If you’re wondering what goes into good digital signage content  creation, chances are, you’ve seen lots of bad examples. Screens stuck  on the same news loop, out of date images which are too low res, or  worse - the blue screen of death.

Like any other marketing medium, the screen is only the vehicle. If  you don’t have good content to show on it well, you might as well leave  it turned off. It’s the same as putting a post on Facebook full of  spelling mistakes and broken links; it’s not Facebook’s fault if the  content isn’t any good.

So in this guide, we want to take you through everything you need to  know about good content creation. Where to find content, ideas for when  you’re stuck and examples of content done really well.

To start with, how do you create digital signage content? This  depends on what you want to show. A good digital signage tool like ScreenCloud  will edit any content you upload to the optimal size for your display.  Which means you can upload images, videos, presentations and web links  and it will all be repurposed into the right size and resolution for  your screen.

If you’re creating graphics, or something fancy like a digital poster, you’re best to stick to a 16:9 ratio for landscape displays and a  9:16 ratio for portrait. To create a graphic for this in a design tool,  set your pixel count to 1920 x 1080 or 1080 x 1920, which will ensure  everything is in the right ratio for your screen.

If you don’t have the resource to create your own content and you  don’t have any good content already in your locker, you can use the ScreenCloud App Store.  Here, there’s no excuse not to create great content. With more than 50  “plug and play” apps to choose from, completely free with your account,  you can easily setup a playlist that will impress your audience. The  apps allow you to pull in your social media feeds (saving time by  repurposing content you already have), add news feeds from the biggest  sources around the world, create dashboards and send content such as  Trello cards and Slack rooms direct to your digital screens.

The content you choose all depends on the type of problem you are  trying to solve. You can take a look at our guide on creating content  strategies here, otherwise here are a few examples:

If you want people to share more brand love, some of the content sources you could look at include:

Dashboards of sales or customer happiness statistics

Messages for social good (for example, helping support a local missing persons or foodbank cause asking for public support)

If you want to make your employees buy into what you do, you could include:

For a store or restaurant that wants to sell more and raise awareness of products with customers, try:

Signs close to the point of purchase which upsell items

Price reductions or comparisons with other stores (or online)

Testimonials and reviews of products or menu items

To get everyone wanting to visit, and staying for longer, you could use:

If your mission is to get customers or employees engaged through fun, dynamic content, here’s what you could play with:

YouTube video playlists - organized in relevance to time of day and day of week

Here, we want to walk you through five case studies where the digital signage content creator was able to nail their signage and content.

Our customer Mamuśka! had a few key aims for their digital signage displays:

Post information on speciality menu items

As a result, they created a digital signage playlist with digital menu  boards, to easily show menu items and rapidly changing produce. As well  as full menus, they also used individual menu graphics (using a  template) to push information and therefore upsell speciality items.

Upselling desserts and alcohol became easy using images of each  product and special offers (also timing alcohol announcements to only  play out in the evening or weekend). They also announced special  features such as a delivery service and their Polish heritage, to ensure  repeat custom within a specific audience.

Merchant Taylors’ is a family of schools in the UK who were aiming to:

Easily share content that updates automatically

Keep students informed - both of school news and wider world news

Allow departments to share specific content

Upsell services to the wider public to create revenue streams

As a result, the school used apps from the ScreenCloud App Store  to create Twitter, Facebook, news and RSS feeds so that the content  would automatically update. Specific departments were able to manage  specific screens, to share general news that could spark debates,  departmental social media feeds and information such as currency rates  and world clocks.

Other screens, were used to share school news and information and  public-facing screens were used to promote the rental of the sports  centre, helping to create more revenue.

Digital signage for a church or place of worship

Faith Community Bible Church wanted to implement digital signage with a few key aims:

Display information about upcoming events and the current sermon series

Share charitable initiatives to improve public perception

Their playlists as a result, were kept simple but extremely visual. They  used multiple screens to create a split image poster regarding upcoming  events or charitable initiatives.

Secondly, they rotated images and posters weekly to promote timely sermons and events.

When ScreenCloud recently exhibited at a tradeshow we knew we needed  to put our digital signage skills to the test. Our aims were:

Hook passersby into the stand and our services

Encourage visitors to attend our speaking sessions

Show off our various features - including our App Store and easy to use signage platform

In response, we created five playlists of nearly 30 items, each showing for 7-8 seconds.

We showed multiple pieces of content in our playlist and used slides  created in Picmonkey to anchor this together. For example, introducing  our App Store feature, then moving on to the next slide showing what it  could do. This created a story and synced together the content  seamlessly - regardless of whether our audience was there for 10 minutes  or 10 seconds.

We then repeated the playlist throughout the day using our scheduling tool.

We also ensured that the playlist showing was relevant to time of day  and the real-time activities going on. This meant one playlist for AM,  welcoming people to the show, showing breakfast menus (it was a show  aimed at restaurateurs) and reminding attendees that we would be giving a  presentation at 2pm. Then another for the afternoon, providing  messaging consistent with the rest of the day. Once the presentation was  over, we swapped to a playlist without the presentation slides, but it  would have been just as easy to log in and delete them too.

Lastly, we had a playlist full of great case studies and demo content ready to wow our audience with what we could do.

Digital signage for corporate communications

Thin Martian, a London-based agency, wanted to create a digital signage network that could:

Use content as a means for communication and meeting management

Connect with clients through great content

Case studies and examples of how to create digital signage content and get it live on digital screens, within offices, tradeshows, restaurants or schools.

Fuel your best content ideas and see examples from the pros.

How to Create Digital Signage Content: Ideas and Examples

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How to Create Digital Signage Content: Ideas and Examples

How to Create Digital Signage Content: Ideas and Examples

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