Digital signage lives in public spaces where you're competing for attention, so you need to earn the eyeballs. Think about what your audience needs - practical information that helps them excel - then balance that with your company messages. Get this right and your communications become genuinely effective.

Balancing Content for Effective Digital Signage

So when you're thinking about your content calendar for digital signage, most comms teams will think about what the company objectives are and the information the company wants its employees and teams to see. So that is very much company objectives. However, this is a form of entertainment, and it is in a public space where people could look and do other things rather than look at the screen. So you need to earn the eyeballs. You need to think about the audience needs and what's the information that they want to see. Now, it might not necessarily just be entertainment, although, again, there's nothing wrong with that if it's in a break room, for example. But it might be information that is specifically useful to them. So examples would be more information about maybe management training or job opportunities, or how to change rotor shift schedules, or who's even running the shift. Information which is practical and useful for them to get their job done better and also to excel at the company. And then you need to balance that out with the needs of what the company wants its team to understand and see. If you get that balance right, you earn the eyeballs, and you will get your message across in a much more meaningful way. We call this internally broccoli and ice cream. So you want to eat the broccoli, you've got to give it an ice cream incentive. Some of our product team hate that analogy, but it kind of seems to land. So, you know, if you're giving out lots of broccoli, don't forget to also reward some ice cream too.

When planning digital signage content, you need to balance company objectives with what your audience actually wants to see. I call this 'broccoli and ice cream' - if you're serving up lots of corporate messages, you've got to reward people with content they genuinely find useful or entertaining.

Optimising Digital Signage Content for Employee Engagement

So when you're thinking about your content calendar for digital signage, most comms teams will think about what the company objectives are and the information the company wants its employees and teams to see. So that is very much company objectives. However, this is a form of entertainment, and it is in a public space where people could look and do other things rather than look at the screen. So you need to earn the eyeballs. You need to think about the audience needs and what's the information that they want to see. Now, it might not necessarily just be entertainment, although, again, there's nothing wrong with that if it's in a break room, for example. But it might be information that is specifically useful to them. So examples would be more information about maybe management training or job opportunities, or how to change rotor shift schedules, or who's even running the shift. Information which is practical and useful for them to get their job done better and also to excel at the company. And then you need to balance that out with the needs of what the company wants its team to understand and see. If you get that balance right, you earn the eyeballs, and you will get your message across in a much more meaningful way. We call this internally broccoli and ice cream. So you kind of want to eat the broccoli, you've got to give it an ice cream incentive. Some of our product team hate that analogy, but it kind of seems to land. So, you know, if you're giving out lots of broccoli, don't forget to also reward some ice cream too.