With the falling cost of LCD screens and the ease and practicality of LCD enclosures, outdoor digital signage is no longer only for big businesses and advertisers. More and more smaller companies and institutions are installing outdoor screens for communication, branding, providing information or advertising.
No longer do these types of businesses or institutions need to hire specialist digital signage integrators, as erecting your own outdoor screen can be fairly straightforward. And with the amount of software available, which can edit content too, and some, such as the new You Tube video editor are also free of charge, so people can take control of their own content too.
Just because you can, however, doesn’t necessarily mean you should, especially if you are using an outdoor digital sign to increase sales via advertising and promotions. But for many users, keen to provide information or raise company awareness with a branded message, generating your own content can save a fortune.
Generating content does require some thought, though. Simply cobbling together a few slogans, images and messages, may not be effective at getting across the message you want to convey.
There are 5 key points to remember when generating content for outdoor digital signage
Keep it simple—Audiences don’t spend long looking at outdoor digital signage so content needs to be simple and to the point. Cluttered and complicated content isn’t effective and anything on the screen needs to be big and bold.
Make it Engaging—Keeping things bold, bright and clear also helps make keep a sign engaging. Use bright colours and bold imagery, try and capture an audiences attention.
Meet your Objectives—make sure you know what your objectives are—what you want the screen for—if it is to draw attention to a promotion, make sure the message isn’t hidden behind fancy transitions or other content.
Suit the Environment—try and make sure the style of content is appropriate for the environment. A screen outside a religious building such as a church will need a different style of content to a screen outside a bar.
Suit the audience—similar as above, remember who the audience is and try and tailor the content to suit their needs and expectations.
Another important aspect to generating you own content is testing and trying new approaches. The great thing about digital signage and generating your own content is that it is easy to upload new messages; so if something isn’t working, try a different approach.
