The fastest growing type of advertising is digital out-of-home (DOOH), those video display screens you see in stores, on the highway or even on city streets. DOOH is growing in employee communication too, as companies see opportunities to use digital screens to communicate in the workplace.

With a little planning, digital display screens can be a powerful tool to help you reach and engage employees, especially those who don’t have easy access to email or intranet.

Here are three must-dos for making digital display screens as strong as possible.

Keep it local

Be selfish! Keep content relevant to your location and the employees who work there, by answering the question, “What does it mean to me?” 

People love to see their name on the big screen and photos of their friends and coworkers.

How

• Provide information about your facility’s upcoming employee event accompanied by a slide show of photos from last year’s festivities. 
• Localize messages about corporate programs by recognizing local employees who suppport those programs.

Keep it fresh

Even the best-placed digital screen will get ignored and turn into “furniture” if you don’t keep it alive with new information.

Digital display screens allow you to continually feed new or refreshed content.

How

• Ask content experts to submit information every week. Once people see you’re dedicating your DOOH screens to local content, you’ll get more than enough content to balance out required company messages.
• Circulate your content for no more than a week. Studies have shown 4 to 5 impressions is the right amount for learning. If the information is still relevant, change the visual and recirculate it.

Keep it moving

The ability to use creative animation gives DOOH a leg up on your traditional bulletin board or site signage. But be sure that the speed of your animation works for your content.

How

• Slow down a scrolling list of birthdays, anniversaries or other special celebrations. Recognition is useless if it’s too fast for anyone to read.
• Ask for feedback to pinpoint the right speed for your animation. A display that moves too slowly will bore employees and remind them they’ve got somewhere else to be.