Building a Content Strategy (for the New Year)

EPISODE 77 | Guest: Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix

Crafting a content strategy for your digital signage system can help finetune your goals, streamline your processes and save you time in the long run. More importantly, it can ensure you’re delivering messages and campaigns that will attract attention and inspire interaction.

In this episode, we walk you through nine easy steps to build a content strategy that’s focused and inclusive. Whether your plan covers one month, one quarter or a whole year, getting a gameplan together will benefit both your signage team and your audience.

  • Understand why you need a content strategy
  • Hear nine practical steps to create a formal plan
  • Discover why audience demographics can be misleading
  • Learn how to find out if you’re measuring the right things
  • Get tips on crowdsourcing tasks, calendars, policies and goals

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Get more tips in our Masterclass Guide 2: Digital Signage Communications Planning Guide


Transcript

Derek DeWitt: As the old year comes to a close and the new year is approaching it’s time to start thinking of a new, comprehensive content strategy that will engage your audience for the next 12 months and beyond. I have with me, Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager, for Visix to talk on that very subject. Hi Debbie.

Debbie DeWitt: Hi Derek.

Derek DeWitt: How are you?

Debbie DeWitt: I’m great. How are you?

Derek DeWitt: Marvelous. Very excited to talk about content strategies in the new year.

Debbie DeWitt: Me too.

Derek DeWitt: Okay. So, I think a lot of people try and come up with some kind of a content strategy or content plan, probably a quarter, three months at a time. Why? Why do we even need this content strategy to begin with? What’s the point? Why can’t I just wing it?

Debbie DeWitt: Well, I mean, everything you do needs to have a reason, or why do it. I mean, that’s kind of a life philosophy. But, in terms of content that’s especially true because for your communications to be effective, you always need to be working towards some sort of a goal, you know, and then measuring progress toward that goal. And based on what you said, in terms of a content strategy, if you can do a whole year, great. I actually think the quarterly approach is better because things change and you don’t want to continually have to rework it because you’ve put something down that’s no longer relevant, you know, for November when you did it in January. So, quarterly’s good.

Derek DeWitt: What do you think about just kind of broad stroking the rest of the year and then, you know, don’t get locked into it, but have a general idea of, in a perfect world, this is probably how it’ll go.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I think, I think that’s very valid. And really when you start building, say you start building for Q1, you know, as we talk about the steps you go through, you’re, you’re really working toward a good mix of content, you know, at a good pace. And so obviously when you’re doing like January through March or whatever the time span is that you’re working on, it’s gonna go ahead and give you some visibility into, oh, I can see we need to do these messages weekly. We need to have more motivational messages. And so, start planning for future quarters that way.

Derek DeWitt: All right. That all makes sense. Any other advantages come to mind?

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I think the biggest advantage for content managers and content creators is you’re gonna save yourself a ton of time. You know, planning is gonna help you set up your priorities and your goals in advance. That’s always the key. And as you’re looking at this, you might discover some new opportunities, get new ideas for content or even find out, hey, I’ve got some other people who could be contributing that I hadn’t included before. It’s also gonna let you batch your creative and scheduling tasks, which, you know, every time management course tells you, you know, batch things together, it saves time.

Derek DeWitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get in a certain groove for a certain kind of task and you’re like, I’m just, I’m just knocking this out.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, really. It’s kind of an 80/20 rule. You know if you plan for everything, you know, you’ll cover 80% of it. Things are still gonna pop up. That other 20% is gonna happen throughout the year. You’re gonna have obviously messages you didn’t plan for, or campaign ideas that come up. But by doing this, you’re not also dealing with, oh, I also needed to do this whole month’s birthdays and anniversaries and motivational messages. And I just got handed a new campaign.

Derek DeWitt: Right. Change is inevitable, but it need not be disruptive.

Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. So, timesaver. You know, strategy that is hopefully gonna create a more engaging digital signage strategy. So yeah, I’d say these are all the reasons why you really ought to think about doing this in advance.

Derek DeWitt: Okay. So, what’s the first step?

Debbie DeWitt: As anyone who listens knows I really love lists. And so, I have a list of nine things here. And actually we have a handy infographic that you can download for this as well.

Derek DeWitt: Right. Check the episode notes for a link to that.

Debbie DeWitt: So first one is to do some housekeeping. You know, you wanna look at those contributors we talked about. You know, go through those system managers, content approvers, users, template users, and also look at those organizations and sub organizations you’ve set up. Because, you know, obviously jobs change, people come and go at an organization, so you want to keep that clean. But again, that’s where you might get some ideas for, hey, this person in my organization has been sending me emails asking me to do these basic messages. Maybe I could make them a contributor and they could use templates and do them themselves. You might be able to streamline some processes.

Derek DeWitt: Right, right. Just pass the buck.

Debbie DeWitt: Well, I don’t know that I’d say that. I’d say democratize your communications and get more people involved.

Derek DeWitt: That’s very nice. All right.

Debbie DeWitt: Also on the housekeeping side, we always preach update your software. You know, we come out with new features all of the time. And if you don’t know what’s possible, you might be missing out on some inspiration for content that you could be creating. And, as a Visix plug, I will say, please subscribe to our newsletter (there’s a link at the bottom of our webpage), because that’s where we announce when new features are available. So, there’s some really cool stuff that comes out like our HTML5 message playlist viewer. You know, you could be putting that on your intranet. You could be sending that to Teams. And you can actually add a URL to that where people can click out for more information if they’re viewing it on the web. This is something that like several of our clients weren’t aware of, and once they found out it changes their whole content strategy.

Derek DeWitt: Sure, sure. Not just the actual content itself, but workflows improve. Suddenly, you know, you were having to do five steps to accomplish task A and Hey, guess what? Now there’s an upgrade and it’s only two steps.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. There’s a widget. I can just do this widget and now it’s automated. So definitely update your software and that way you can see what’s possible, which will help feed what content you want to create.

Derek DeWitt: How much should the previous year and previous messaging offering influence future plans?

Debbie DeWitt: I think quite a bit. I mean, looking at what you’ve done is a great starting point to look at what you’re going to do, you know. But I do think it’s important that you go back and see what works and what didn’t. Actually, that leads perfectly into step number two, which is reexamining your goals. You know, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, are they the same as last year?

Derek DeWitt: Probably not.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And actually, they probably shouldn’t because all organizations evolve. And as your company’s strategies change, your content strategy has to adapt to that larger picture, that larger mission.

Derek DeWitt: Okay. So how do you measure what was successful and what wasn’t?

Debbie DeWitt: Again, one of our favorite mantras on this podcast, we care about what we measure. So, are you measuring the right things? You know, this should be about engagement and interaction. So, measure toward that. An example I use a lot is with email delivery, a lot of people go, we sent out 80,000 emails. And that’s a great thing if you see that you’re increasing that. But what are, what’s your open rate?

Derek DeWitt: Right. If your open rate’s 1%, then maybe, maybe cut that down, save yourself some hassle.

Debbie DeWitt: Right. And that’d just be, you know, an engagement. Also, does anybody click through? Because that’s, again, that’s interaction.

Derek DeWitt: So, despite what some people think size is not necessarily the thing that matters.

Debbie DeWitt: No. I mean, and that’s something that people use for digital signage metrics is how many messages were published or how long were they on screen? And that’s, that’s not the goal. You can, you can put a message on screen every minute of every day, a different message. But did anybody read them? Did anybody care about them? So really just use a fresh eye and think about what you can do with the metrics you do have. And is that actually focusing in on what you’re trying to accomplish? And we always say every message or campaign should have a call to action. So, one of the things you can do in your strategy is create a list of calls to action, put ’em in your policies, and that makes it a lot easier for your content creators. You know, even if it’s basic tips, like be sure to include a URL. Or put that in the template; include a URL or a QR tag or a web link.

Derek DeWitt: Some way to measure interaction.

Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. So, number three on the list is reassess your audience. Since we’re talking about our viewers. You know, have their demographics or preferences changed?

Derek DeWitt: You know, someone who’s been on the podcast a few times now in the past, Ray Walsh, who’s a communications consultant, he recently shared on LinkedIn, a sort of a warning about being careful about overusing personas, this concept in marketing and communications of personas, you know.

Debbie DeWitt: That’s true.

Derek DeWitt: Here’s the demographic information and so therefore it must be this. And the example is two people, both born, both male, both born in 1948, both married twice, both live in castles, both famous and wealthy. One of them is Prince Charles. The other one is Ozzie Osborne.

Debbie DeWitt: Ooh, not the same market at all. Yeah, demographics and preferences, probably heavier on the preferences and interests than on demographics. Because it’s very easy for people to say, oh, millennials like this, oh, gen Z, like this, oh, boomers like this. And yeah, those broad strokes are okay, but you really need to get into your audience because it’s very different if you’re talking to students at a university versus employees in your HR department who are of the same age and demographics. You need to give them different information and maybe in a different way.

Derek DeWitt: And obviously, like you said, update your software and stuff. Hardware and software are always updating. We’re always getting new technologies. We’re always getting new trends and ways of approaching communications. So that’s another thing to fold into your new content strategy.

Debbie DeWitt: Absolutely. I mean, if you think about just the advent of web or mobile, those completely changed communications. I mean, imagine not changing your communication style after social media became a thing. A lot of people are used to shorter bursts of information due to Twitter. You know, we’re used to visual things. We like more video because of YouTube. So, you have to adjust. And I’d say a major trend right now is the work from home revolution or evolution that’s gone on. So, communicators have to address remote audiences in their content strategy, not just the people who are gonna be in front of the big displays.

Derek DeWitt: Technologies seem like they’re making it easier and easier to kind of drill down and make communications more relevant to smaller and smaller subgroups.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, I think you should absolutely look at that. As you’re looking at the content, you’re gonna do, you’re gonna say, can I localize this better? Can I personalize this better? Can I gamify it? You know, like you said, there are tools and tricks to do that, and there are tons of articles out there that help you do it. But I think this always goes back to what we say, which is ask your audience., You know, ask them and don’t just do bulk surveys. Surveys can be tricky. We have a podcast on this you can listen to. But you know, try some surveys, but also do some one-on-one conversations. You know, understand that audience. I know that’s not super easy if you’re in a corporation that has 3000 employees, but you can ask your managers and team leaders to maybe get into that. And don’t do it too often, but certainly if you’re building a content strategy for a year, you can at least take the temperature, you know.

Derek DeWitt: Right. I was gonna say, you don’t have to make it some big thing. Like the manager goes, okay, well this week, I guess I’m having those conversations with people. No, just once in a while. Keep it on your plate and once in a while, just kind of informally go, hey man, I saw you were looking at the screens. What do you think of this? And the person goes, I think this, and you go, hmm, and you make a note.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. And get that feedback to your digital signage managers. But I think the other thing is that those calls to action will help tell you what’s working and what isn’t. And that leads perfectly into number four, which is, build on what worked and scrap what didn’t. So, you’ve got these calls to action. You’ve done maybe some surveys. You’ve done informal conversations. You’ve gotten feedback in a number of ways. You’re gonna be able to see no one cares about blank. I can’t even imagine what it would be, but you know, no one cares about publishing the agenda for the town hall.

Derek DeWitt: Right. Turns out they don’t care.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. They’re gonna be in the town hall.

Derek DeWitt: So, that’s just work, wasted time and wasted energy and effort.

Debbie DeWitt: Right. So definitely look at those things when you’re thinking about what to do next. Clean out your old content and old artwork. This can really spur new ideas for messages or campaigns. Because you’re looking at your old content and maybe it’s one of those things that we said didn’t work, but it’s not because it was a bad idea. It was just, you know, we didn’t have a call to action on it. And, you know, or you have no idea. Like this didn’t have a call to action. It just went up on the screens. There was no follow through, so maybe we redesign it and try it again. I think you should redesign anything that’s evergreen. You know, content that just stays up forever, you know, like safety tips or things like that. You can always redesign that, give it a new look to grab more eyes. And then, on that same note, you know, we recommend you refresh your layout designs. You know, just the background of the layout or move your logo or something. You know, it’ll just cue the audience that, hey, there’s some new stuff here we should pay attention.

Derek DeWitt: Yeah. There’s a message up there about recycling. Don’t forget to recycle, and so…

Debbie DeWitt: Clean out the refrigerator.

Derek DeWitt: Clean out the refrigerator, you pigs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It just becomes part of the background and people stop noticing it.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, so redesign can actually make it look like something new. And especially if you’re using an image, say the recycling icon on a green background. Don’t just change the background color. Like, move the text, reword the text, use a different image and a different background so it’s completely new. ‘Cause people can pretty well tune out like, oh, they just changed the background color.

Derek DeWitt: Right. And you know, there are plenty of digital artists out there who submit their work to websites like Pixebay where you can actually use it for free even for commercial use. So even something like a recycle symbol or something that indicates recycling, there are new versions of that coming out all the time.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Yeah. We’ve actually got a blog and a podcast that talk about where to get imagery. Pixebay’s great. I will say, just be sure you check your copyrights because some of those are only, you said for commercial use, in that case, you might have to pay or give credit. For non-commercial use though, you know, it’s just going out on my screens to my employees. I’m not charging anything. It’s not for an event that costs anything to get in. A lot of those are free.

Derek DeWitt: I’d also say when you’re sort of revamping and revisiting and reassessing, take a look at your playlists also because almost certainly you have too many items in your playlist. I guarantee it. Almost everybody, there are still some people out there that have 60 items in their playlist, 30 seconds each. Think, do the math on that. That’s two hours before a single message repeats in the cycle. It’s too long. It might be also a good time to rethink. Come up with multiple a playlist for different times of the day and so on.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. Take advantage of dayparting. If you’re a smaller installation, I’ve got one screen, you know, in my break room or whatever so I need all of these messages. Well, they don’t have to just play in a loop like you, you know, we can use, these come up on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, these on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As you said, do some in the morning, some in the afternoon. Or better yet, create more playlists.

Derek DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. Even for things like data integration and automated feeds, like at two o’clock in the afternoon, I don’t need to see current traffic patterns and commute times because I’m not commuting. Stick those up at five.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, and also having multiple playlists is easier to clean because you can actually go by topic. Or you could even assign them to like the marketing department playlist, hey, marketing person, look at it and see what’s still relevant. You know, it’s like anything else, if you have folders in your inbox, they’re easier to go in there and clean than you just have, I have 3,800 messages in my inbox.

Derek DeWitt: I’ll never find them. You recently read the book, The Checklist Manifesto, which I know you were a big, big fan of.

Debbie DeWitt: Oh, I love it.

Derek DeWitt: Yeah. One of the big pieces of advice in there is don’t have one giant checklist, have a whole bunch of small checklists that you use on an ad hoc as needed basis.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. Organize them. They said don’t have 500 items on a checklist. Have 100 five-item checklists and only the people who need to address those items need to see that checklist.

Derek DeWitt: Right. Right.

Debbie DeWitt: So, think of it kind of the same way on the playlist. Like I said, if you’re an individual, you’re the only one doing it, you’ve got one screen, you’ve got one playlist, you know, maybe you can manage it. But when you get into organizational communications, it can become a bear.

Derek DeWitt: I mean, it seems to me, since we’re talking about doing a, at least three months if not longer, at least thumbnail sketch of a content strategy, having some kind of a calendar makes sense, you know. Come up with your calendar and, and make that all work out so you can see, Ooh, I’ve got a hole here. Oh, I’ve got a hole here.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. I do, I do digital signage communications. I have a Google calendar that I use specifically for that. You know, it’s free, it’s online. I can share it with other people. You can color code for different types of content. You know, you could do that by different playlists or departments or topics, or even type if you want to like tag videos as green. And it’s a great visualization. I can just look at it and say, oh my gosh, I’ve got a lot of this three days in a row and none of this. And so, you can see where there’s nothing scheduled. You can see, I’ve got too much hitting one day or too much of one thing at a certain time. It allows you to mix and match so you make sure there’s variety, which is really nice. And it’s also, actually a good place for inspiration. When I was working on my own content plan, I noticed that there were several holidays or historical months that we don’t have messages for. So, Google lets you add generic calendars. Like a great example is I’ve worked for a very large corporation before and sometimes we get a little geocentric. They had hit all of the U.S. holidays, but they hadn’t thought about Canadian holidays.

Derek DeWitt: Right.

Debbie DeWitt: And so, you can actually add those Google calendars and just say holidays for, you know, every country that you’re in. And right there, it showed me, oh, I need to create 10 new messages because there are things that we’ve missed. We’ve got some holes. We’d only done messages for the days the holidays we take off, but there are other holidays and other important, you know, things like Black History Month, International Women’s Day, you know, things like that, that you need to really advertise.

Derek DeWitt: Okay. So that’s a lot to keep in mind. Uh, what are first steps? How do we start off? ‘Cause this seems like a daunting amount of stuff to deal with.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I always say start with the easy stuff. You know, we were just talking about the holidays are an easy thing to, you could actually, that’s an easy one to schedule out, you know, for the whole year. I mean, obviously things that are on all of your layouts that are always on screen. You know, your weather, date, time, events, directories. You know, any of that data-mapped information you have. Again, this could be redesigning the background, changing the font slightly. Start with that easy stuff, make sure it’s all tweaked and configured the way you want it. And then move on to things like birthdays, anniversaries. If you’re doing fun stuff like trivia or motivational quotes, you know you’re gonna do that so go ahead and prep some of those or put them in the calendar anyways. And also, you’re gonna have things like (maybe they’re weekly, maybe they’re even monthly) things that aren’t date specific, but you do want to constantly remind your audience. Things like, you mentioned recycling. DEI is a big topic, you know. Wellness reminders. It’s great to start with the things that you know are going on dates like birthdays and anniversaries, and then use this other stuff like recycling and wellness and then fill in with quotes, trivia, things like that.

Derek DeWitt: I have to say though, I would almost fear that doing this much organizing would stifle the creative impulse. How do you, how do you keep the creative impulse alive and still schedule things out?

Debbie DeWitt: Well, first of all, automate everything you can. You know, all the data integration widgets, also subscription feeds. Again, if you’ve got a feed that’s giving you news-in-pictures or local traffic, you know, set that up and go ahead and plug that into the holes in your calendar. And again, when we’re talking about building a content strategy plan, I’m not talking about actually sit down, decide all this, create all of it and schedule all of it right now. We’re talking about…

Derek DeWitt: In one week.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, no. This is write it out and put it in a calendar and see where your holes are. See what you’re missing, see your new opportunities. So, I’d start there. And then number seven on my list actually is schedule the creative time now. And go ahead and put on your calendar or whoever is scheduling things, you know, some time, you know, once a week or once a month for scheduling messages. But definitely get the projects on your designers’ calendars ASAP.

Derek DeWitt: Right.

Debbie DeWitt: And um, you know, ’cause they’re gonna wanna schedule in batches. And if you’re the one creating it, even if it’s templates, batch whenever you can. Sit down and do all of your birthdays at once or all of your anniversaries at once. And the other great thing is like, you’re doing this, and you might have some new design, but you need like employee photographs to put in these. Well, by putting this on the calendar, you now know three new employees are here and I don’t have photos for them. So, let’s get that instead of the day I’m trying to put it up or the day before their birthday I’m scrambling and all I have, all they have is like social media pics that are too small.

Derek DeWitt: Right. Yeah, exactly. There’s no need to go creating, I don’t know, Christmas messages in February. You can, you can certainly put that off.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t waste your time. The whole idea behind the content strategy is to save yourself time and to pace your workload and pace your messaging. The other thing I did want to quickly mention is make sure you share your purpose and your goals with your creative team. You know, don’t just say, I need an image of a toy and I need this, this, this, you know, toy drive information on the message. Like, let them know, we’re hoping to collect a hundred toys by February 2nd to give to Toys for Tots. Or whatever your thing is, let them know the reason behind it. That that really helps a creative person.

Derek DeWitt: Now of course you might not be the only person involved. Like you said, maybe they’re designers and other content collaborators. So, number eight on your list is share the strategy. And maybe even share the burden of coming up with the strategy. After all they have their own timelines and workflows. So, everybody who’s working on it together, all the stakeholders, can collaborate together on it.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, I would, I would definitely hope that this isn’t an individual exercise. Again, we do have clients where there’s only one person involved in this. But I don’t see you building a content calendar or plan without having to go out and talk to other departments or people who give you ideas or people who submit requests for messages. You’re going to have to crowdsource this. And that’s always gonna give you more opportunities for ideas, more creativity, you know, brainstorm with other people. And like you said, definitely share that content strategy. Share your goals. Just like I talked about with creative, you’re gonna wanna do that right at the beginning. You know, if you go out and say, hey, human resources department, what kind of messaging would you like to do next year? You know, don’t make it that vague. Let them know, you know, if you have any guidelines, like I’d love to see something from you once a week or once a month, and we’re really trying to engage, especially on our 401k contributions. Uh, you know, corporate, the organization strategy says we’re not seeing a ton of participation. Can you help me get more of the word out on screens to maybe bump up those benefits or things like that. So definitely crowdsource it, share the goals, share the strategy and share that calendar. Like I said, especially I like the Google docs, or excuse me, the Google calendar idea, because you can just share it. And you can protect it so it’s not out there for the general public, but everybody who needs to see those holes can.

Derek DeWitt: And it updates for everyone immediately.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of updates, if you have policies in place, definitely update your content policies and include a mission statement for digital signage. I know the mission statement of the company or the school is already out there, but what’s your actual goal in this digital signage? Is it just to inform? Is it to entertain? So, you will have different goals. You know, update your policies. And then on top of the strategy, refresh your team’s training.

Derek DeWitt: Right, because of course workflows may have changed, number one.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Especially if you updated your software. And I include this in strategy because again, training feeds into everything. You need feed them the strategy, the goals, the mission. They will then give you feedback on that, their own contributions. You’re gonna update your software. They’re gonna see new features. You get trained on that. It, again, feeds back to the strategy as people get more ideas. So, I include that in the strategy, because this is something that I would say needs to be on your books at least quarterly. You have new employees, new users. But even if you don’t, people who’ve been using the system for a few years the same way are almost harder to train because they’re so used to doing it…

Derek DeWitt: They’re stuck in an old way of doing things.

Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. They’re so used to the workflows the way they do them. And then like we said, you found out, Hey, there’s a widget. A great example is, you know, just duplication of efforts. A lot of people are updating like a spreadsheet somewhere. And then they’re going in and creating a message where they don’t know that there’s an Excel widget that’ll just pull it from the spreadsheet. So, you only need to do it once. So, I say refresh training, and that will reinforce and feed back into the strategy.

Derek DeWitt: So, now you’ve gotten eight in. What’s big number nine?

Debbie DeWitt: Number nine is execute against your goals. So really…

Derek DeWitt: That sounds ominous.

Debbie DeWitt: Well, call it a bonus. Because really the first eight are the ones that you’re actually doing. You know, that’s the strategy, that’s the planning. Now we’re talking about execution. So, after you do the strategy, you’re gonna execute against your goals. You’re gonna create and schedule your messages. You’re gonna measure success for those calls to action. But I would say part of strategy is the ongoing steps, which is continuing to survey that audience, continuing to ask to see how’s the quality, how’s the quantity and adjusting as you go. You know, that’s the final. In any plan or strategy, the final step is always test and adjust, test and adjust. It’s never a one-time thing. It’s something, it’s an organic process that is constantly evolving. You know, you need to see, does your strategy work out? Am I looking at the right things? Am I asking the right people? So, try a smaller one. Build that content calendar for three months. Is it working? Is it worth it? Again, there may be a very small place with one person doing it, one screen, one playlist that has 10 messages. It’s, it’s a lobby, and so it’s just for customers coming in saying welcome. In that case, you may say, I don’t need a strategy. But I would argue, you at least…

Derek DeWitt: Yeah, you do.

Debbie DeWitt: Well, I would argue, at least you need to go back and look at that content you’re putting up there. You would need to look at, are there new features? Are there new workflows? So, you know, it’s, it’s planning as much as strategy. And hopefully even that one person, one screen install has a strategy, has a goal in mind. If you’re just throwing stuff up and you don’t know why, then you need a strategy.

Derek DeWitt: So, uh, succinct summary.

Debbie DeWitt: Okay. Succinct summary is it may take a little time to do a content strategy the first time you build it, but it’s easy to refresh and adjust as you go. And, uh, you’re gonna want to adjust versus starting from scratch every time. If you don’t have a strategy, you don’t have a content calendar or content plan. You don’t have these things on the creative, uh, calendar. You’re going to be dealing with it every single day as things pop up. So, this is gonna save you a ton of time.

Derek DeWitt: As always, don’t forget it’s all about the audience. So, obviously another advantage to planning out a whole content strategy is it gives the viewers and the audience a nice bunch of content that’s delivered at a nice, steady pace and keeps them informed, but also engaged and uh, maybe entertained as well if that’s one of your goals.

Debbie DeWitt: Exactly. And that’s, like we say, that’s, that’s always what you’re trying to do.

Derek DeWitt: All right. So those are nine good reasons to come up with a content strategy plan for the new year. Sketch it out in general terms. Drill down for the next three or four months and adjust as needed. As always, you can find links inside the transcript version of this on the Visix website and in the episode notes. Thanks for talking to me today, Debbie. Very good food for thought for the next year.

Debbie DeWitt: You’re welcome. It was good being here.

Derek DeWitt: Again, this has been Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix, and this has been Digital Signage Done Right.