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Removing Complexity: How to Manage Digital Signage Content

Written by Ilir Sabriu | 7/30/19 12:01 PM

Although DatabeatOMNI has been designed to make digital signage simple, when creating a communications strategy, it’s normal to face a few obstacles along the way.

Creating digital signage content for your business is an important step in rolling out a communications strategy, but effectively managing that process is another thing entirely.

If you find yourself racing to put together new content every week or month without a solid plan in place, don’t worry — you’re not alone. Digital signage content management is fundamental to the distribution of timely, relevant messaging, yet in the rush to create and share those messages, many businesses overlook their existing management procedures.

To help you eliminate the stress of last-minute content changes and grasp how to manage your digital signage content confidently, we’ve put together these helpful tips:

5 most common digital signage management challenges

There are several mistakes businesses typically make when it comes to managing the creation and distribution of their digital signage. Let’s look at five of the most common:

1. Not having a clear strategy/goals in place

When creating digital signage content, a lack of strategy is going to make it very difficult to plan your content and capture your audience — let alone measure tangible results.

If you’re pushing out content every week without a clear strategy in place, our advice is to reduce or pause this activity and take the time to properly understand your target audience and goals. Document this information in an easy-to-share spreadsheet accessible to your content producers and any other relevant teams.

2. Making the solution more complicated than it needs to be

Arguably as problematic as having no digital signage strategy at all, biting off more than you can chew is going to leave you feeling overwhelmed and unproductive.

A clear, predefined strategy won’t just give you a plan to work from. A strategy maps the scope of the campaign, from the scale of the content being produced to individual publication dates, offering perspective and making the campaign management as simple as possible.

3. Spending more time focused on design than messaging

Style over substance is an easy trap to fall into, no matter what kind of content you’re creating. Although the visual appearance of your digital signage content is important, what really matters is the quality, clarity, and consistency of your messaging.

  • Does your messaging speak to the right people? Each individual message should be tailored to its target audience
  • Is your messaging consistently on brand? Consistency and branding come hand-in-hand; make sure your messaging reflects who you are and how you sound
  • Do your messages tell a story? People are hardwired to respond to stories. Pro tip: Consider weaving a compelling story across multiple messages to extend your narrative and create a lasting impression on your readers

4. Overlooking the importance of good CTAs

It’s unlikely you and your team are publishing digital signage content for the sheer pleasure of it. (If you can’t identify a clear goal behind your activity, you should revisit your strategy at the earliest opportunity.) To encourage that next step in your readers and drive commercial success, employ a strong, persuasive call-to-action (CTA) after each message shared.

5. Not learning the basics (and paying consultants to do the work for you instead)

As with most forms of management, success is found in practice and familiarity. Don’t expect your team to carry out any activity you couldn’t pick up yourself, for example, leading your team from the front while giving you a clear idea of how long tasks should take and which pitfalls to avoid. Upskilling is a valuable tool when it comes to digital signage as it will increase your confidence in using software like DatabeatOMNI — not to mention reduce costs — and you’ll no longer need to outsource simple tasks to third-party consultants.

 

Why DatabeatOMNI?

We’ve created DatabeatOMNI to simplify your digital signage production process. By harnessing the power of DatabeatOMNI, your business can schedule content to display at various times during the day, week and month. What’s more, utilising the pre-installed automation functionality will make your day a whole lot less hectic.

Cutters has embraced the power of DatabeatOMNI to produce content for all the monitors in their salons — straight from a laptop. Click here to find out more.

Other ways to address and solve your digital signage content challenges include:

  • Using professional public displays instead of standard commercial displays
  • Maintaining a stable Internet connection
  • Having (and sticking to) a defined content/media plan

For a step-by-step guide to uploading content using DatabeatOMNI, click here.

 

What support can Databeat provide?

We’re always on hand and happy to help our customers with anything they need when it comes to using DatabeatOMNI digital signage.

We’ve even created an FAQ article to address and answer some of the most common questions, plus a troubleshooting resource to help you resolve your issue quickly.

If we don’t have the answer straight away, we also have a well-established partner network that can provide more information and insight on how to solve various common digital signage problems.

To learn more about how to manage your digital signage content effectively, download our ebook, ‘Picture-Perfect Screen Publishing’ today.