What is Digital Signage? How is it being used and how can I start using it for my business?

Digital signage is a modern communication tool and, just like any other communication method, its success lies upon the right audience, message, and process. Digital signage covers anything where content (video, reports, images, and presentations) is shown on-screen (TV screens, phones, tablets, billboards, projectors, and video walls).

For digital signage you’ll need three things:

• A SmartTV or a regular TV and a digital player like Fire TV, Android, Windows, Linux, etc.
• A laptop or PC where you can upload content.
• The content (images, video, powerpoint, etc.)

The whole idea of digital signage is to make your marketing campaign and ideas powerful and easy. However, digital signs are much more than just good campaigns or advertisements.  Because all data stored or generated by a computer is digital, any media, including presentations, images, videos, music, TV network news, and more, can be stored to be brought up later or streamed right now.  This media is then played through a computer network or cloud service.

How is it being used?

That network can be used to provide information in the form of video or looping messages in restaurants, retail shops, lobby welcome screens, offices, schools, universities, churches, gymnasiums, airport and bus terminals, and so many more locations.

Digital signage content can be very specific for an audience at any given moment. Compared to the creation, distribution process, and printing for other forms of display or advertising, digital signage networks are less costly. Content can be tailored to each display device separately, allowing for more customization of each display. And, a dynamic medium allows for animation and interaction.

Which digital signage solution should I use?

There are multiple options on the market, but OptiSigns is the leading, user-friendly and secure solution for digital signage. Our software can turn any digital screen into a digital sign in minutes, letting you create, design, and schedule your content and manage all your screens remotely. We offer 500+ free templates, 100+ APP integrations, a built-in designer, top-notch customer service, and advanced features like analytics and AI. Also, our software is multilingual and supports payment in multi-currency. We have 4500+ satisfied customers and 1,000+ 5-star reviews on G2 and Capterra.

Our software is simple but powerful, you can access our central dashboard portal remotely through a web browser, or download our APP on any iOS or Android device, and easily set up, manage, and upload screens contents and most importantly, showcase unique information in each screen to engage different audiences if you need it.

Our goal is to make setting up and putting beautiful content to your digital signs a simple, easy, and enjoyable experience.

Which features will I need?

OptiSigns support high-level features like:

• Wide range of image, video, documents file types.
• 100+ APP integrations. You can display your social media walls and moderate your social media feeds.
• Create playlists with ​​images, videos, web links, and apps. You can mix and match in any order and duration.
• Simple Calendar APP schedule (you can schedule each week, day differently into the future) or use calendar mix APP to mix multiple calendars into 1 app, you can even mix Google Calendar together with Microsoft Calendar.
• Multiple orientations: portrait & landscape mode OptiSigns support rotation of your screens, up to 270 degrees.
• Split-screen layout to show more information on the same screen.
• Multi-users: you can invite your team members to help with managing and updating screens.
• Work offline: with OptiSigns you can have offline playback, meaning all downloadable content (pictures, videos, documents) will be downloaded to your device, so losing internet connection will not affect your playback.

Ready, set, go!

1. Choose your plan

If you have decided to use our solution for digital signage, the first thing you need to do is choose a plan based on your needs. Then you choose a digital player, OptiSigns app is available for the most popular ones: Fire TV, Android, Windows, Linux, etc, but you can also buy a SmartTV such as Insignia or Toshiba TV with Fire TV built-in. And if you want more enterprise-level control and support, then Raspberry Pi and Android Stick devices provide good options for advanced data security (ensure your content is stored in a specific country) and reliability.

Below is a quick comparison of top digital signage players to see which one is better for you.

2. Download OptiSigns

Then you need to download the OptiSigns app here, and once the app is installed you set it up in a few easy steps and add one or more screens and create or upload your content in seconds.  

3. Get to know your tools

OptiSigns provides a wide range of tools & integrations such as Weather, News, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tableau, PowerBI, and more to help with your content creation and automation. OptiSigns also provides a Templates Editor so you can create or modify your content quickly. You can also use PowerPoint, Google Slides for collaboration and content creation, and then publish to OptiSigns. With Google Slides, you can share and multiple people can edit the same slides, when changes are made, it will be automatically updated on OptiSigns screens.

We are constantly updating our Apps and integrations to make your digital signage experience the greatest. See our full list of apps here.

OptiSigns offers dynamic visual solutions to transform how organizations attract, engage and delight their audiences.

Try it for free or book a demo today!

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