There’s no question that one-size-fits-all messaging is less than ideal for digital signage content to be a success. Differences in your audience’s needs and interests, location nuances and even local weather and time of day can affect how well a message is perceived.
For networks with screens across states, countries and even continents, it can be difficult to ensure that messages are relevant in every location. Centrally maintaining control over content customization and scheduling is a time-consuming task, but giving your local users the power to create and display their own messages can lead to some questionable design and content choices.
This is where Broadsign Publish comes in. Broadsign Publish is a template-based local content management solution that empowers local employees, like office managers, store owners and more, to create and adapt messaging to their unique audience while ensuring your corporate brand guidelines remain intact. Essentially removing you from having to micromanage every content change or scheduling request. Here’s how:
Broadsign Publish replaces Broadsign Creator which, at the time, met our customers’ needs. However, those needs have since evolved, so we developed a new and improved product. With a new and more intuitive interface, it’s much easier to use, and HTML5 template support enables you to offer dynamic and responsive content to local users.
Broadsign Publish is ideal for large retailers, like grocery chains, QSRs and cafes and clothing retailers; managed services, like public healthcare services and hospitals, private healthcare practitioners and veterinary clinics; and internal and municipal communications, like global offices, city councils and student campuses.
While Broadsign Publish can be used for a variety of local messages, some examples include:
- Opening hours
- Upcoming store closures
- Promoted products
- Daily specials
- Location-specific tips and information
- Staff updates
- Upcoming event details
- Important notices
- Local news
Templates for a great look and feel
While outlining brand guidelines in a style guide is an important first step in maintaining your look and feel across your digital signage network, not everyone will follow these to a tee. With Broadsign Publish, you can upload HTML5 templates with restricted editing capabilities, ensuring your branding is consistently followed in every location. Local users simply fill in the template with their local information, no technical skills required.
What’s more, these templates are responsive to various screen resolutions and orientations. Local users won’t have to worry about blurry images or awkwardly cropped content, no matter which screen they are working with.
HTML5 also gives you more creative flexibility with your messaging. Integrating location-specific data feeds, like time-of-day or current weather, adds even more context to your messaging.
Independent local users for reduced content bottlenecks
To lessen the bottleneck between local users and your marketing and operations team, Broadsign Publish is designed to be a self-serve platform. With a simple interface and guided tooltips, there is a short learning curve – literally a few minutes – for local users to get started with the platform. They can easily display their messages without any technical or design skills. Creating and publishing messages is as simple as:
- Selecting a template and entering a message
- Picking the screens where the message will play
- Scheduling which days, times and at what frequency the message should appear
Users access only what they need
To ensure each local user only has access to the content that’s right for their business needs and audience interests, your team can assign users to each template. For example, a clinic in Florida probably doesn’t need a snowy flu-shot template.
All content that is right for the local user is then available in their content library, where they can get started on creating a new message.
Balanced content for an engaged audience
While local users have the power to select what days and at what hours their custom message will play, this will not affect your network’s overall content mix. Broadsign Publish is integrated directly with Broadsign Control, ensuring each message plays at the right time.
Take a network where local users are allocated 10% of a 60 minute loop for their messaging. Automatically, the six minutes of local content will be distributed evenly across the loop to maintain a good balance with your network’s ads and other content. Additionally, if the local employee doesn’t schedule the full six minutes, the scheduling will adjust accordingly to avoid the same message being played over and over.
Broadsign Publish for a complete digital signage offering
Broadsign Publish can be branded using your logo and colors, making the tool feel more your own, and giving local users an added sense of support from your network. With the reporting feature, you can see how local users are using the platform, enabling your team to follow up as necessary to suggest improvements.
For more insight into the why your network needs a great local content strategy, check out our ebook:
