Digital Signage Basics: The Ultimate Guide to Digital Signage as a Medium, Tool, and Business

Digital signage is on everyone's lips these days. Whether looking for new ways to attract customers or broadcast your company's message to a broader audience, you'll most likely have stumbled upon the digital signage trend. Today's blog is going to cover what digital signage is conceptually. Keep on reading to discover:

• Digital signage as a medium
• Digital signage as a tool 
• Digital signage as a business

Digital signage as a medium

First of all, digital signage is an excellent medium for conveying information. This is fundamentally important to understand because, how can you design a digital signage project without being aware of what can be achieved and the limitations of digital signage as a medium? 

As Marshall McLuhan famously said: "The medium is the message!" You might be asking yourself: What on Earth does this mean? It is understandable to be confused. As a student, I often tried to grasp his words and became quite frustrated with his ambiguities. However, perhaps because he is so ambiguous in his words is what truly makes McLuhan a genius of his time. 

What he means in the aforementioned quote is that each medium's possibilities define the medium in itself. For instance, digital signage can be used to display a select variety of message types. You can get your message on the screen using static images, moving images, and video content. As a result, digital signage is a very visual medium. Yes, audio matters too, but not as much. Generally, it is easier to grab attention using strong visual material with vibrant colors than by using a catchy tune. 

This brings me to the most important limitation of digital signage: its visual nature. Yes, I know we just outlined this as an advantage, but bear with me. One potential trap that you'll be tempted to fall into is overloading the displays with too much visual content. This is why you need to design a specific content strategy, one that is based on the company's branding identity. Doing so will ensure that your content always stays relevant and your message is broadcasted efficiently. For a step-by-step overview of how to create content for digital signage, consider reading our expert guide. 

Curious about what makes a digital signage project successful? Check out our blog where we outline 6 of the most important things to keep in mind when getting started with digital signage. 

Digital signage as a tool  

Now that we defined digital signage as a medium, we can move on and think about digital signage as a tool. Depending on your project goals, you will wish to have specific content on your display. Digital signage is a useful tool for efficient communication. This means that you can make use of this technology to display all sorts of information. However, since this is a knowledge platform for Samsung's digital signage solution MagicINFO, the following is an account of what kinds of information you can display using this powerful solution. 

MagicINFO can be purchased as a Premium solution, Lite solution, or only as a Remote Management solution. Also, you can opt for on-premise installation and purchase MagicINFO as a license or opt for a cloud subscription. If you wish to learn more about MagicINFO and the differences between the solutions outlined above, have a look at our website, where you'll find more useful information. 

If you opted for the MagicINFO Premium, you'll be able to explore all the features that MagicINFO offers, including the widgets. There are widgets that use RSS feeds and can display the news source of your choice, which comes in handy if your goal with digital signage is to keep the team informed about any news you consider relevant. Other useful widgets include the traffic widget that shows important traffic updates, helping you avoid areas with jams, for example. Finally, there is also the weather widget that displays information about any location of your choice, both in Fahrenheit and Celsius.

When thinking about digital signage as a tool, it's important to keep in mind other useful features. MagicINFO has lots of features that can come in handy. We regularly write blogs where we dive into a specific feature and discuss its utility. This content is published under the tag MagicINFO explained. By reading these blogs you can learn how to work with tagged content, how to assign user roles, how to create templates, and many other relevant functionalities. 

Digital signage as a business 

Finally, we couldn't end this blog without discussing digital signage as it is known to most of us: a business. According to GVR, the digital signage market is projected to grow by around 8% by 2030. This leads me to the most important thing to keep in mind when making any new investment: will my investment still be relevant in 5 years' time? Well, in this case, the answer is a loud YES! Since its early development, the digital signage business has only been increasing in popularity as more and more companies learn about its potential to boost sales, attract customers, captivate audiences and showcase any content item that you wish to be seen. 

As with any business, networking is key stay on top of the latest developments, and what better way to do this than by joining our partner program? Doing so will accelerate your knowledge, enrich your business, empower your assets, and increase your results! 

You have reached the end of today's blog where we discussed what digital signage is conceptually as a medium, as a tool, and as a business. If you're interested in starting a digital signage project, but you're unsure where to begin, we have good news for you! Join us this Thursday, on the 11th of May for the live webinar "Kick-start your digital signage project". Sign up and learn more about what digital signage is, how to write a digital signage project in 6 steps, and tips to future-proof your project. 

For more information on how to use digital signage and MagicINFO to level up your project schedule a meeting with one of our MagicINFO experts.