Virtual Bulletin Boards For Office – Ideas, Guidelines & More!

​Traditional corporate communication methods can be overwhelming and confusing in this digital era where most organizations encourage remote working. Between online workspaces, email, video conferences, phone calls, newsletters, social media, and digital signage, it is quite easy for information to get lost, thereby affecting internal communication adversely and costing time and money to everybody within the organization.

Virtual Bulletin Board For Office are one of the ways businesses can give a refresh to their internal communication, reduce costs and boost productivity. In this post, let us try to understand how virtual bulletin boards can be easily created in offices to give employees easy access to information and improve collaboration. 

Virtual Bulletin Boards For Office – A Complete Guide 

​Not all businesses consider creating corporate bulletin boards as a part of their digital workspace. However, internal communication has become more important than ever in the present situation. Methods of communication, strategies, work culture, and the corporate world as a whole are changing quickly. A digital approach to internal communications strategy should make it more effective and convenient.

Virtual bulletin boards enable businesses to communicate messages, alerts, announcements, and other aspects of communication effectively as remote working employees prefer dynamic content available readily on their digital screens. Digital bulletin boards prove to be effective communication tools to share vital information and catch employee attention. Colorful, creative, dynamic alerts are better absorbed by the employees and clients as compared to static boards.

Here are some of the most significant benefits of using virtual bulletin boards.

• -Spread a sense of community
• -Improve collaboration
• -Boost employee empowerment
• -Increase productivity
• -Ensure better absorption of information

How To Create A Bulletin Board Online? 

​A digital bulletin board is easy to get started with as a part of a modern business intranet incorporated for better organization and productivity. The virtual bulletin board functionality serves as a basis for content curation and discovery, knowledge management, and collaboration in the workspace. The best feature of these tools is that they are customizable. This means you can easily cater your content to the target audience depending on their interests, age group, and location.

To set up a bulletin board online, you need a TV and a cloud-based digital signage software platform. Here are the steps to how you create a bulletin board online.

1.Select your screen

Cloud-based signage enables you to edit and update the bulletin board from anywhere at any time. You need some basic hardware to power your virtual bulletin board. If you have an Android TV, you can use an Android player app and get started. You can, alternatively, use a regular TV and make the screen smart using additional hardware.

2.Pair the screen

Then, download any bulletin board app to pair the screen. If you have multiple bulletin boards, you can do this for all the screens and manage them from a single account remotely.

3.Craft the messages for sharing

When it comes to creating a virtual bulletin board, you want an easy way to produce content. A simple system for message creation helps you stay on top of updating messages and making sure the employees always have the information they need. Here are some of the methods you can use to craft messages.

Google Slides – It is a simple way to broadcast messages to a digital bulletin board. It is an online tool that you can use to loop in your presentation. It also allows creating a series of messages like staff announcements or opening times. The changes you make to the file automatically reflect in the presentation.   You can also customize the appearance of your digital bulletin board by using various Google Slide themes.

Notice – This is another useful app designed to let you create quick text-based, attractive digital signage. It can be used to make a single notice or multiple messages to rotate through. The notice can be paired with graphics from the library or custom backgrounds to make the signage more appealing.

Events – This app provides an easy way to broadcast event information across the organization. You can either connect the app to other applications like the calendar to get all the events sent to the board automatically or add the details manually.

4.Schedule the messages

Scheduling lets you show different messages on different days of the week or times of the day. For example, you may have some reminders at the beginning of the week to share with the team. These messages may change as you head towards the weekend. Having a tailored system to show messages improves engagement and efficiency and saves you time.

5.Use playlists

Playlists let you select what messages you want to show and in what order. With playlists, you can add messages to a loop or add visual content like YouTube videos and Twitter feed between messages to keep it engaging and fresh. 

Popular Digital Bulletin Board Ideas

With digital bulletin boards, you can use existing screens around the office to share announcements, information, dashboards, and updates around the office. The employees just need to look up and receive messages in time. Organizations can create colorful displays to capture the attention of onsite and remote employees.

Digital bulletin boards can be easily customized. This means it is easy to cater the content to the audience depending on their needs and interests. If you are using displays for internal communication, make sure your content recognizes team members that do exceptionally well. A simple birthday wish or a monthly award can go a long way.

Some digital signage software enable users to connect to personal screensavers of employees. This feature is highly beneficial when communicating with remotely working teams. Even when they are not working on-site, it is possible to ensure they never miss a piece of information. As these displays are customizable, messages can be updated whenever needed.

Digital bulletin boards are one of the most powerful components of an internal communications strategy as they improve mass communication. An email sent to hundreds of people may or may not be seen but a message displayed on a TV screen in the office is guaranteed to be noticed. When you set a consistent bulletin board schedule, employees know that they can access information on specific topics at specific times. This is likely to streamline communication within the organization. You can even make your digital bulletin board software a two-way stream to let the employees communicate with their managers.

You can easily update digital bulletin boards with the latest alerts and news feeds from trusted sources. It is possible to share multiple messages at the same time as different screens can display different text and images. You can also use tools to create infographics and present your information in a more appealing way. Visual communication helps absorb values, facts, figures, and procedures better. 

Office 365 Bulletin Board – Getting Started

Office 365, now renamed as Microsoft 365, provides you a simple, user-friendly tool to share information, news, and announcements to an audience rather than sending them to individual employees in the organization. The newsletter style is ready to use and is formatted to be used on multiple devices.

With this bulletin board, you no longer need to draft complicated emails and announcements whenever you want to share some important information with employees. With a plethora of features and capabilities, Office 365 bulletin boards have everything you need to enhance your internal communications.

The service works in the same environment as Office 365 and can be accessed and operated from smartphones and laptops. You get useful functions to circulate messages including viewer confirmation, viewer restriction, read/unread management, and more. You can use rich text to create your document, embed attachment links, and create embedded links to other posts. The document can be searched with keywords to find the desired information. 

Employee Bulletin Board Guidelines

Employee bulletin boards are valuable communication tools for organizations. Everybody is connected to screens for much of their working hours and that is how they get most of the news from the world around them. However, in-person interactions are still important. Businesses are always looking for new ideas to make bulletin boards effective in this regard.

Based on the number of employees, size of the organization, and available resources, the board should be revised once a month. While some components like policies remain static, others keep changing. You should put the right amount of thought into the board design but should not try to go over the top. Always give a respectable allocation to human resources by posting forms, policies, training notices, and other items.

The bulletin board should display weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly calendars with birthdays, milestones, office deadlines, and staff meetings. Post some volunteer initiatives with their media materials and pictures. Also, use the board to welcome new employees, congratulate people on completing assignments, and celebrate promotions.

You can also use the display to post news and accolades. You can share recognition of your team by a local community or client feedback. You can even post articles that talk about your company's mission and goals. Ensure that you highlight announcements and invitations of local events and staff parties. The last thing you should focus on is to keep the bulletin board always fresh. Make sure you display dynamic content like RSS feeds, videos, and animations to capture attention and keep the viewers interested.

Internal communications can be often difficult to plan but are an essential aspect of your business success. Traditional communication channels are likely to fail your plans due to the difficulties they pose in digital environments and the extra costs associated with them. A virtual bulletin board, on the other hand, helps you streamline communication and keep the employees engaged and productive.  Build a bulletin board with AgilityPortal.