There is value in creating a lively office environment. Offices should be a place that gets people excited to work and that inspires the very best efforts from each employee. Today, finding ways to boost energy, build excitement, and loop more employees in on office happenings are important priorities.
Achieving these goals is easier said than done. However, with its strategic, creative approach to content creation and network deployment, Plaxma Visual Networks is helping companies across Mexico develop workplace communications that make people happy and productive.
Rethinking what internal communications can be
After first working with digital signage in 2007, Plaxma officially began operations in 2008, developing a roster of clients that includes everything from hospitals, to automotive companies, to resorts. Offering turnkey communications solutions to its customers, Plaxma helps at all stages of conceiving, planning, and delivering the right content for internal comms networks of all kinds.
The success of Plaxma’s approach begins with the very way that it views the internal communications space. Rather than approaching internal comms as a simple project of delivering content to digital signage, it views its work as more like establishing an internal TV channel for its clients.
Operating from this point of view requires a different mindset from the content standpoint. For internal communications content to be engaging enough for viewers to actually pay attention, it should be regularly updated, just like a TV show will release new episodes at regular intervals. To do this effectively requires thinking outside the box of internal announcements from HR. Infotainment content like weather, sports, and trivia questions are all popular offerings, as are more casual internal updates – photos from company events, employees’ children, and more.
Finally, Plaxma rounds out this fun stuff with material more directly related to the company: key performance indicators, new policies, upcoming meetings or events, adding valuable substance to the channel.
Easier content creation = better engagement
Though external content will generally fill the bulk of a channel’s content, even creating small amounts of internal content requires time and effort. This means keeping up a steady stream of content can be a challenge. For Plaxma, facilitating the content creation process is key to ensuring their customers have the easiest time adding content to their channels. This, in turn, provides the freshness that drives better results.
Keeping internal communications content fresh is key to ensuring it remains engaging
Incorporating social media feeds is one option. By using a mobile phone to upload content to Instagram, for example, network operators can get interesting new content added to their channels on the fly. Privacy concerns, however, mean that this solution is not always ideal – company social network posts are generally public, after all.
It’s with this issue in mind that Plaxma is introducing a brand new tool designed to bring the convenience of mobile content uploads directly to the internal communications space – no social media workaround required. Users simply use the app to upload a photo and any text they might like, with the five most recent such posts given a place on the channel. It’s an exciting concept that Plaxma hopes will streamline the content creation process and encourage a new level of engagement with internal communications channels.
Plaxma and broadsign
With a network of over 1,000 screens in many different business environments, Plaxma has a lot of different content to deliver. It must be able to integrate a variety of external data feeds, and wants to be able to add on tools like mobile uploading of content. Being able to manage all of this content and all of these tools efficiently is of critical concern.
To meet its ambitious goals, Plaxma relies on the Broadsign platform. With its rules-based automation of content delivery, Broadsign is leaps and bounds ahead of competing offerings that still rely on playlists for scheduling content. The platform’s extensibility, meanwhile, means Plaxma can easily introduce more content and more features to shape their network into something truly special. Finally, the local content management functionality offered by Broadsign Publish is ideal for teams to add their own content to their internal channels – no technical skills required. Combined, it’s an ideal solution for efficiently building and delivering rich, informative, and engaging content to internal channels of all kinds.
