Digital signage for internal communication: screens your team actually reads

Important news gets lost in a full inbox. The intranet is visited when someone needs a form. Meanwhile, everyone walks past the coffee machine, the lift and the canteen several times a day. A screen in those places reaches people at the moment they have a minute to look.

This is how to make internal screens useful rather than one more thing nobody looks at.

What to show

The best internal screens mix the practical with the personal:

• Today and this week: visitors expected, meetings in the big room, events. A calendar feed keeps this current without retyping it.
• Company news: a new client, a launch, a result. One sentence and a photo.
• People: new colleagues, birthdays, anniversaries, team photos. People look for themselves and each other.
• Practical information: canteen menu, parking, IT maintenance, safety instructions.
• Numbers that matter to the team: a goal and the progress towards it.
• Outside world: the weather for the commute home, the news headlines.

Avoid what doesn’t work on a screen: long announcements, policy documents, anything people need to read twice.

Where to put the screens

Place screens where people wait or pause, not where they rush past:

• at the coffee machine or in the kitchen,
• in the canteen,
• next to the lift,
• in the reception area (useful for visitors too),
• in production halls and warehouses, where many colleagues don’t sit at a computer at all.

That last group is often the reason to start. For people without a company email address or desk, a screen may be the main channel.

Who publishes, and how to keep it safe

Internal screens fail when one person has to do everything, or when anyone can put anything on screen. A workable setup:

• Content makers in different teams submit items: HR the new colleague, facilities the maintenance notice.
• An owner approves. In Rivowall, new content starts as a draft, gets submitted for review and only appears on screen after approval. A content maker doesn’t approve their own work, and a rejection comes with a short reason.
• Location managers look after the screens at their own site.

That way content stays current without turning the screen into a noticeboard nobody manages.

Connect what you already have

Retyping information for a screen is the fastest way to let it go stale. Rivowall can show content from sources you already use:

• Google Slides presentations,
• Google Calendar for upcoming appointments and events,
• weather for your location and RSS news headlines,
• PDF files, images and video.

Keep it fresh

• Give everything an end date. An event announcement should disappear after the event. Rivowall removes items automatically on their end date.
• Use dayparting. Morning: today’s agenda. Lunch: the canteen and people news. End of day: the weather and tomorrow. See dayparting.
• Keep an urgent message ready. A safety or closure notice can override all other content until you remove it.
• Check it in person. Once a week, look at the screen where your colleagues see it.

Several offices?

Publish company news to every location at once, and let each site add its own local items. Organisations, locations and roles keep each team’s screens and content separate.

Get started

Pick the one spot everyone passes, such as the coffee machine. Connect your calendar, add three people items and the week’s news. Try Rivowall free for 14 days, or see our offices page.