How to Create Digital Bulletin Boards & Notices

Bulletin boards have long been a staple of offices and schools for posting announcements and relevant information. But often, these boards don’t live up to their name. They go unnoticed as more and more messages pile up and organization goes out the window. 

When it comes to more effective internal communications, there are many great reasons to ditch the print and go for a digital information board.

Benefits of using a digital bulletin board

When you want to get the message across, displaying your announcements on digital information boards has been shown to be better for engagement. In fact, workplace digital signage bulletins have been shown to reduce the incidence of accidents by 20%. And people viewing digital signage experience over 80% recall rate of the information shared. (source)

In addition to this, physical bulletin boards require time and effort to change, which risks wasting resources and broadcasting outdated information. One of our own clients, Ricoh UK Products, saved 65 weeks of work hours per year just by switching from manual creation of paper-based reports to digital signage.

With 70% of organizations implementing digital transformation strategies, it’s more important than ever to keep pace and engage clients, employees and customers. In fact, digital information points are increasingly found from the office, to hospitals and schools to airports.

Increasingly, the setup costs and requirements are lower than ever and the benefits tackle many pain points that schools, offices, and healthcare facilities often face.

For example, digital bulletin boards are:

• Cost-effective
• Memorable and engaging
• Easier to update and manage remotely
• Able to launch real time information
• Versatile (allowing different content to be shared on one screen)
• Scalable
• Flexible

Digital signage has made the process of creating digital information noticeboards even easier than ever. Using software such as ScreenCloud allows you to remotely share content, schedule it in advance and make quick updates without needing to reprint or rehang those notices.

Whats more, the dynamic nature of digital signage makes it easy to update content in the event of an emergency or rapidly changing situation. Let's take a closer look at some of the use cases for digital bulletin boards.

Digital bulletin board ideas and examples

With so much freedom, it can be hard to figure out what to create. We’ve seen our fair share of digital signage successes and understand what works well and what doesn’t. If you’re looking for some inspiration, we have plenty to give.

Digital announcement boards for schools:

• Upcoming Events: Announcements about school plays, concerts, sports events, parent-teacher meetings, or field trips.
• Exam Schedules: Posting exam dates, times, and locations to keep students informed.
• Important Deadlines: Reminders for assignment submissions, application deadlines, or registration dates.
• Club or Organization Updates: Sharing information about club meetings, activities, successes or recruitment.
• Safety Reminders: Bulletins regarding school safety procedures, emergency protocols, or weather-related announcements.
• Celebrations and Achievements: Recognizing student achievements, birthdays, or special accomplishments.
• School Rules and Policies: Displaying reminders about dress codes, behavior guidelines, or code of conduct.

Find out more: Digital signage for education.

Digital bulletin boards for offices:

• Meeting Announcements: Sharing details about upcoming meetings, including date, time, location, and agenda.
• Policy Updates: Informing employees about changes to company policies, procedures, or benefits.
• Employee Recognition: Highlight outstanding employee performance, work anniversaries, new joiners or birthdays with a recognition board.
• Training and Development Opportunities: Promoting workshops, seminars, or training sessions to enhance employee skills.
• Office Events: Announcing office parties, team-building activities, or charitable events.
• Health and Wellness Tips: Providing information about fitness challenges, stress management techniques, or healthy habits.
• IT Notices: Alerting employees about IT maintenance, system upgrades, or network outages.

Find out more: Office digital signage.

Digital information boards for hotels and tourism businesses:

• Building Directory and Wayfinding: Help guests find all of your services with ease, listing facilities and their locations.
• Service Schedules and Availability: Clearly display important timings such as restaurant openings, maintenance and event schedules.
• Promotional Content: Upsell your own services and loyalty programs, or partner with local businesses to help them reach your audience.
• Emergency Alerts: Providing clear instructions and guidance during emergencies, including evacuation procedures or muster points.

Find out more: Digital signage for hotels.

Digital notice boards for healthcare facilities:

• Patient Education Materials: Sharing health-related information, such as disease prevention tips, medication guidelines, or lifestyle recommendations.
• Health Campaigns: Promoting vaccination drives, awareness campaigns, or health screening programs.
• Staff Updates: Communicating schedule changes, shifts, or training sessions for healthcare professionals.
• Visitor Guidelines: Displaying information about visiting hours, visitor restrictions, or safety protocols.
• Emergency Alerts: Providing instructions during emergencies, such as evacuation procedures or contact information during crisis situations.
• Support Groups or Counseling Services: Announcing support group meetings, mental health services, or counseling sessions available to patients and their families.

Find out more: Digital signage for healthcare.

Digital information boards for factories and industry:

• Safety and Protocol Reminders: Share information about site protocol, safety reminders and more.
• Business Announcements: Display important information for non-desk based workers including business developments, performance and news.
• Emergency Alerts: Providing clear and visible instructions and guidance during emergencies, including evacuation procedures or muster points.
• Employee Recognition: Share birthdays, anniversaries, promotions and general recognition content for better employee engagement.
• On-the-Job Training: Highlight processes and share tips and information during onboarding, or stream training videos and presentations.

Of course, if you already have a virtual bulletin board set up in an app like Canva or Poster My Wall, you can simply connect that as-is to ScreenCloud. Once you feel like you have the hang of things, you can start expanding to other types of content, like KPI dashboards, schedule/calendar integrations, and user-submitted content.

How to make a digital information board

The best way to create a dynamic digital information display is by using a TV screen and digital signage software.

Today, digital signage software like ScreenCloud means you can easily create content and then stream it in minutes. And indeed in some cases the content is fully automated, for example emergency alerts, dashboard information, news or weather.

Here’s how you can quickly and easily set up a digital bulletin board using any kind of smart screen and ScreenCloud.

1. Set up your ScreenCloud account

First, log into your ScreenCloud account and click New Screen in the upper right corner. It’ll ask you to type in a 6-character pairing code, which will be displayed on a TV or screen that has the ScreenCloud app running on it, such as:

a) Smart TV + the ScreenCloud app

If you already have a smart TV, such as Sony Bravia, LG webOS or Samsung Tizen, you can use the ScreenCloud Player app which you can download from the relevant app Store. That’s it! Your TV is all the hardware you need, and you’re ready to go.

However, we highly recommend the following option which is using a media player with your chosen screen (smart or not)...

b) TV screen + digital media player + the ScreenCloud app

We highly recommend using a digital signage media player with your chosen screen, as this gives you much better control over the functionality and scalability of your digital signage network. Check out the list of recommended media players here.

Once installed, you can download the ScreenCloud app from the relevant app store and connect your TV to your account.

If you already use our ScreenCloud OS devices, there is no need to navigate to the app store as ScreenCloud’s software already comes pre-installed and will boot up once your device powers on. The only step you need to do is configure your network settings using a ScreenCloud OS provisioning USB flash drive.

After you’ve got a screen connected, you need to add apps and integrations to your account. These will help you optimize what you want to display for digital signage purposes.

2. Choose what messages to share

Digital signage is only as effective as the content you show on it. So making it easy to create and share this content is important. ScreenCloud comes with several integrations for managing content as well as some features to help you display content from any app on your digital signage. Here are some of the best apps for creating digital announcement boards:

QuickPost

Our very own QuickPost app is a great AI powered tool designed to create digital signage ready content in minutes. Simply pop in your text, choose and image and QuickPost does the rest. You can even add in additional elements like QR codes or ask AI to summarize busy text.

QuickPost is a tool that is free with all ScreenCloud subscriptions.

Canvas

Canvas is one of the most popular ScreenCloud apps. Think of it like a simpler version of Photoshop. Canvas allows anyone within the business – not just your designer – to create on-brand content like posters or notices. Or, you may want a designer to set up your branded templates first, and then it’s a simple case of drag and drop to customize the design later.

For time-sensitive content like events, you can schedule when you want this content to appear/disappear within your Playlist. You can also make updates directly within Canvas and show new information instantly across all of your screens.

Google Slides

The Google Slides app allows you to take any slide you have and add it to your screen. The benefit of using Google Slides is that, like Canvas, it’s an online tool. This means you can create a series of messages like staff announcements, and then when you need to make a change you simply open the Google Slides file and edit it online.

Check out our 30+ free Google Slides templates bundle here.

Canva

As probably the most popular user-friendly design app, many teams have their designs created and stored in Canva. And with ScreenCloud you can easily

Media picker

Sometimes it might be easier to upload your own graphics as a PDF, PNG or JPEG. You can add any of those files using the media file uploader. Just keep in mind that ScreenCloud does not currently support GIFs and animations. It does, however, have an easy workaround for displaying Canva images and animations on your digital signage.

Noticeboard app

The Noticeboard 2.0 app is a convenient solution for creating basic text signs with customized backgrounds. You can easily add, style, and arrange text with various formatting options. There are no limitations on the amount of text, as the app dynamically scales the board to fit the screen. Users can choose from pre-designed themes or throw in some stock icons to create their own.

3. Create your digital bulletin board

Once you have your content ready, add it to a Playlist. This is just like how you would create a compilation album: add your content in the order that you want it shown, schedule the times that you want it shown and also the duration. As it’s all drag and drop you can easily add/remove content.

You can also create thematic Playlists to show on different screens in different locations at different times. However granular you want to get, ScreenCloud has the flexibility.  

Between those announcements, you may want to add other ambient content like YouTube videos, updates on the weather, world news or departmental Twitter feeds.

If that sounds like a lot to learn, our training page breaks everything down into quick video tutorials.

Easy digital signage with ScreenCloud

ScreenCloud helps teams in 10,000+ organizations around the world communicate with those who matter most, using the screens on their walls and the content already in their systems. 

ScreenCloud’s digital signage can inform employees on corporate information like social media feeds, data visualizations, emergency alerts, and live broadcasts – or even simply the news, sports scores and weather. 

Sign up for our 14 day free trial or book a demo and see how digital signage can work for you today.