In today’s digital world, keeping your school communities informed and engaged is crucial. One effective way to do this is through digital signage. By creating a robust digital signage plan for your trust, you can ensure trust wide communications reach students, staff, and parents. When planning out your signage plan, there are three key elements to consider:
Finding your champions
Successful signage relies on the right people being in place from the get-go. You might have heard us talking about this in our webinars and case studies, and how we support our customers on their journey to digital signage success.
Your champions don’t necessarily need to be the people who are actively uploading and managing content (though it sure helps!), but those who are passionate about sharing information with their communities. People who aren’t afraid to speak up when things need to be updated, communicated or sometimes even switched on!
Having these key individuals in place ensures that the digital signage remains a useful tool rather than just a static display. With the right champions, your digital signage can become a dynamic, engaging communication channel that’s continuously updated to keep the community in the loop.
Delivering your key messages
Here at TrilbyTV, we understand the need to share key messaging across your community, whether it’s to students, staff or parents. The signage champions you’ve discovered can be used as a resource to let you know what their specific site needs, allowing you to form a content strategy that can be used across the board.
To make sharing even easier, our Shared Playlists allow Trusts to send focused communications to any or all schools in just a few clicks, leaving schools to manage when and where the content gets displayed.
Key information for your staff can be used in communal areas and meeting rooms to foster a supportive and informed work environment. Share important updates and resources on health and wellbeing initiatives, continuous professional development and internal job opportunities as well as essential safeguarding procedures and protocols.
Making this information readily accessible strengthens engagement, promotes transparency, and ensures that all staff members have access to the resources they need.
Digital signage in reception and visitor areas can enhance parental engagement by signposting involvement opportunities, highlighting upcoming events and changes, and providing a welcoming atmosphere. This allows you to reinforce your trust’s identity, principles and ethos with everyone who enters your buildings.
Not forgetting that student messages can be cascaded to cultivate a strong sense of community and shared identity within your trust. By displaying student messages, you can actively promote and reinforce the trust’s core vision and values, making them more tangible and relatable to your students.
Managing hardware
You’ve got your team in place and you’ve got engaging content ready to go. So, of course the important thing is to make sure that it’ll be seen by the right people, at the right time, in the right places.
While a somewhat basic question – are the screens across your Trust online? We see it happen all the time: the plug has been pulled out to be used for something else. Or, a Player has been relocated but not turned back on. Maybe someone has turned the device off at the end of the school day but it’s not been turned back on again the following morning.
The trust-wide messages you wish to share with all schools depend on having reliable, online screens. But beyond the basic functionality, you need to ensure that your champion on each site is available to troubleshoot and maintain the screens.
Either your champions or your IT team (if available) should be able to address any issues quickly to ensure that players remain online and content is up-to-date. Whether it’s a technical glitch, an accidental shutdown, or a need for a quick software update, having someone at each site who understands how to manage the screens is vital. Without this support, even the best digital signage content won’t have the impact across your community you’re trying to achieve.
Creating a digital signage plan for your trust is a powerful way to enhance communication, engage your school community, and make your messages more dynamic. By finding the right champions to manage your content, ensuring reliable hardware management, and creating engaging content, you can maximise the potential of your digital signage and build a stronger connection across your schools.
Digital signage isn’t just about displaying information, it’s about creating an interactive and evolving space that reflects your trust. If you’re interested in finding out more, why not join our upcoming webinar – A departmental review of digital signage with United Learning. We will be exploring how United Learning implemented TrilbyTV in the trust and examining ownership across different departments. Leading into how staff were trained on content creation and management, discussing impact and future development.
If you’re new to TrilbyTV and would like to chat about more ways that digital signage can be used in your school or trust, why not sign up for a demo today to talk with one of our digital signage experts.