Social Media Digital Signage: What, Why, How, & Where

The terms social media marketing and offline advertising have been in existence for quite some time now with marketers heavily relying on social media for advertising & marketing contrastingly declining reliance on offline channels. 

As social media networks have grown their influence on the billions of users and millions of brands globally and offline channels have seen diminishing returns. 

But the emergence of digital signage as a solution to offline media, a new opportunity has been trending among the brands with interests of integrating social media with digital signage to create Social media digital signage.

This article perfectly explains the depths of social media digital signage, its importance, and how your brand can leverage it to create a remarkable digital marketing strategy.

What is Social Media Digital Signage?

It is an integration of two different worlds of digital media, i.e. Social media & Digital Signage, where one focuses on social advertising & the other on the offline channels of advertising.

By definition, It is the process of using social media content in digital signage campaigns for brands. 

Digital signage is an upgraded concept of offline advertising that includes the use of digital display screens, advanced technology such as artificial intelligence or face recognition, and internet connectivity to make the information or advertisements more understandable, attractive, and customizable. 

Now, the integration of social media into digital signage has taken the advertising efforts of brands to the next level with enhanced interactivity, increased user engagement, visual vibrancy, and amplified campaign results.

Why You Need It?

With these critical points, understand why do you need social media digital signage campaigns now more than ever. 

#1 Interactive Campaigns

The prime drawback that offline advertising had was that it was not interactive for the viewers with one-way information dispersion. But with social signage, you enhance the interactivity of your campaigns. 

Having a digital screen with interactive elements like a touchscreen, face recognition, or artificial intelligence will make it more interesting for the users.

Interactivity can be instilled by adding allowing users to enter their social information, share their photos & videos, or interact simply with entertainment elements that can magnify the impact of the campaign on the audience. 

Interactivity with giving value propositions like vouchers or gift codes by collecting or linking audiences’ social media information can also provide beneficial results.

#2 Increases Social Interactions

Along with your social media marketing to grow your social presence & influence, you can use signages to redirect the offline audience to your social profiles to magnify your brand exposure and awareness and build social profiles. 

There are billions of global active social media users but still there a vast audience that might be unaware of your brand & its social media activities. 

Having social media digital signage displaying valuable user-generated content can help you promote your social media activity to create brand awareness and guide new users to your social profiles from the offline environment. 

It is an excellent way to grow your brand’s social following & build an online community. 

#3 Boosts Social Proof

Users must perceive your brand as trustworthy, reliable, and authentic as these elements motivate the users to engage with a brand and walk on the path to conversions. 

It is the perfect solution to display all the relevant and valuable user-generated live hashtag feeds, social content, or mentions about your brand on signages to build this social proof. 

It will instantly grab the attention of the viewers and encourage them to engage with your campaign & brand. 

Social media is a hub of UGC and the fact that over 90% of the people trust UGC reviews & recommendations to make their online purchase decisions, ads with UGC have a five times higher click-through rate & people engage with UGC more comparatively, shows how advantageous it can be to incorporate UGC in your digital signages. 

Digital signages with UGC will tremendously help in building trustworthiness, authenticity, and user engagement, and drive conversions in the offline environment.

#4 Deliver Entertainment & Gamification

These social media digital signages are installed in places where users ideally have some time to kill. With these, you can enhance user engagement by adding entertainment & gamification attributes. 

The process is easy where you can display social content that relates perfectly to the users. It has aspects such as fun, humor, trendy, etc., or uses gamification strategies like contests, giveaways, leaderboards, or vouchers, etc. to attract & engage the viewers. 

It is a brilliant solution to drive event engagement and at the same time, showcase your brand as fun & humanized to connect well with the users. 

But the important thing to consider here is that you install these signages in such places where the users might have time to invest otherwise it will be a waste of resources & effort. 

#5 Hashtag Campaigns with Instant Display

Creating hashtag campaigns has become a common phenomenon on social media among brands these days. With the Social media digital signages, you can take these hashtag campaigns to the offline environment as well. 

For now, these campaigns are only restricted to social media platforms, so the reach gets restricted, and an opportunity might be lost to make the most returns on your campaigns. 

Displaying hashtag campaigns on social media digital signages can magnify the reach of the campaign with the possibility to gain exposure to a broader audience, generating awareness, enhancing user engagement, and even conversions. 

The best part is with social media signage; you have the functionality to display instant updates. So, when the viewers share their content using your hashtag, they will get a chance to feature on the screen, which is a significant motivating factor for engagement. 

Challenges With Social Media UGC & Their Solutions by Taggbox

How To Create Amazing Social Media Signage Campaigns

Taggbox, as a user-generated content platform and social media aggregator can help provides complete solutions to create and display social signage campaigns effectively and efficiently.

Social Media Digital Signage – Diverse Use Cases

Explore where you can display these amazing social media signage to boost your brand growth & campaign exposure.

#1 In-Store Displays

The first & foremost is to display the signages in stores or brick-and-mortar stores for your brand. These displays work like a charm with their upselling characteristics and influential content display. 

It is an excellent way to influence your in-store audience to purchase more with your brand by showcasing the hashtag campaigns and highlighting how others are using your products through UGC. 

Also, social media signages can be used in-store to attract your customers to your social profiles and build a social following. Besides, you can also encourage customers to share their experience using your brand hashtags & display it in real-time on signage, which will eventually increase your social media impressions and give an amazing boost to your in-store marketing campaigns!

#2 Digital Out-Of-Home

Public spaces and other digital out of home advertising options are a perfect place to display social media digital signages as the audience usually are waiting and have time to invest in such things. 

From last night’s #Oscars #RedCarpetLive on our Thomson Reuters digital signage! Live @PeriscopeCo feed with @Twitter social wall! #ooh #dooh pic.twitter.com/NmTz6Rhr5s

— BrandedCities (@BrandedCities) March 5, 2018

So, you can gain maximum user engagement for your campaigns at these places along with gathering their social influences and also grow your exposure, reach, and awareness. 

These places also present an opportunity to share new updates, product launches, upcoming events, and more relevant news about your brand. 

#3 Hospitality Industry

Hotels, Resorts, Restaurants & food festivals are part of the hospitality industry where the customer experience defines the success & sales for your business. Thus, social media signage becomes a necessity to display social proof & quality of experience.  

Also, Displaying signage can help you grow your sales and customer engagement. 

Firstly, you can display the specials on signage & social media together. You can also encourage the customers to share their experience through social media by mentioning your brand and displaying it to highlight your happy customers & their incredible experience.

You can encourage the customers to share their experience through their photos, videos, and reviews on social media using your custom hashtags and display it on your social signage to highlight happy customers the quality of services. 

Also, you can promote offers, discounts, vouchers, highlight services, and much more to benefit your brand. Further, it is also a fun & entertaining way to engage and interact with your audience. 

Want to know more about the use of user-generated content in the hospitality industry? Follow the given link and know everything important which you must know about it!

#4 Corporate Events

Corporate events such as exhibitions, conferences, trade shows, seminars, workshops, office displays, or internal communication can make perfect use of social media digital signage. 

These events are mostly informational & driven with a commercial purpose, so social media wall for events can help in showcasing the buzz around these events on social media. Also, highlight the key speakers, display guides & schedule, interact and engage with social & in-event audiences, etc. 

Besides, these events can be remarkably leveraged by brands through social signage to promote their new product launches, upcoming products or feature updates, business news, and marketing campaigns.  

#5 Entertainment & Education

Finally, what is a mutual element between social media, entertainment, and education? It is MILLENNIALS.

Millennials are the most significant part of the audience in social media, entertainment events, and the education industry. 

So, it is an excellent solution to install social media signages at entertainment events like music concerts, festivals, sports events or at education events like college fests, exhibitions, university events, and more. 

These social signages can be leveraged along with a custom event hashtag to encourage the sharing of images & photos during the event by the millennials or to create promotional campaigns, display schedules & guides, or create a buzz about the event on social media & cross-promotions. 

Summary

Social media platforms are the most important and valuable part of the digital ecosystem, and the resurgence of offline advertising with digital infusion is capturing brands’ attention to merge social media and digital signages for massive, impactful advertising campaigns. 

Social media digital signage as a unification of social media & digital signage will ensure maximum engagement, impactful campaigns, and drive conversions to boost revenue & brand growth. 

Although, these signages are not hugely active in marketers’ community as only selective brands are leveraging it to their advantage. There are many uncovered opportunities with social media signages that can be explored to generate engaging campaigns & drive positive results. 

With the evolving technology & innovation, social signages will be the future of offline advertising. Thus, you must acknowledge the importance of it and find solutions to leverage it for your brand.