelly: That’s a great question. That builds the community of your work family, right? That brings you closer together. So, when you are building those widgets, you have a better sense of community. It’s not just all about work, right? You’re giving them information that’s useful to them, so they think, “Wow, I saw that at work today.” That’s a great thing.
They might not have a lot of time when they get home and they might, that might help them with their family to go out this weekend to see Butch Walker.
Derek DeWitt: “C’mon kids!”
Ellyce Kelly: [Okay,] perhaps maybe not “the family”. I don’t know; he’s family friendly. But you get the idea.
Derek DeWitt: Or there’s a circus in town or whatever.
Ellyce Kelly: Right. You might even run into some of your coworkers there. It might be fun to see them outside of work, but it just builds, it’s not all about, “We made this widget, and we made this widget better.” Everybody knows that. They contributed to making the widget better.
Derek DeWitt: What about webpages? I know a lot of people like to just stick a webpage up there.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah, “Let’s just schedule our homepage as a message.” That makes no sense whatsoever. No, let’s not do that. But I’ll give you one of my favorites all time. So, I have a customer, they are essentially selling space in a retail mixed-use environment. They’ve got people living, they’ve got people that have retail shops. And so, in their headquarters they have this beautiful video wall, and they want to show just how busy that area is that they’re selling that space or leasing that space.
Derek DeWitt: Like foot traffic, car traffic?
Ellyce Kelly: Yes. So, heat maps display visitors, and obviously also residents, to this area.
And so, they can see this on their digital signage. It’s part of a big video wall. And they can see what is happening and say, “Wow, this is the most number of visitors we’ve had this on this date”; “This is the number of visitors we have right now”, and that thing is constantly moving and changing, and the heat is constantly moving.
Derek DeWitt: And that’s in real time, or close to real time?
Ellyce Kelly: That’s in real time. Great webpage. That’s a great use of a webpage to me.
Another great use of a webpage would be, for example, automated subscriptions. Typically, those are webpages that are auto-updating that can be customized to your look and your brand and all that good stuff. Those are constantly updating and feeding. They fit perfectly. Everything fits perfectly on the screen, and in the area that you’ve chosen to display that information.
Derek DeWitt: At the right resolution.
Ellyce Kelly: At the right resolution. But if you have a webpage that you’re pointing to that…I’ll give you an example of what not to do here. So, if you have maybe some events that are showing, that you’re showing on your website, but you have a scroll bar. And it’s showing in this nice little narrow field. Well, if you have to interact with that on your PC or your laptop, and you have to scroll down? Well what if you don’t have interactive displays? And even if you do, you’re looking at a tiny little desktop area of events that no one wants. Let’s get those events automated, and we’ll do that a different way. They’ll look beautiful and look however you want, and people will be able to read them.
Derek DeWitt: And, it’s not a lot of work, I think.
Ellyce Kelly: It’s so easy. Super quick.
Derek DeWitt: All right – how to; “how to” tips and tricks – Leveraging the actual people in the organization.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, you can do this. So… how to make beer at home?
Derek DeWitt: Because Joe makes beer, and he knows all about it.
Ellyce Kelly: Joe loves beer. Joe likes beer a lot.
Derek DeWitt: He’s a beer maniac.
Ellyce Kelly: He’s a beer connoisseur.
Derek DeWitt: I was going to say “glutton”, but okay.
Ellyce Kelly: Or, you know, how to buy concert tickets without going through, let’s say, a big place that charges you a lot of money. There are people in this building that know that, believe it or not.
Derek DeWitt: Right. So like lifestyle hacks.
Ellyce Kelly: Lifestyle hacks.
Derek DeWitt: Ah, that’s pretty cool.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah. How do you smoke barbecue? I’ve got a customer who’s great at smoking stuff – one of his favorite things to do – and he’s always got really good tips. I should put some of those up. I bet when he listens to this, he’ll know that I’m talking about him.
Derek DeWitt: You know who you are, pal.
So, you can kind of go around and leverage the outside-work expertise of people, or find out what they’re interested in. And then go, “Hey, it turns out a lot of people, weirdly enough, love making Easter baskets. So here’s how to make a great Easter basket.”
Ellyce Kelly: For under $5.
Derek DeWitt: For under $5, yeah. And you know, we’re in an interesting time because, especially on social media, but all over the place, you get these clickbait articles – five ways to do this, six ways to do this, five ways to do this. I mean, that kind of thing, to me it almost feels like it’s pre-made for a medium like digital signage, you know. But, with digital signage you don’t want to take up… you don’t want to make it too busy. So you go top three.
Ellyce Kelly: Top three. Could do top five if they’re super short.
Derek DeWitt: Right, right. What about loyalty programs? I know some companies have loyalty programs. Obviously the retail version of that is, it’s “Buy 10 coffees, get one free” and things like that. How can that be leveraged onto digital signage?
Ellyce Kelly: You can certainly reward loyal viewers or viewing behavior, and then you can learn about your audience at the same time.
Derek DeWitt: What with polls and surveys and things like this?
Ellyce Kelly: Polls, surveys – great ways to get people engaged. Because if you think about it, think about Facebook. Have you ever taken a survey or a poll or a test on Facebook? I think they’re called “tests”.
Derek DeWitt: What Harry Potter character you are….
Ellyce Kelly: There you go. I did a Brittany Spears test one time….
Derek DeWitt: And you probably aced it.
Ellyce Kelly: I got a hundred. It’s the only test I’ve ever made a hundred on, but I did ace it. But a lot of people like those. Even people that I would say…some of my friends that I would say I would think they would never click on one of those – they’ve done it. They’ve all done it on Facebook.
Derek DeWitt: They’re just so enticing, how can you not?
Ellyce Kelly: They’re fun.
Derek DeWitt: So, how do you set something like that up? You put up, say, a digital signage message with what? Like a QR code or a short URL that go to a Survey Monkey or dedicated webpage you created with five questions on it, or what?
Ellyce Kelly: All of those are great ideas. And you can even just say, “Hey, if you go to the intranet, it’s on the homepage. Click the link at the top of the homepage.” Done and done.
Derek DeWitt: I heard about, there was a university that went to ask questions of their student body. And they put things up on the digital signs saying, “Hey, fill out our surveys”, and they gamified it somehow, you know, random drawing. And they actually had tables set up right there underneath the displays with the surveys. Five questions, no more – because people won’t do it otherwise – with pencils. And yes, people stole the pencils. They had to replace them. But still you have to make it easy, right? You have to go “Boom, it’s really easy.” If you make me hunt around, I’m not going to do it.
Ellyce Kelly: No, that’s a great idea – a great way to do it if you need to print something. If you’ve got a phone – everyone has a phone in their hand – and they can scan something that immediately takes them to that survey. That’s also a great way to get an immediate response because, of course, as soon as they walk away from the display, the chances are they’re not going to go back and do it.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Let’s talk videos. Should we put videos on digital signs?
Ellyce Kelly: Well, it depends. I’m usually not a big fan of video. Here’s why – because most videos that you already have, they’re long. It depends on what they were made for. Are they 20 seconds? Are they 10 seconds? Those might be great, because video is captivating, right? When I think of video on digital signage, I’m thinking animated video backgrounds. That is a great use of video on digital signage.
Not all customers are going to need video. I’ve seen videos that go up that are two, three, four minutes long. They have audio associated with them. Those are great for YouTube, but I don’t have audio on my displays. But there’s no captions in the video. There’s no, how do I even know what’s happening in the video? And three minutes later, I’m long gone.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. Who’s going, “Let me just stand here for four minutes. I was going somewhere, but I’m going to stand here and watch this video.”?
Ellyce Kelly: And nine times out of 10, if you have interactive displays and you have video playing, everybody’s trying to figure out, “Where is the back button, how do I get back to the home screen? How do I stop the video? I’ve decided I don’t want to watch that.” I have a lot of customers tell me that.
Derek DeWitt: So, it just becomes like a real-world annoying pop-up.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, that’s a great way to put it. An annoying pop up. But it depends. It really depends on the location of the displays and what you’re trying to communicate.
Derek DeWitt: Uh-huh. So short video, judiciously used, animated backgrounds, animated weather icons or something like that. That might draw in.
Ellyce Kelly: Oh yeah.
Derek DeWitt: Okay. What about kudos? I see here in the offices, you guys have this kind of shout-out thing, which apparently is very, very popular.
Ellyce Kelly: One of my favorite things.
Derek DeWitt: What about giving recognition to people?
Ellyce Kelly: Well, everybody likes to see their name in lights. Well, almost everybody. So, we do have a new shout-out feature. I love this. You can go to the intranet, fill out a form (it’s on the homepage). You fill it out and it goes to the digital signage, and it lists who gave you the kudos. It says thank you. It’ll say, “Thank you from Dave”, and it literally thanks all the people you wanted to thank for a certain project.
So, you can do that with anybody; it’s a great way. Like I said, everybody – it always catches my eye if I see my name on that sign. And it’s also nice to do customer quotes, or if you’ve got something that some customer said something nice.
Derek DeWitt: A testimonial.
Ellyce Kelly: Testimonial. It’s great. Especially too, if you’re in technical support or development spaces, “I love this product. This product is amazing.”
Derek DeWitt: Or, if somebody sticks up a Google review, or on some consumer website or Facebook – grabbing those and sticking them up. Why not?
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, because the whole company is responsible for that. Everybody plays a part.
Derek DeWitt: What about profiles? I think this is always a potentially dicey area because… some people would love it. “Here’s Bob and he is our technical manager, and he likes goldfish and whatever…
Ellyce Kelly: …and cats, because those go together…
Derek DeWitt: …and he has a way to make them live peaceably….”
Ellyce Kelly: Yes.
Derek DeWitt: Some people like that stuff. Some people don’t like it. So how do you handle this?
Ellyce Kelly: Another idea might be to focus on a department or team. Oh, maybe perhaps, what their interests are, what they do. Kind of getting to know your team a little bit better. So, if you have somebody on the team who’s not super-excited about having their picture up there, you can focus on maybe a team effort.
Derek DeWitt: “Do you know what the quality assurance department does?”
Ellyce Kelly: I was going to say – “or finance?” Because to me that’s just numbers, but I know that they are very critical group.
Derek DeWitt: They just did this; they just did that. They just applied for a grant. They just received the grant, or something like that.
Ellyce Kelly: Three or four people just got their project management certification or something like that, or grad school.
Derek DeWitt: So, it could be projects in addition to departments and people?
Ellyce Kelly: Could be.
Derek DeWitt: What about training somehow? I mean, obviously you can use digital signage to say, “Hey, we have these training modules available”, or “There’s this training seminar coming up”, or whatever industry-specific certification deadlines are looming into the future. Are there other ways we can leverage digital signage to assist with training?
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. You might want to share a tip or something that maybe not everyone would know, that would benefit folks that maybe just took training. You could even do quizzes. You can say, “Hey, everybody was in the seminar, did you know this?” Or, “What are the three things that you learned?”, let’s say some goals of that seminar. Maybe you put up a little quiz to remind everybody, “Hey, you just took the seminar, and we know you took it. So, now answer this and then maybe take a picture of it, and then you might win something.”
Derek DeWitt: Right, so you can gamify it too.
Ellyce Kelly: You can gamify.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. It’s a nice way to remind people, “Hey, you know that training seminar you just did? Do you remember that this was the number one takeaway?”
Ellyce Kelly: Exactly. And we know it was mandatory and you probably didn’t want to go, but if you can answer this question first, we’ll give you money.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, get a coffee card or something.
Ellyce Kelly: Or an award or a trophy.
Derek DeWitt: Whatever. Or just, we’ll put it up on the screens.
Ellyce Kelly: Or you’ll get your name “in lights”.)
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. What about safety tips and guidelines and things like this? I know a lot of manufacturing uses this.
Ellyce Kelly: They do. This is a great thing to put up on the screen. Very quick, short, sweet. If you’ve got interactive displays, let them choose which safety tip they might want to watch.
Derek DeWitt: So, divide them up by categories and departments.
Ellyce Kelly: Yep. You can certainly schedule – if you don’t have interactive displays – then of course you can schedule at will what you need to. But keep them short, sweet, to the point. But if you have interactive displays, even better, because then they can choose maybe ones that they’re not so up-to-speed on. That’s a great learning tool but short, sweet, quick and allows them to get educated at the same time.
Derek DeWitt: Speaking of interacting with screens – we see this all the time – where you go even to a shopping center, certainly any trade show, you see it. This happened, it started a few years ago. The moment someone sees a screen at human level, reachable level, they just start pawing at it. They just start touching it. “Can I interact with this? Can I interact with this?” This is, I kind of feel, honestly at this point, any decent digital signage deployment kind of needs to have some interactive screens.
Ellyce Kelly: It really does. If you think about what’s in your hand, you have an interactive screen in your hand. It’s called your phone, your iPhone, your Pixel, you’re whatever it is, your Android.
Derek DeWitt: So then, what can we use it for? I mean, obviously we can go to directories.
Ellyce Kelly: You can. You can go out to directories, but if you’re trying to maybe incorporate, let’s say that sense of community, you could say, “Hey, thinking about lunch today, what do we have around here?” Touch. And then you get a…
Derek DeWitt: You guys have this in your lobby!
Ellyce Kelly: We are doing this right here at Visix. And I absolutely love it. I didn’t even know that about 40 of those restaurants existed. But first it says, “What are you feeling like? American cuisine?” You want, you know, “Do you want Italian?” “Interested in some salads, some healthy choices?” It’s great.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. I thought it was kind of cool because you go up, you select Dining in the Area. You can do it by cuisine. You can do it by location. At this particular shopping center there are these restaurants, and this…. So yeah, it’s actually pretty neat.
Ellyce Kelly: Community events – back to the Butch Walker. What’s the weather going be for Butch Walker, by the way? I can check the three-day forecast. I mean, there’s so much capability with interactive.
Derek DeWitt: Where is Butch Walker having lunch?
Ellyce Kelly: You can touch here to do this, and that touch can lead to another touch, that leads to another one, and another one that just takes you wherever you want to go.
Derek DeWitt: Because they’re all nested information.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes. And it’s what you – you are choosing what you want to see.
Derek DeWitt: And obviously wayfinding. I know Visix does a lot of custom wayfinding projects. That’s a huge part of interactive.
Ellyce Kelly: And you can take that on your phone too. So, you find out where you’re going, and you can get turn-by-turn directions.
Derek DeWitt: What about menu boards? I kind of think menu boards are awesome. I love menu boards because I love food because, you know, I love food. Menu boards, right?
Ellyce Kelly: Yes. I’m going to go to one of those restaurants that the digital signage told me to go to, and I would like to see menu boards. Why do you print anymore? And that way too, if we run out of something at the location where we have the food, then we can automatically update it super-quick instead of them saying, “Hey, I would like that BLT. Well, we’re all out of bacon”. I need to leave then.
Derek DeWitt: Or, “I’m not going there. I’m only going for the chili.”
Ellyce Kelly: Only for the chili. But, if you maybe can’t eat bacon because your doctor said that bacon’s not for you, or you’re allergic to tomatoes, then we can update the boards or have that information on the board where it’s visual, and it’s not just a long list of words – heart-healthy, non GMO, gluten-free. All of that can be communicated to you, the audience, in the form of an image.
Derek DeWitt: Which processes faster.
Ellyce Kelly: It processes faster.
Derek DeWitt: And I can imagine, I mean I’m not a vegan, but I can imagine for vegans, it must be a constant struggle of, “No, I said no butter.”
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, and gluten-free is also, you know, it’s tough. So those are, I love that. I love that about menu boards. And plus, let’s say the price changes…
Derek DeWitt: …or there’s a sale…
Ellyce Kelly: .…or there’s a sale.
Derek DeWitt: Now here’s a question – all right, that sounds great, but those are expensive, those touchscreens. I only have static displays, so I guess I’m out of the interactivity game. Is that true or is there a way to leverage static displays?
Ellyce Kelly: You’re really not out of the game. You want to make sure that your content is changing frequently to where it is almost like it’s interactive. It’s not quite the interactive experience, but where can they go to get more information?
Take the message space that you have, the retail area that you’ve got on your display, and use that to have hooks like weather and, “Hey, did you check out all the new community events that we have happening in the area? You can find those here.” Just give them somewhere to go since they can’t click.
Derek DeWitt: So, like what, with a short URL?
Ellyce Kelly: You could do a short URL. Sometimes it’s almost easier to, if you’ve got it on the intranet, if you have it on your intranet or on a certain place on your website… So, if you’re a university or something, and you’ve got a page that’s dedicated to that type of information. Like if I need to go to Student Life, and everything’s on the homepage of Student Life that I saw on the digital signage. Well that’s just really one click to go onto a website. I’m not having to dig deep down. You don’t want to have them go to Student Life, and then have them go underneath that, and then a page and below that. The more words you put up there about where to go to get more info, the less likely they are to go.
Derek DeWitt: Well, you know I read recently that a QR codes are finally taking off here [in the US].
Ellyce Kelly: They are. So QR codes are something that in the past I haven’t seen used that frequently. But lately I’m seeing that, and in a lot of college campuses.
Derek DeWitt: You know what, I think because they’re coming preloaded – the readers are coming preloaded on the phones.
Ellyce Kelly: I think that does help because in the past I’ve had to download a QR code reader.
Derek DeWitt: Right, and it’s a pain in the neck and I don’t want to.
Ellyce Kelly: And now I don’t have to. It came with the phone.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Fun….
Ellyce Kelly: Oh, let’s have some fun!
Derek DeWitt: Can we put fun things up there? Is it just stupid to put up fun things?
Ellyce Kelly: You can put up a joke if you want to, as long as it’s safe and clean and it’ll make everybody giggle. Even if it’s silly. You can do jokes, you can do trivia. Trivia is fun. On this day in history, for example. In fact, we do that here. I always learn something. I don’t know that I can repeat it the next day, but I feel good about it that day. So, you could do contests.
Derek DeWitt: Whatever you want. Right. Fun Facts, limericks, jokes. That’s all stuff that I either have sitting around my organization, or I might be able to gather very easily myself as a content creator or even just using my fellow colleagues. What about curated content – this idea of curating content? We kind of mentioned this a bit already with grabbing community news and things like this. I know I don’t personally, I’m not a big Pinterest person. But I know a lot of people use it and it’s becoming more and more and more and more popular. I mean, that’s a curation site.
Ellyce Kelly: Derek, that will take hours of your life away from you.
Derek DeWitt: I know. But here’s the thing.
Ellyce Kelly: But it is fun.
Derek DeWitt: So, if Matilda is already spending hours of her life on Pinterest, surely she could – if you create some kind of a funnel or some kind of a way for people to go, “Hey, did you… I find this interesting.”
Ellyce Kelly: But, yes, you can absolutely use that content. You’re already going to it. You’re already interested in it. So, find out what your audience is interested in. And a lot of, like you said, a lot of folks are using that, and they’re already interested in it. So let’s get it up on the screens. The content already exists.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. They’re already sharing it with their friends. While you’re at it, why don’t you just share it with our digital signage content creators and they’ll determine if they put it up there. And then of course, there are actual content subscriptions, which we will talk about in a future podcast.
Ellyce Kelly: Yes, those are my favorites.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. You like those.
All right, so it just goes to show folks, there is an astonishing amount of material out there for you to tweak, adapt, curate. There’s no end to the amount of content that’s available to you to put up on your digital signs. And it doesn’t always have to be specific to the organization.
It can also be fun. It can create community. And it can just be something that attracts people to the sign, so they get used to seeing the signs and they actually start to depend on the signs for information, entertainment and so on. It just becomes part of their life. All right. I’d like to thank Ellyce Kelly for talking to us today, and we’d like to thank all of you for listening.
Ellyce Kelly: Thank you.