Entertainers regularly talk about the thrill of engaging with a live audience; where it's almost a case not of performing at them or for them, but with them. Our truDigital team appreciate this point - delivering digital signage content that is of immediate and valuable use to those viewing it builds its importance in their mind - further engaging them with this swiftly growing medium.

Here, we are going to look at ways to build this vital audience engagement. Our previous blog 'Delivering cutting edge digital signage through keen audience appreciation' examines your audience in greater detail. Understanding them, from in-house staff to passing visitors, allows effective objectives to be set for your digital signage content. These might include increasing sales, providing staff information, building customer engagement, and many others.

Capturing your audience

How and where you locate your digital signage is vital. You may have a captive audience, say in a company or organization reception area; equally, people may be scurrying past some wayfaring screens. Content may be relevant to a specific product, displayed and sold in the vicinity. Such POS promotion tends to be highly effective in gaining a response. Offers may be made to attract passers-by into a business.

Consider the placement of your screens to maximize their availability to the audience, be this for only a few moments or for a longer time-span. The content should then match, or deal with, their likely mindset; for example, an anxious patient is in a different mental place from a scurrying commuter!

Informing your audience

The final point above is often called the dwell-time of your audience. This needs to be considered together with their attention-span, which is generally quite brief. Even for locations such as a doctor's waiting room, longer content should be split into bite-size chunks. Those hurrying by your wayfinding screens may need to be informed in a matter of seconds - so that information must be instantly valuable and important.

A key error is to use content prepared for other visual media on digital signage screens. Examples might be web content or ads designed for cinema audiences or at-home viewing. All content should be specifically tweaked or, if necessary, completely re-purposed to be viewed at its best. For example, the amount of text might need to be reduced. Equally, logos might be sized-up for swift recognition from a distance or be a full-frame part of a quickly looping presentation where simple key messages are each given individual prominence.

Partial content might build up across several screens on a video wall, or a bank of screens in different parts of a single building. The complete picture needs to deliver a coherent message and do so in a clear and simple way.

Energizing your audience

Whether to help them find their way or to take a desired course of action, your digital signage should provide energy to its audience. This might be the positive mindset delivered by making the finding of a specific location an easy task. Equally, it could be in building a desire to do whatever you want them to. If members of a potential audience pass unnoticed digital signage, or with a 'so what' or 'who cares' mindset, then key opportunities are being lost!

Agile motivation - delivered by digital signage

A cloud-based content system, for a few screens or many, in a single or multiple locations, allows an agility to refresh content that other media can't hope to match. Clearly targeted messages can be to-the-point and in-the-moment; capturing, informing, and energizing those who view them. Talk to our truDigital signage team now about making the most of this possibility; your obligation-free conversation starts with a call to 1-801-852-9898...