I came across a pretty neat post from the "Social Media University, Global (SMUG)" blog talking about the merits of using centrally-managed digital signage as a corporate communications medium. Consider these thoughts, passed along from MediaTile's Chuck Gose:
No!
Please, people, don't use tickers. Just say no. Honestly, they're terrible. They're hard to read, they have very poor comprehension and retention rates compared to reading a block of text, and they just look ugly. If you have something to say, put up a screen of text (not too much) and say it.
Other than that, I agree, digital signage for corporate communications can be a great idea :)
Tags: digital signage, corporate communications, narrowcasting
Digital signage can increase “access” and can tease/drive traffic to your social media efforts. For example, an RSS feed of news stories from a company blog could automatically appear as a ticker on your digital signage. One thing Chuck is experimenting with is using a Twitter feed to populate the ticker. They also subscribe to RSS feeds from press releases and automatically feed it into the signage. That way the employees find out news at the same time as the outside world.Which all sounded well and good. "Gee," I thought, "somebody not from our industry finds this pretty interesting." I was excited. Then I read the next sentence: "I think using RSS feeds to populate content and having a “ticker” is one of the best ideas from Chuck’s presentation."
In summary, digital signage:
- Provides greater access to your social media program
- Increases ROI by increasing visibility and offsetting printing and placement costs
- Effectively communicates to employees while they are on the run
- Delivers messages to often “unreachable” employees
- Provides message flexibility
No!
Please, people, don't use tickers. Just say no. Honestly, they're terrible. They're hard to read, they have very poor comprehension and retention rates compared to reading a block of text, and they just look ugly. If you have something to say, put up a screen of text (not too much) and say it.
Other than that, I agree, digital signage for corporate communications can be a great idea :)
Tags: digital signage, corporate communications, narrowcasting
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3 comments:
Here, here!
The only reason to run a ticker is to get male viewership. But if they're reading the ticker, they're not looking at what your advertiser wants them to see.
You beat me to this one. I was about to comment on this article. It would hae matched much of what you said; however, I do think there is a time and place for a streaming ticker. Since we are conditioned to read tickers for sports scores(thanks ESPN!) and stock info, it suffices to say that a digital screen that caters to an audience looking for that type of content would benefit from the ticker - and welcome its inclusion on the display.
This tool makes quite a succinct point. Play with it yourself.
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