Digital Signage Templates

All this month, we've been sharing 31 reasons not to be afraid of digital signage. And given the rather spooky month October is, we thought it was a great time to share this information. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. 

We know it can be intimidating launching a network, but that's why we're here. We try to take as much fear out of the equation as possible through education and awareness (hence, this blog). We are open to having as many conversations or demos as needed to help you get your project off the ground. 

So in case you missed any of our 31 reasons or want to stroll through memory lane, here they all are:

1.  Networking
2. Cellular
3. WiFi
4. LAN
5. Scalability
6. SaaS
7. Unlimited users
8. Cost of installation
9. Complexity of installation
10. Variety of file types
11. Scheduling
12. Digital signage hardware
13. Content management
14. Content expansion
15. Component players
16. The Cloud
17. Touch screens
18. Training
19. Digital signage content creation
20. Custom-branded templates
21. Video
22. Security
23. IT involvement
24. Custom training
25. Support
26. Content best practices
27. Screen placement
28. Project management
29. Return on investment
30. Enterprise deployments
31. Roles and permissions

We hope everybody has a safe and fun Halloween. We'll leave you with this spooky message. 

In light of October being a rather scary month, we thought we would highlight 31 reasons not to be afraid of digital signage. We hope you enjoy them.

Reason #28: Project management

When you are ready to kick-off your digital signage project, the management of said project can feel like a whole other job on to itself. MediaTile offers to manage your entire project from start to finish through our MediaServices team. We will work with your primary internal digital signage advocate starting with the kick-off meeting, then concept creation, establishing timelines, approvals, testing, roll out, and reporting. In the case you want to keep the project in house, here are a few suggestions to help your engagement go as smoothly as possible:

• Dedicate a project leader to oversee the processes and make sure it is moving.
• Come up with clearly defined goals for your digital signage network.
• Have a single provider contact so any questions or issues that may arise only require a single call.
• Come up with content designs and templates that maintain a consistent tone with your existing brand messaging (whether your audience is internal or external)
• Have a list of all the hardware and software components you'll need to deliver an individual installation point.
• Schedule your team's training and testing well in advance and encourage "playing" with the content management solution.
• Once your project goes live, make sure either the project leader or some other vital team member is checking on the network daily to ensure success and gather usage data.

If you have any questions about a new project or management of existing one, MediaTile has the experts to consult or inherit the engagement and increase the likelihood of another digital signage project in your future.


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In light of October being a rather scary month, we thought we would highlight 31 reasons not to be afraid of digital signage. We hope you enjoy them.

Reason #20: Branded templates

In yesterday's post, we talked about about our Composer tool (it allows you to create content for your digital signage network right in our software). In this post, I want to spend more time talking about customizing the templates for your company. 

The general templates are available to be used and abused by all of our customers, but they are a bit generic (on purpose). The real benefit of Composer comes in when you upload custom-branded Composer templates for your network. 

Content that's on digital signage for banks should look a lot different than a network for a college campus. Retail networks should look different than a corporate communications one. 

But even though the looks are different, they can all still be professional through a template system. One of our corporate communication customers themed all of their templates so that employees would know what sort of content was on the screen before even reading the message. This type of planning can be very beneficial to a network's success. 

It's no secret that content is critical to a network's success and Composer is a tool that makes creating content not so scary. 

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In light of October being a rather scary month, we thought we would highlight 31 reasons not to be afraid of digital signage. We hope you enjoy them.

Reason #19: Content creation

Previously we talked about the variety of file types that you can play on our digital signage solution, but there is also another option. Through our tool called Composer, users can use embedded templates to contribute content. 

We've built in standard ones that any customer can use, or you can upload or have us create your own custom-branded templates. This way you can ensure that no matter who is contributing content you know what it will look like. Your colors, your schemes, your brand. No stretched logos or goofy clip art. 

In fact, one of our corporate communication customers has locked their users out of doing anything BUT using Composer to add content. This guarantees consistency with the corporate content at an international and regional level. 

If you'd like to see the Composer tool in action, check out this demo. It can make creating content for your out of home network not so scary. 

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One of digital signage's great strengths is its ability to display content in multiple forms, including high-definition video (or standard def), Flash, dynamic Flash, and even static images (like jpgs, gifs & pngs). You can then use the content and the platform to reach employees, customers or whoever your target audience is with engaging messages. 

But inevitably the question arises: Can it play PowerPoint? 

And so here's the problem. PowerPoint was never designed to be used for digital signage content. And furthermore, most PowerPoint presentations aren't that good anyway. We've all been witnesses to them. If your content looks like a presentation, people will treat is as such (which is usually a cue for nap time). 

Now, let's be clear. I am not a PowerPoint hater. I like it. I use it to support my own speaking engagements. But we have all been put to sleep by silly clip art, unattractive templates and bullet after bullet after bullet. I'll never understand why people are so in love with transitions between slides. You're just delaying the next piece of content.

The fact is that great presentations can be made and supported using PowerPoint though. Check out SlideShare and you can see phenomenal content created using PowerPoint. 

But when people start thinking about digital signage content in a PowerPoint state of mind, the wheels start to fall off a bit. Our digital signage software (MediaCast) does support the use of PowerPoint files but we do not condone it. We would rather customers use our Composer tool that lets you create content right inside the software. 

We understand why people want to use PowerPoint. They are familiar with it and therefore it's comfortable. Many of our customers use PowerPoint and then expert out into another file format. It works but it doesn't necessarily equate to great signage content.

What are your thoughts?
______________________________
Image credit, Mike Licht


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Diversified Media Group (DMG) is a network and systems engineering company, responsible for the management of day-to-day planning, engineering, installation, content development and routine maintenance across a wide span of business sectors.  DMG is also the sister company of Diversified Systems, one of the US’ largest A/V integrators, with multiple offices from New Jersey to Seattle).

The first Digital Signage for Corporate Communication was a big success (in my opinion of course) because for an entire day we had communication experts focused on how to best use the technology internally. The day-long event also included a tour of Eli Lilly & Company's network, in addition to content presentations from David Trounstine and Steve Crescenzo.

Digital Signage Today was kind enough to publish the list of top opportunities and obstacles facing digital signage used for employee communication. The challenges faced by these networks are often quite different from those that are public facing.

Please check out the full detail on Digital Signage Today but here's a sampling of what the group cited:

The Top Opportunities (in no particular order)I have been asked by many for details on the next event. All I can say at this point is stay tuned. I'm determined to make sure that each event is worth the time and expense it takes to attend events like these.

- By David Trounstine -

Some of our clients don't have the in-house expertise to create, manage and deploy their own content. That's why our team exists. In fact we have some clients who completely rely on us for everything that is shown on their digital signage network. As the economy has forced many of us to tighten up our budgets we are starting to enable these clients take on some of the creative work in an effort to help keep them in the black throughout these tough times. The process is tougher than you might think, but it all comes down to taking small steps toward the goal.

Charles Fleharty, MediaTile's Director of Content Development and one of the engineers behind the new Human Kiosk with 4G VideoPresence, in conjunction with our portal engineering team created a fantastic web-based application that we call Composer. Simply put is is a content editing tool that allows a user to change pre-built templates to include relevant and up-to-date information without the use of a cumbersome and expensive set of digital design tools.

Using Composer our clients can create great looking content with a few simple steps, all within their web browser. The templates can be custom built to the needs of a client. They can include a number of very cool dynamic functions such as RSS display, time & date, and even weather. All parts of the template can be animated, and when the user makes changes to the text or imagery the animation is preserved.

We met recently with a client who uses interactive content to engage their users and provide them with current event information relative to the local area. It would be very development intensive to provide them with a "template" version of this touch screen application, so instead we suggested moving some of that content out to an attractor screen. Allowing passers-by to see the content, and be encouraged to learn more by interacting with the touch screen.

We are pushing forward with the next version of the software as I type this, and the new features will really make the template approach shine. I highly recommend that our clients check it out, and if you aren't a MediaTile client consider making templates that work for your system to aid you in achieving your design goals.

I spent the day with one of our current digital signage customers who's looking to expand their network to help with a new internal branding campaign.

First, I love going behind the lines (so to speak) and seeing how our clients are using all sorts of measures to improve communication with employees.

Second, I love when they use digital signage to do it.

There divisions and lines of business have gone through some recent shuffling and they are banking on digital signage to help them through the transitions.

One of the features they love about MediaTile's approach is MediaCast, our digital signage software. Because it is entirely web-based, they can now give more people access to contribute content to the network. And with Composer, our embedded content creation tool, they can now take advantage of flash templates so that content contributors can focus on the message and not the

First, we made it easy to install your own digital signage network with our Digital Sign in a Box hardware.

Then, we made it even easier to manage the network and content with MediaCast 4.0.

And now, creating digital signage content couldn't be simpler.

Last week, MediaTile officially launched Composer, an online Flash-based content generating tool. With Composer, customers can create professional looking flash-based media quickly and easily. You need no knowledge of Flash or other animation tools to create this great looking content.

Many of our customers went through a webinar this morning so I'll be curious to hear the feedback. Where I think this will really help in internal communications is through templates. You can store your own templates right inside the system. This could give many others the ability to contribute content to your network while still ensuring brand compliance.

You might have an HR rep or an admin somewhere who would like add content. With the templates, you can give them access without having to worry about will appear on your screens.
Simply put, you can decide what the content looks like and let others worry about the message.

Though you have the option of storing your own templates, MediaCast does come with 20 built in. These are available in both landscape and portrait, as well as different sizes so that you can add them into variou8s playlists or use them in a Multizone playlist.

If you'd like to learn more about Composer, let us know. I'd be more than happy to walk you through the tool.

You may or may not be tired of reading me going on and on about the importance of content. But people get so focused on the fun part (the network hardware and software) and then don't come up with a plan to manage content.

The Digital Signage Association recently published an article from Keith Kelsen, MediaTile CEO and my boss's boss. His comments are relative to not only employee communications networks, but really any signage applications and markets out there. He points out that content is and should be a concern for any network operator out there, no matter what technology you're using to deliver your messages. He recommends creating a variety of templates that you can quickly adapt to your specific message.

Think about your various employee communications messages you're asked to deliver every day or week. They usually fall into certain categories: HR/benefits, health and safety, community awareness/involvement, business news, executive briefings, employee recognitions and so forth. You could/should create basic templates around all of these topics and then modify them for that particular piece of news.

The better you are planning for content, the more successful your digital signage implementation will be. (I stole that line straight from the original article.) Ultimately, content will be the most important deciding factor in whether or not your network is deemed successful.