Choosing the optimal digital signage hardware is crucial when you want to broadcast your brand’s content in highly efficient and meaningful ways, but the hardware is only half of the equation when you want a powerful digital signage solution. You’ll also need the ability to seamlessly manage your content across screens in user friendly, cost effective ways—and Autora DMS is the answer.
“Autora” is a Spanish word that translates into the English “Author,” serving as the intelligent, plug-and-play solution to content control indoors and outdoors. This robust platform simplifies the entire process: from content creation to organization, scheduling, and updating. Here’s more!
Autora DMS: Top Digital Signage Content Management Features
Features of Autora DMS, the modern solution for your digital signage content management system (CMS), include the following:
- Layout designer: This feature of the digital signage CMS software allows users to intuitively create unique page designs that represent your brand. This can include text, images, logos, video, audio, and other elements with its ease of use expanding the pool of people that can effortlessly craft the desired content.
- Content organization tool: This allows users to structure the digital signage content that’s been created for ease of management and retrieval. Content can be categorized in multiple ways—playlists, folders, or categories—providing flexibility and choice and saving the time you would have spent hunting for the right content.
- Scheduling tool: Autora’s CMS for digital signage allows you to schedule your content: where it appears and when it does. By scheduling content delivery ahead of time, you’re freed up for other tasks while ensuring that your messages are shown to your target audiences at the optimal times.
- Remote management tool: This part of the digital signage content management system also saves you time and resources, permitting administrators to upload content from various physical locations. They can also edit or remove content remotely, streamlining usage and saving you the frustration of needing to return to “home base” first.
- Content versioning tool: This tool allows you to maintain numerous versions of your content, including the original one for historical reference. This tool allows you to adjust content seasonally or for other reasons and, as needed, recover and restore the version of choice.
- Content playback tool: Autora’s digital signage CMS software makes sure that your carefully designed content will display precisely as intended. It includes tools in which you can adjust display settings along with resolution and aspect ratio to dovetail with screen specifications.
- Content integration tool: You can integrate the content you’ve created for your social media feeds into your digital signage CMS software along with third party content like weather reports, news updates, live events, and more. This allows you to enrich your content, ensuring that it’s dynamically up to date.
Content Creation 101: Designing Engaging Content for Digital Signage
Using the layout designer, users can create engaging content, including text, images, logos, video, audio, social media feeds, live data streaming, and more. So, the potential for creating inviting content is enormous, virtually endless—but what, specifically, would engage your audiences?
High quality images grab the attention of passersby, and so can snippets of text that’s relevant to your audiences. If you’ve had outstanding sales numbers, proudly share your successes. Discount codes? Provide them. Enticing new menus? Make them easy for people to see and RSVP. Generous donors? Thank them publicly. Ready to recognize outstanding employees? Do so!
If your digital signage will be in a sports arena, you could include videos of exciting accomplishments of the home team or dynamically introduce the players. In a retail store environment, video could be used to demonstrate the usage of a new product; in an elementary school, you could include clips of the spelling bee contest or fun fair. If you’ve got a story to share, no matter your industry, you can create and integrate short videos into your digital signage content management system to engage your audiences.
If you’ve put time and attention into your social media, perhaps the visually appealing Instagram or YouTube, you can use widgets to incorporate their feeds into your digital signage CMS software: of a new innovation in your healthcare system, perhaps, or a new product in your stores.
Or, if you gather customer testimonials, you can include snippets of text in your digital signage to provide social proof of your value. Also, add images and videos of the satisfied customers and let other customers know where and how to provide testimonials of your brand.
Dynamically share wayfinding information, updating it if pathways to parts of the building will change, certain parking areas will close or reopen, and so forth.
Because so many industries use digital signage today—and in such a wide variety of ways—these are just some of the many ways in which you can craft engaging content to interact with your audiences. The sky’s the limit!
Content Management for Different Industries: Tailoring Solutions
Digital signage enhances the messaging being provided in a wide range of industries with some of them including the following:
- Hospitality: Hotels, motels, and resorts can use self-service check-in kiosks, wayfinding signage, digital menu boards, and more to streamline and enhance the guest experience. The Autora digital signage content management system can be used to promote specials, nearby attractions, locations of other brand facilities, and more.
- Retail: Brick and mortar retailers can attract shoppers and engage them in the shopping experience, build customer loyalty, and personalize the experience for individual shoppers through CMS technologies. Display pricing, use video to demonstrate how to use products for sale, provide discounts, and so forth.
- Healthcare: Facilities can use digital signage CMS software to engage, educate, and inform patients and their families, changing messaging as needed to address real-time situations. Healthcare staff can receive training, learn of incoming emergencies in real time, and more while people can be entertained in waiting rooms and lobbies.
- Education: School officials can communicate with students, parents, staff, and visitors in dynamic ways, capturing people’s attention with real-time information. Digital signage can provide schedules, cafeteria menus, policies, academic and athletic accomplishments, and so forth along with wayfinding information.
- Sports and entertainment: Create immersive experiences at sports stadiums, theaters, casinos, resorts, and more. You can share scores and highlights at sports games along with the live action. In a movie theater, film promotions can be shared before the main event—and, across entertainment venues, concession items and discounts can be promoted.
- Financial services: From sharing current rates on savings and loans products, updating customers on financial market trends, and more, real-time content streamed through a CMS to digital signage keeps everyone up-to-the minute informed. Financial institutions can also share their branded stories, upsell products, list other branches, and more.
- Transportation: From airports to subway stations and from railways to bus terminals, travelers will appreciate when digital signage displays schedules for departures and arrivals, flight numbers, delays, and more. Wayfinding signage will get them into the correct lines while streamed content will entertain and inform travelers and reduce the perceived wait times.
- Government: Digital signage content management systems can direct people to the locations they need, provide digital directories to offices, list case numbers in courtrooms, and otherwise inform people in often-confusing situations.
The Power of Digital Signage Content Scheduling
Autora DMS is a powerful solution that allows businesses across the spectrum of industries to seamlessly connect and engage with target audiences, elevate their customers’ experiences with the brand, increase customer loyalty and, because of boosted engagement, enjoy revenue growth.
To take full advantage of these benefits, though, it’s important to deliver the content on a schedule that will reach the largest amount of the targeted audience—and that’s where Autora’s scheduling tool comes into play.
Benefits of scheduling (especially when done in batches) include time savings with efficiency allowing businesses to confidently focus more on other priorities, knowing that the scheduling technology will get the content where it needs to go at just the right time. If time consuming tasks unexpectedly arise for the business, these companies will especially appreciate how their content delivery is already set and ready to go.
The scheduling tool also allows users to be more strategic in content delivery, considering what content will help those who consume the information and what content will help a company to reach business goals. If, for example, you’re managing a theater, you can upload times when people can buy tickets for upcoming shows. You could do the same with tickets to sports games or a school’s annual musical performance. You could create and store messaging for upcoming holiday specials, scheduling it for release at the appropriate times. If your hospitality brand has facilities near in-demand festivals, you could schedule your content to share room specials.
Autora’s content organization tool also contributes to this endeavor. By allowing users to organize the content created into playlists, folders, or categories, those scheduling content delivery can more easily find the right content for a particular need.
Plus, when events repeat annually, you could save the content, tweak as needed, and use that version the following year. This saves time and resources that could be used elsewhere to improve or grow the business or enhance the organization.
Under some circumstances, the best laid plans for scheduling content may need to be rapidly changed because of unexpected events. Fortunately, the ability to change content in real time allows an organization to have a foundational plan for scheduled content delivery, knowing that, if an emergency or an important event occurs, the digital signage content management system is flexible and adaptable enough to accommodate these changes.
Emergency Messaging and Digital Signage Content Management
Any time an emergency occurs, it’s crucial to warn potentially affected people as quickly as possible, and quality digital signage CMS software is ideal for this purpose. Emergencies can range from inclement weather—ranging from tornadoes to hurricanes, heavy rains that cause flooding, and more—to natural disasters like fires and situations like chemical spills or natural gas leaks and so forth. Or, there can be scenarios where warnings must be given about actions of other people such as an intruder in a school building or healthcare facility.
With digital signage, the CMS system can be used to provide real-time alerts with messaging sent to the appropriate locations to warn customers, staff, and others of the situation. Through the use of a digital signage content management system, factual information can be provided in a clear, straightforward way, including details about how to react; this could include information about a building evacuation or wayfinding information that shares where to head for the best shelter (such as a basement during a tornado) or another building entirely (such as when a fire starts). This helps people affected by the emergency to respond in an optimal way and, by listing where people should gather, it makes it easier to ensure that everyone has safely followed the recommended procedures.
Digital Signage Solutions From MDM + Autora DMS
When your organization wants a comprehensive solution for its digital signage technology needs, this is an ideal pairing. MDM Commercial offers premium digital signage options, serving as a one-stop shop for innovative technology needs across multiple industries. Our expert team can provide quality recommendations after listening to your specific requirements; then, we can provide efficient shipping options, personalized installation services, and ongoing technical support and professional guidance.
MDM offers competitive pricing by leveraging our big buying power and deep industry connections, so even businesses on a budget can benefit from exceptional technology. So, whether you’re upgrading existing equipment or entering into a new technology investment, we’re happy to help by providing our world class service.
When you choose MDM Commercial as your partner, you’ll benefit in numerous ways as we seamlessly manage your project. This is true for small ones and large ones, straightforward ones and ones with more complexities. If you’ve got questions about the possibilities or are ready to get started with your technology, please contact us online or call (800) 359-6741.