Guest blog post by Nate Holmes, Widen Marketing Intern

How we use the web for marketing, advertising, public relations, branding and just plain ole’ relationship-building is constantly evolving. There are more and more ways to share and exchange information; with that, come more programs to manage and with those programs come more digital asset types for you to create, manage, distribute and publish.

Social Media Backgrounds are one simple, yet important component of your brand's identity. Social media is becoming more and more integrated with business — marketing, branding, customer service and PR. There always seems to be a new way out there to connect with people—but maintaining a consistent face to the market in each space can be tough. You want to make sure that your brand is presented consistently across all of those customer touch points, but can’t afford to spend too much time always starting over. The best way is to use a digital asset management system, so you can reuse and repurpose those assets for disparate social networking platforms and optimize each asset for the dimensions of each platform’s unique layout. You may think that creating a background for your brand’s Twitter account(s) or YouTube channel is a one-time deal, but doesn’t it make sense to modify and repurpose them to fit new ad campaigns, brands, promotions and events instead of starting over every time? To ensure these new types of digital assets can be easily controlled, maintained and repurposed, you’ll want to add these to your digital asset library.




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These new types of digital assets require centralized, controlled management for brands because they’re certain to change over time and they represent a blend and flow of new digital media assets used and received by hundreds or thousands of people.

Check out the Widen social networks and let us know how you use social media to get better results.

The benefits of digital asset management software tools aren't just limited to increased organization and better branding. DAM can also be used to make more intelligent decisions for future marketing campaigns and strategies. Tools that allow users to track assets along with system reporting can result in highly valuable information useful for future budgeting, forecasting, and market intelligence.

Users can benefit from Digital Asset Management tools for smarter marketing decisions in the following ways:

Know which internal departments are the heaviest users of the system – Knowing who is using the DAM software the most lets administrators know which departments need it the most. Further analyzing how they are using the system will then reveal how their usage can be improved as well as the numbers and types of functionalities and aspects they should be given access to. This will answer questions like who are your power users and what are they doing.

Find out which external departments are using the DAM system the most – Understanding who the key customers and content consumers are helps administration determine which user groups need more training, what areas need more attention and what areas are underperforming.

Discover where the DAM system is being used the most – Knowing where the DAM system is being used the most can indicate where markets are concentrated. This in turn indicates where and how more emphasis should be focused on customization and localization of marketing materials.

Determine when the DAM system is being used the most – Gaining an understanding of when the DAM is being used most often can reveal the most effective times for marketing purposes, including when to introduce new assets, communicate with your users and improve marketing ROI.

To better understand how digital assets are used can also help you make smarter marketing decisions in the following ways:

Indicate which assets are most popular – The number of downloads tell us which digital assets are being used the most and thus indicate the types and formats of assets that should be produced for similar circumstances. This can be a great help for determining the most effective investment in future marketing materials because it can indicate whether or not (and how much) money should be spent on producing particular types of assets, such as tutorials, flash animations, or screen cast demo videos.

Find out if print or web format downloads are more popular – You already know and have read reports about the overtaking of digital marketing over traditional print media, but for some campaigns and use cases you really need to know what is best for you. Hopefully web format downloads will be more popular because printing induces higher costs. DAM can at least give an idea of which is being used more and help you better plan and budget for future campaigns.

Discover which products are most (and least popular) – The number of times images and marketing materials for a particular product are downloaded can be compared to sales indicators to ascertain product popularity. This level intelligence can be shared with your product teams to improve future product decisions.

Find out which digital assets are expired to maintain brand integrity – Digital asset software helps you control branding and improve brand consistency by making it easier to remove asset availability after it has expired. Other data management tools can indicate which digital assets are being used after expiration.

Your DAM system is meant to be used for far more than storing assets and can provide you with numerous benefits for smarter marketing decisions dealing with your users, assets, media channels and other market-based planning. To learn more about the versatility of DAM solutions and interact with live reporting applications, request a demo of the Widen Media Collective web-based DAM software suite.

One of the main barriers to using digital asset management software tools are the users themselves. Bad habits are always hard to break, and especially so when technology is involved. Many people don't want to change the way they learned to do something on a computer because it took them so long do learn the process in the first place. They can't be blamed for expecting other new technologies to be just as tedious to learn, but they can't continue to use old, inefficient status-quo methodologies. To get them to change their bad habits, they need to realize that the old way of doing things is actually detrimental to their productivity and the company.


Some of the strategies to employ for convincing employees and partners to use your DAM system include:

Put together quality informational materials – Put together documents, presentations or short videos that clearly outline the benefits and advantages of using your DAM tools. Don't forget to make these materials available to all potential users internal and external! Make it obvious why the DAM system is a tool needed by the company.

Set up DAM training sessions – Make your digital asset management training sessions short and sweet but make sure that every user is required to attend (or at least has an opportunity to watch a recorded training video). Clearly explain what the DAM system does, and most importantly, how it will make things much easier for all users. Talk about how DAM will increase overall efficiency and productivity, and then teach users in a hands-on fashion. With each user in the system, guide them through the process of searching for and downloading assets to show why it’s better than their old habits.

Continuously promote brand management – Don't stop with just one workshop. Training and promotion opportunities need to be carried out on a regular basis to keep your users engaged and made aware of your latest and greatest additions to your DAM system. The more that users learn about the functions and contents of DAM, the more likely they will incorporate it into their daily workload because they will see how easy DAM is to use, and the extent to which it will facilitate their job. Promotions can also include emails to users featuring training videos and “what’s new in DAM” documents that explain the importance of using DAM. These same assets can also be uploaded to the DAM system for universal user access. This way, the necessity of DAM is reinforced by needing to use the system to get pro-DAM materials.

Turn to your DAM service provider for help – Look to your DAM service provider to help in evaluating and reviewing your current training and promotional materials. See what other methods customers are doing and having success with to spur new ideas for your teams. Lean on social media to communicate with your broad user base. If nothing else, ask for more training when needed.

Getting people to adopt unfamiliar technology is always a challenge. Nevertheless, once users see for themselves how easy it is to use DAM programs, they should adopt the system in no time. Request a demo or contact us to learn more about how Widen goes beyond providing just DAM software.

The best marketing campaigns are those that are carefully and diligently planned before the launch date and can be appropriately executed using resources that can quickly assist in the process. The time invested in this planning stage pays off with a more effective, targeted, and efficient campaign. Nevertheless, the high degree of organization and multi-level management can make the preparation of marketing campaigns a daunting process, especially so if the campaign is large in nature and covers a wide geographic area. Granted, campaigns today embrace several various channels of communication, including a highly specialized use of digital marketing.

Digital Asset Management tools provide the type of organizing power required to prepare large marketing campaigns with the goal of running smooth and effective campaigns when they’re executed. From pre-launch to post-launch, DAM can help the process of streamlining the flow of information and promotional materials connecting with customers at just about every step of the way.

A few of the ways Digital Asset Management software is used to prep for a new product campaign launch are to:

Facilitate internal collaboration – DAM can help photographers, brand managers, graphic designers, and other marketing staff collaborate on creating and reviewing materials needed for the campaign launch. DAM helps with this sort of collaboration by providing a central access and distribution point in addition to coordinating online reviews with quick and easy web-based collaboration tools. 

Centralize new branded materials – The logos, images, documents, and other collateral that were created for the campaign can be uploaded to the DAM system and assigned appropriate access levels for those that should have access to these materials. For example, logos meant to be used for every aspect and area of the campaign can be tagged for universal user access, while assets designed for certain geographical regions can be assigned to users covering those areas of the country. Access to the branded assets can be easily set for a future release date to avoid accidental release of materials, but the necessary parties can get access to what they need to prepare promotions and quickly execute their launch campaigns.

Provide a high degree of control – The centralized control afforded by DAM ensures that the materials associated with the launch will be released with the appropriate launch date and users still have the agility needed to quickly put brand assets into effect.


When the product campaign launch date arrives, DAM continues to play a major role by:

Giving access to various users in the supply chain – Access can now be granted to branded assets based on the pre-determined user access levels. Marketing materials can also be sent out to various external partners and distributors, while others can be invited into the system to take advantage of branded materials to boost sales.

Providing tools for customization of materials by local markets – Marketing asset management tools allow for controlled customization of marketing materials to ensure that local distributors and salespeople adapt assets to their respective local selling situations without diminishing branding power.

DAM facilitates every level of a marketing campaign surrounding a new product launch. Take a tour of Widen DAM Software as a Service to experience the power of Widen digital asset management and on-demand brochure building tools to discover ways to improve your marketing efforts.

Making the choice to incorporate DAM software into your company's repertoire of invaluable technological resources is a decision that will have a big effect on marketing strategies, and will probably be one of the factors that determines company profitability and growth. With so much at stake and so many vendors selling DAM asset management systems, a number of careful considerations need to be taken into account before choosing a DAM vendor partner.  Administration and marketing decision-makers need to get a handle on some important questions to ask before choosing DAM software, including:

What does the company want to accomplish with DAM? – The exact goals that you have in mind for DAM need to be put on the table and clarified to make sure that the company is investing in the most appropriate system. For example, decision makers need to investigate exactly why they want to improve digital assets management to understand which internal departments and external affiliates will use it most. The extent to which the DAM software will be used and the use case scenarios for digital asset creation and distribution should be taken into account.

How many and what types of digital assets does the company have? – The company may have more digital assets than realized. This is often the case, in addition to having many duplicate copies or multiple formats of the same assets. Images and videos are easily recognized as assets that are digital in nature, but other equally important digital assets such as Word and Excel documents, PDFs, and presentations are sometimes overlooked. The numbers and types of digital assets must be known to have an idea about the amount of storage and key functionalities needed in the DAM software.

Will the DAM system be replacing one that is already in place? – If the company is already using some form of DAM software, migration of assets into the new system needs to be investigated to assess difficulties and IT needs. You may be replacing multiple systems or make-shift repositories and will need to get multiple parties on board with the new options to get the most value from your DAM software tools and digital assets.

Have you considered a plan for metadata? – Metadata is the information associated with digital assets that is used for cataloging, managing and searching for assets. This is vital knowledge that should be worked out in advance because it determines how easily assets can be searched for and found. Metadata development depends upon the context in which the assets will be used as well as the users themselves. Consider a metadata structure that captures and uses as much information to power a useful search that meets user expectations, but is also easy to maintain over time for all assets in the system.

How will the new digital asset management tools be used with current and changing workflows? – Centralization of assets with a DAM solution can provide increased efficiency and collaboration and should make working with digital assets a smooth and easy process. To ensure that this is the case, every company in evaluating DAM software should decide how the new system will complement existing workflows and what adjustments can be made for a more streamlined approach.

These are just some important questions to ask before choosing DAM software. To learn more about the benefits of using digital asset management software and have an opportunity to ask more DAM questions, request a demo of the Widen Media Collective.

Continue the conversation by leaving comments below or download the Widen white paper by John Horodyski of DAM Education on “Digital Asset Management (DAM): What to Know Before You Go” – a free resource to help you break down all the important questions.

Online DAM and Marketing Efficiency

Digital Asset Management (or DAM) can be carried out in a number of ways but not all of them produce the results you hope for. Installed DAM software for use on servers at company headquarters might sound tempting at first but once the high costs and investment of IT department time are taken into account, it starts to lose its appeal. When the difficulties associated with hosting large numbers of digital assets to be accessed by large numbers of internal and external parties are considered, it doesn’t even seem to be a viable option.

A better choice for management of digital assets is an online DAM system. Letting third-party servers host digital assets solves any issues related to internal bandwidth use and figuring out where to safely store digital marketing materials at company headquarters. The cheaper cost and easy implementation of online DAM systems is also a big plus but one of the strongest arguments for acquiring an online DAM solution is the increase in efficiency and productivity that marketing teams experience after getting on board with the new system. It’s hard to beat a tool that improves performance and cuts costs and online DAM software does this in a number of ways, a few of which are outlined below:
 
Online DAM software allows marketing teams to work anywhere – With in-house attempted management of digital assets, setting up campaigns for regions far from headquarters becomes a much more time consuming endeavor. Sure they can still set up the campaign from the office but they won’t have the valuable insight and connections of marketers and sales associates who live in the target region. If marketers that use in-house servers want to become more familiar with distant territories, overhead shoots up with costly flights and hotels, not to mention the huge investment in time.

Contrast this to companies that use online DAM hosting. Their marketing teams can set up residence anywhere as long as they have access to the Internet. This makes it easier to expand into new markets and even if they do need to travel to a site, they can set up marketing campaigns on site by using brand assets that they have immediate access to with their online DAM system. They might even discover that new, updated assets have become available upon arrival if such assets were engineered and approved while they were in transit.

Online DAM solutions help with branding – When using an online DAM system, branding gets a major boost. This is due to the high level of organization that comes with online DAM along with the ability for administrators to control user access and remote users to get their hands on brand approved materials. An online DAM solution is set up for excellent organization of assets. Administrators decide how to categorize marketing materials but can also get help with the process if the online DAM is provided by a SaaS DAM vendor. Organizing assets by date of creation, format, regional use, and level of branding helps administrators and marketers know which assets should be put into use for a wide variety of situations.

With administrators controlling user access, this also aids with focused branding because users only have access to marketing materials deemed appropriate for the situations they are likely to encounter. These assets may be provided for specific campaigns, events and promotions or for general branding and marketing usage. Nonetheless, all materials can be easily controlled and your users get the most current version.

Online DAM tools greatly reduce time spent on management – When you don’t have to worry about whether or not your DAM system is functioning at full capacity (or even working at all), you will work in a more efficient and productive manner. Administrators and end users alike can stick to their core tasks and just let the online DAM software do its thing because management of the system is taken care of by the provider. They host all aspects of the system so even if you wanted to waste time with managing it, you couldn’t because none of it can be found on in-house servers. In addition to boosting efficiency, it’s best to leave management of the online DAM in their hands in any case because they are the system experts.
 
Assess ROI of assets with online DAM tracking – What better way to measure the efficiency of marketing teams and the effectiveness of assets than by assessing their ROI? The best online DAM systems have such useful features and provide administrators with a means of taking the online DAM solution one step further by locating the assets that work, those that should be discarded, and finding strengths and weaknesses in marketing strategies.

Online DAM systems help marketing teams and companies increase efficiency and productivity. Request your live product demo to see the Widen online DAM solution in action.

Finding the best digital asset management software for your company can be a challenging process due to the high number of DAM solutions available on the market. To simplify the process of looking at various digital asset management programs, it's best to start by understanding WHY you need DAM in the first place. Regarding DAM as a service to existing problems will help you come up with a shortlist of the most effective DAM solutions. This is particularly valid when one considers that the DAM needs of companies are far from uniform because of differences related to how and where they work.

In addition to understanding exactly why you need DAM, it's important to look into different scenarios that involve digital asset management processes of creating, managing and distributing digital media. The following are three basic scenarios that play fundamental roles in determining how digital asset management tools will best fit your company:

1. Video production – Does your company have a focus on video production? This can signify videos for broadcasting purposes, e-learning courses, or short form marketing videos. Video production needs differ for different applications of video and so do the DAM tools that support these processes.

2. Publishing – Does your company produce catalogs, mailers and other types of published media? Is it involved with multi-channel publishing or rights managed content syndication? Again, various publishing toolsets can be found within different DAM solutions and should be examined carefully.

3. Management of marketing and branding materials – Arguably the most common need for DAM, this includes photo archives, a corporate image library, marketing asset management services for the production of ads, brochures, and other marketing collateral endeavors that incorporate branding.


Once you understand the reasons for needing DAM and the scenario or multiple scenarios in which your company can be placed, then you can take a deeper dive into the DAM vendors offering such solutions that fit various scenarios. Some of the questions to ask and inquiries to make include:

• Is the vendor a veteran in the DAM space? – If they have just started making software engineered for the management of digital assets, then their products may lack the expertise garnered from years of experience offered by helping many other companies. This isn't to say that new vendors to the game will offer bad products, but there is a good chance that they lack the type of experience that results in highly effective, up-to-date DAM solutions. Ask not only is the vendor a veteran, but how have they evolved over the years and what does their roadmap look like.


• Is the vendor supporting clients similar to my company? – As with any company, the efficacy and quality of their products is mirrored by the successes their clients share. If they keep losing customers then they probably aren't offering anything of great worth. If, on the other hand, they keep their clients, then said companies are enjoying their DAM investments. Furthermore, you can piggyback from shared solutions and marketing best practices from other successful companies in similar or different markets.


• What does the DAM company’s service model look like? – Keeping your DAM system up and running at all times can be vital for a number of reasons because your digital assets are often the lifeblood of your sales and marketing operations. The benefits of having a trusty service provider in your corner mean that your DAM system will always work and be used to its full potential.

The high number of DAM offerings can present difficulties to finding the best solution for your team. Use the advice given above to put your company on the right road to the most appropriate DAM service. To experience the service from one of the leaders in digital asset management space, request a demo of the Widen Media Collective.

The Things You Can Do With Web DAM

Managing digital assets with a web DAM system offers a certain amount of versatility and agility benefits that are hard to find with installed software or other basic DAM systems that use in-house file sharing. Some of the reasons why marketing teams should look to managing digital assets with web DAM solutions are:

Store huge libraries of assets online with web DAM – This is a perennial strong point of digital asset management software that uses cloud computing resources to host assets. The demand for viewing online videos and ease in distributing high resolution images just about guarantees rapid growth of digital asset libraries. That would be fine with hosting on in-house servers if those assets were small but since they tend to all be large, local storage and bandwidth gets eaten up like hot cakes at a breakfast buffet.

If hosting assets on in-house servers isn't a problem at first, it won't take long for issues to show up and they will be pretty obvious. The network will be running slower than normal, work will become far more frustrating, and the stress will be apparent in the faces of your IT guys. Keep everyone's blood pressure low and make work a smooth and productive process by keeping that huge, memory eating bunch of assets out of the house. They will be available at all locations at all hours and will also be easier to download.

Have more control over assets with web DAM – Keeping that library of digital marketing materials on third party servers also makes them easier to manage compliance with the help of governance controls. However, the biggest amount of control over assets comes from the way that digital assets are organized within web DAM systems. Assets are categories and grouped according to different file-level controls. This is followed by setting up different levels of user access with roles and permissions. Administrators that use web DAM are afforded access to all marketing materials and it is they who decide which users should have access to various groups of assets. This makes it far less likely for users to bring marketing materials into play that shouldn't be used because they take away from branding, don't demonstrate a return, or are meant for another region. As videos, images, logos and other assets either prove their worth or demonstrate their failure, administrators can add or remove them from the web DAM solution with ease.

Creative freedom for marketers with web DAM without compromising branding – Considering the high degree of control over marketing materials afforded by a web DAM system, it might seem that this would be a contradiction. In reality, though, marketers and sales channels who use the web DAM solution end up having a fair amount of creative freedom with the digital assets they are allowed to use. The degree of creative freedom of course depends upon management but in general, even though web DAM users can't have access to every asset in the system, they can still customize the assets available to them for localized situations. This provides a means of adapting to local marketing needs without taking away from branding because every asset used will have been authorized to boost the branding initiatives of the corporate campaign.

Leave the heavy lifting up to the experts – With web DAM systems, management of servers and infrastructure for hosting digital assets and programs for organizing them is carried out by the experts who developed the DAM software. This leaves the web DAM software in the hands of the people who are most capable of keeping it running at its highest capacity. It also ensures that administrators aren't wasting their precious time on management of the web DAM software instead of focusing on far more productive core tasks. A smoothly running web DAM system will also make sure that system users are working at their highest levels of productivity.

Reduce overhead costs with web DAM – Another feature that is especially applicable to marketing companies is the ability to use it as a virtual office. It won't entirely remove the need for office space but a web DAM system does make it feasible for marketing teams to work with digital assets and carry out Internet based marketing campaigns from anywhere in the world. Since this includes their own living rooms, it opens up the possibility of working from there instead of from an office beleaguered with overhead costs.

Web DAM is an easy to use, essential means for managing digital assets. Request your live product demo to see the Widen web DAM solution in action.

Most companies have become largely paperless as computers have replaced typewriters and word processing software has improved. One of the many benefits of using digitized documents, files, and images is that they can be easily reused and repurposed with very little extra cost. This advantage of digital documents was often overlooked until the tech industry started buzzing with talk of digital assets and their management. When the word was out about digital files, pictures, and documents being more correctly referred to as "assets", the demand for DAM software also increased. Nevertheless, a variety of DAM offerings and misunderstandings about the benefits of digital asset management tools have resulted in common misconceptions when talking about DAM.

Some companies aren't sure why they need DAM even if they suspect that using their digital assets could be a much smoother process. To make things a bit more clear about DAM, the following are some basic reasons why your company needs it:

1. Search time for assets – Studies have shown that creative professionals only find the digital asset they are searching for 35% of the time when not using digital asset management. However, this figure goes down to 5% with the help of DAM. The implications for this are substantial for a business if one thinks of the amount of time wasted when multiple users search for assets.

2. Centralization = optimized workflow – DAM affords the type of centralized control needed when dealing with thousands of digital assets that can be used by a large number of associates over a huge geographic area. Workflow is optimized because administrators only give users access to those assets determined to work best for their particular situation.

3. Correct use of branded materials – Branding is a tricky game that requires careful control over marketing assets. DAM asset management provides the type of organization and control needed to carry out effective branding on even the grandest of scales.

4. Cut costs with improved efficiency – The ability of DAM to save time at various levels adds up for a powerful increase in efficiency. This in turn results in more employees being able to spend more of their time focused on core tasks for higher productivity. Costs go down because DAM takes care of some basic management procedures that would have otherwise required more workers, or taken valuable employees away from more important assignments. The big increase in digital assets and a subsequent need to properly manage them has made DAM an invaluable tool for every company.

Watch a demo of Widen SaaS DAM to learn more about how digital asset management can help your team.

Online video content has become an extremely popular form of entertainment and source of information for hundreds of millions of people across the globe. This is reflected by the success of such websites as YouTube, and a huge increase in the number of video marketing assets produced and put into action by companies and not-for-profits from a wide variety of sectors. Video content makes up some of the most valuable marketing assets that a company has at its disposal. For this reason, the ability to properly manage videos has taken on a great deal of importance.

Here are a few key points for how to manage videos online:

Centralized hosting and a good search engine – Software as a Service hosting providers can help to store and distribute your videos from one place for easier, more cost-effective management of these important resources than by hosting them on various in-house servers or storage devices. The combination of centralized hosting and a good search engine is necessary for quick and easy retrieval of video content. Being able to rapidly find those videos saves a tremendous amount of time and garnishes the marketing department with a sharp adaptive edge.

Host video assets in the cloud – Marketing videos are popular because they are able to show so much and captivate a wide variety of senses to inform, entertain or persuade. However, this rich content comes at a price and the payment is made in big chunks of storage. If video content is kept on in-house servers, the cost of storage can reach the point of bankrupting your organizations limited IT resources. Elegantly avoid a crash or putting any strain on your network by hosting all of your video content with a DAM asset management service provider that leverages cloud computing resources for greater scalability. In other words, the provider safely hosts your video content in secure sites that don’t use your company’s servers and you have all the capacity you need to grow.

On-demand transcoding capabilities – Whether a business grows and expands is a function of the adaptability of its marketing department. Marketers in different areas and dealing with different situations will require video assets formatted and adapted to a variety of needs. For this reason, the ability to transcode video content into any format should be considered a key aspect of video content management. Ideally, users (not just administrators) of the DAM system should be able to easily transcode assets into required formats on-demand.

Online video management is just as an important aspect of marketing with video content as is the production of quality videos. Since it plays a major role in determining the success of marketing campaigns that use video content, companies need to be careful about how to manage videos online. Remember, YouTube is an awesome destination for videos – but YouTube is not a digital asset management tool for businesses that want to stay competitive in today's complex marketing climate. Learn more about how Widen Video Asset Management solutions help companies manage videos online or request a demo to see it live.


Watch this 2-Minute Demo of Widen Video Asset Management in Action

Digital asset management is poised to become an essential aspect of marketing and creative departments in companies from just about every sector of the economy. As the general public spends more time working with digital pictures, watching online videos, and getting more involved with social media, interacting and connecting with potential customers over the Internet becomes a basic part of modern day marketing. Simply stated, the Internet has become the place to find, reach and staty connected with customers and potential customers. Companies that choose not to reach out to them in an online format are very likely going to lose those customers to competing companies that decide to make the changes that allow them to effectively connect with their target. This is especially the case when one takes into account the high degree of competition generated by the global nature of the Internet.

Digital asset management training programs permit companies to keep in touch with their customer base and stay competitive because DAM provides the efficiency and high level organization required to manage large numbers of digital media and brand assets used for making those connections. Acquiring a good solution to fit your needs is an important step to take for proper management of a growing marketing library. Even more importantly, companies serious about staying ahead of the competition and looking to the future need to take seriously digital asset management training programs. One of the most important investments that can be made is to train your administrators and end-users on how to make the most of DAM tools and review your training methods regularly.

DAM asset management is still new enough as a field of study to make it difficult to find experts in the field of digital asset management training. Given the extremely high value of such knowledge and the quickly growing need for people who know how to manage digital assets, there will probably be a fair number of digital librarians in the years to come but in the meantime, companies with large media libraries will be wise to educate some of their own personnel with formal digital asset management training programs. Having someone on board who knows how to best apply DAM practices, where systems are headed, and ideas on how to leverage and adapt the platforms to rapidly changing marketing dynamics will be simply invaluable. Software as a Service and DAM service providers will be a huge help for the success of an organization’s DAM, but does even better when combined with key employees who have been through digital asset management training sessions.

While there is a growing focus among library and information science programs to teach areas of digital assets management, training is still an essential ingredient to the adoption and lasting success of digital asset management implementations. Check out the post "DAM and Higher Education" to see some of the higher education institutions that have Digital Asset Management courses.

Request your live product demo to learn more about digital asset management training provided with Widen DAM as a service. For some pre-recorded digital asset management training resources, check out Widen's digital asset management videos.

A number of factors need to be taken into consideration before the purchase of any software, hardware, or other tools meant to increase productivity and earnings. Perhaps the most basic of these considerations is simply whether or not the tool in question is needed. Even if the tool were free, a cost might still arise if it requires time and resources to implement, maintain and support. Since most tools need to be purchased, the extent of the risk is somewhat proportional to the cost of the tool. Therefore, every company should be well informed before acquiring software or other tools that cost a lot or that have the potential to affect productivity.

Care should be especially taken before acquiring software said to be absolutely necessary or that has become “popular” and “trendy” to have. The reason for this is because even if such software is actually very much needed by most companies, there will be a high number of vendors that don’t offer suitable products. Unsuitable products and poor services will eventually be weeded out but it may take a few years before that happens. In terms of Digital Asset Management (DAM) software, companies still need to be very careful about choosing vendors because not all of the difficult or over expensive products have fallen from the market.

Even before looking into vendors, however, organizations need to understand what digital asset management tools are capable of as well as their DAM needs. For example, some types of DAM software may be more suited for broadcast video production or others for marketing asset production and distribution. Some types of programs are meant to be hosted on an organization’s internal servers while others are hosted in the cloud. Companies in search of digital asset management need to ask themselves whether or not they plan on going “global” with their user base or keeping DAM with local workgroups within the walls of the headquarters. Organization of assets is a big issue so they need to look into how well the program in question will provide an easy means of cataloging images, videos, creative files and other forms of digital assets (and their metadata).

If a company already has a DAM system, they are probably aware of any faults or issues that prevent the company from expanding or achieving certain goals. If they aren’t aware of how their DAM system may be failing them, then they may want to try out other DAM products to see if the new system increases efficiency and productivity. You may even ask your vendor to provide a “DAM audit” to closely examine usage trends and opportunities to improve organization and adoption. Another aspect to investigate is whether or not you would better benefit from working with a digital asset management service provider, aka DAM Software as a Service, that offers professional services and managed IT services.

For more considerations for choosing the best DAM solution, download the white paper by DAM expert John Horodyski of www.dameducation.com titled:  Digital Asset Management (DAM): What to Know Before You Go!

For related reading, check out What is the best DAM solution? from Another DAM Blog or the previous Widen blog post on What is the Best Digital Asset Management Product?

The Internet happened and allowed people to use their computers to send and receive messages. Email was born and as technology got better, people also started sending digital files of documents and images attached to emails. Somewhere along the way, cell phone technology took off like a rocket and millions of people were free to talk on the phone without the constraints of a land line. Not long after, they were also sending and receiving text messages with their phones, spending more time sending and receiving emails with their phones than with their computers, and even using their phone as a digital camera.

iPods and other mp3 players also came into existence and promptly replaced Walkmans as a portable music device. What came next was inevitable and predictable; gadgets that could be used as a phone that stored and played large amounts of music, and that could be used to access and surf the Internet. The mobile device was born and although they are still being developed, don’t be surprised if this wave of the communication future makes its predecessors obsolete. Some would say that mobile devices have already done this although it’s hard to believe that they could ever fully replace much cheaper cell phones. Even if they don’t, every company needs to pay close attention to where mobile devices are headed. The reason for this is simple: sooner or later, these handheld computers are going to be the main platform for communication for most of their customers.

Potential clients will keep talking on the phone and continue to communicate with emails and text messages but they will also be using their mobile devices to watch online videos, to search for and buy products online, to use them as a GPS to locate brick and mortar stores, and to check out social media sites for restaurant recommendations. It will be a personal, indispensable tool for hundreds of millions of people throughout the globe and they will be using their mobile devices to help them make decisions for just about everything.

Digital asset management tools will become just as an essential part of this near future to keep track of the huge volumes of digital media assets used to foster connections with clients via their mobile devices. Some form of online video management will become necessary for just about every company given that this will be the preferred media format for mobile device users. Digital asset management programs will also provide the type of control over assets needed for effective, localized branding that targets mobile device users. In general, DAM will be needed for companies to adapt to working within the new marketing dynamic integrating a wide blend of mediums and platforms.

Request your product demo to learn more about how DAM technology can help you organize and serve your digital assets and digital media consumers.

Increased web speeds and capabilities have allowed phenomena such as social media and cloud computing to become standards on the web. The ability to quickly transfer high amounts of information also makes it possible to effectively use digital asset management programs in an online platform. As the Internet has become more capable, people’s expectations regarding the web have also gone up. Internet users no longer tolerate waiting for than a few seconds for an image or video to download. They have become accustomed to watching online videos in real time and won’t accept anything less. They have come to expect instant gratification when it comes to everything digital and companies need to keep up or face the consequences of unhappy customers.

The quick and efficient nature of digital asset management tools can help with problems related to the instant digital world in which we now live and work. Some of ways that DAM software can help in this regard are:

Getting Brand Consistency on Track – There is a fair chance that companies with a large digital library have issues related to brand management and control. The reason for these digital asset branding problems is related to control over assets afforded by DAM. Without the type of strict user controls that brand asset management programs provide, it’s just about certain that branding will suffer because users will simply choose the digital assets they personally prefer or the ones that are easiest to find. This takes consistency out of the equation and consequently takes away from a brand’s authority in the market. DAM helps to avoid problems with branding in the first place, but it can also be used to quickly fix such issues. Once user roles and access levels have been determined for various groups of assets, administration should work to promote and require all users to only work with materials available in their DAM system. They can also require marketing and salespeople to send out new materials that incorporate this limited number of assets to get consistent branding back on track.

Assisting with Public Relations – DAM is also an excellent tool for dealing with PR matters. The Internet has so simplified mass communication that ideas, images, videos, and stories can go viral in a matter of hours. This is fantastic if a company is shown in a positive light but when the opposite occurs, it becomes a marketing and PR disaster. The quick and efficient communication and mass dissemination of PR materials made possible by digital asset management tools and workflows can help offset a PR crisis on local and global levels. Image asset management can help your teams quickly distribute messaging, photos and videos to effectively communicate your message in addition to providing access to 3rd-party PR partners and key media contacts.

Speeding Time to Market – Many organization’s marketing practices revolve around proper timing and the ability to "strike while the iron is hot" with circumstantial hot market conditions. Utilizing marketing asset management programs allows organizations to meet hot market conditions in a couple of ways. (1) To streamline the creation of new or "repurposed" digital assets by easily locating and reusing pre-existing materials. (2) To quickly disseminate new hot market materials to get digital assets in front of consumers by way of push (sending assets to external users) and/or pull methods (inviting external users to your DAM system). DAM users can share new digital assets with their customers and sales channels or empower external users to get what they need on their own. Bottom line, DAM solutions foster the ability to be prepared to quickly respond to digital asset requests at a moment’s notice.

To learn more about how web-based DAM solutions can give you more control and agility with brand assets, sign up for a guest pass to the Widen demo site and take the tour on your own!

Cloud DAM: A Powerful Tool For Distributed Marketing Groups

A lot of talk is heard about “the cloud” these days in connection with computer technology – both for business and personal use. As this term is fairly new and hasn’t been fully grasped by all everyday tech consumers, you probably aren’t alone if you feel confused when you hear about it. We’re not talking about meteorology or weather conditions but news related to technology and business.

That's completely understandable but to get you up to speed on tech terms (and this one is no longer just a buzzword), 'the cloud' refers to computer programs, software, and applications that are only accessed over the Internet. As opposed to working with a program that was downloaded onto your computer, you connect to a server that hosts the program and use it in an online context. The reason why it's so very important to know about 'the cloud' and 'cloud computing' is because most programs and applications seem to be headed in that direction. Just about every sector of the economy has software applications that are moving to the cloud (if they haven't already done so).

There are numerous reasons why this change in the way we interact with programs and software is occurring but much of it can be summed up by simply stating that the cloud just makes everything easier for companies with limited IT resources. Digital Asset Management is no exception and makes an excellent fit for the cloud, especially so when it comes to marketing with limited IT support. A couple of the reasons why cloud DAM is such a powerful platform for marketing teams is outlined below:

Cloud DAM keeps everything more organized – Digital Asset Management is necessary when your company has too many digital assets to handle on one’s desktop or network share. Reaching this point through accumulation of a large number of assets seems to be inevitable. Improvements in video production technology result in higher numbers of video assets but instead of decreasing in size, they just take up larger volumes of space and bandwidth. Since online videos have also become such invaluable assets for every marketing campaign, it's a given that digital asset libraries quickly expand beyond the capabilities of in-house servers.

It's already impossible to keep them organized and yet the folks in charge of marketing material production upload new video and hi-res image assets on a daily basis. The only way to keep them organized enough to be useful is with a good cloud DAM solution. This is because third-party data centers with a cloud DAM system are needed to host large libraries of assets that have become too cumbersome for in-house servers. Cloud DAM programs for managing assets also have features that make management of huge numbers of assets a straightforward, easy task. Oh, and if you still have trouble with organizing all of those marketing materials, then the cloud DAM provider can help (as long as they keep the last “S” in SaaS in check).

Cloud DAM keeps marketing teams focused on core tasks – With different aspects of digital asset management relegated to different third-party companies or departments, you don't have to worry about managing them yourself. Well, marketing teams won't but the IT department would get stuck with it and if they are spending too much of their time with the management of digital assets, then they aren't focusing on other, business critical tasks. As IT people try to figure out what went wrong with the in-house DAM system, marketing teams also aren't as productive because they can't access the assets they need. Contrast this to cloud DAM whereby marketing teams are able to put a higher focus on campaigns at hand because cloud DAM providers are making sure that their product runs smoothly.

Cloud DAM helps to keep marketers on task – With self-service access capabilities, users are more productive because they can get what they need, when they want it, on their own. Sure, marketers can have access to assets kept on in-house servers but how are they going to find them? How are they going to know which video, image, or logo to use? If the DAM system is on in-house servers, these challenges are overcome by going right on over to administration and making a request for the appropriate marketing material. This move in turn wastes valuable time of administrators and designers in addition to keeping marketers from working on their core tasks. Such a double whammy of inefficiency is avoided with cloud DAM because users simply connect to the system, search and quickly choose the assets they need. It doesn't take long to find the right video, image, or logo with cloud DAM because users only have access to the assets they need.

Widen uses cloud DAM resources to provide digital asset management services. Request your live product demo to see the Widen cloud DAM solution in action.

Digital Asset Management. It’s also known as DAM and during the past few years, it has become a booming buzz phrase in the realm of marketing technology.

The reason that we keep seeing and hearing so much about digital asset management is because it reflects a growing need to adequately organize and manage large libraries of digital marketing content. As for your company, there is a pretty good chance that it needs digital asset management tools, otherwise you wouldn’t have come to this blog and wouldn’t be reading this post.

It might be that your in-house servers have finally reached a critical point where they just can’t be used to host any more videos, images, or large documents. Even if your company had bought new servers to host a growing corporate image library, there is a good chance that management and/or IT wants a better solution than investing in more hardware internally.

It could also be that user access to the large number of your company’s digital assets has become so chaotic and out of control that employees in California are using old, outdated logos, while those in Texas are making up their own. A branch in Florida might be using new and improved assets, but management is hardly aware of it because they have lost all control of their own digital marketing content.

You might also be a marketing coordinator who is simply fed up with spending half of every day trying to fulfill requests for images and other digital assets. Sales and marketing reps in the field contact you with the request instead of having the capability to find the assets on their own. You then become immediately stressed out because you spend time carrying out multiple searches to locate those assets instead of focusing on the core tasks you were hired for.

Yet another reason why you are pretty sure that DAM asset management could be the answer to your problems is because you keep getting this sense of déjà vu every time you put together marketing materials. You know that you have set up similar materials and packages on several occasions in the past, but because it’s too difficult or time consuming to find those assets, you opt for redoing them.

To see that you aren’t alone in needing solutions to your DAM problems, see these survey results that assess the core DAM needs of a variety of companies. Taking the survey will also help you to understand how digital asset management programs can solve your digital asset issues. You may also take a look at a longer breakout of the uses of DAM.

You are pretty sure that there has to be a better way of managing assets, and guess what? You are absolutely right! Widen Software as a Service for DAM provides easy solutions to these and other problems. Take the DAM Assessment Survey and then take the tour on your own to see how Widen can help solve your DAM issues.

The marketing needs of corporations tend to be much more extensive and complicated than non-corporate businesses. The varied departments, companies, and economic interests accumulate such a wide variety and large number of digital assets in such a short amount of time that their management becomes a challenging matter. Maintaining and updating assets in a highly organized corporate image library is paramount to keep things running smoothly in marketing and sales environments. Of course if you aren’t using some sort of digital asset management solution then this is certainly the first step to take (and as soon as possible). Once the right DAM software strategy has been determined, then the following three measures can be taken to facilitate management of a digital asset library:

Gather and Use Metadata – This basic means of organizing data is a major first step to take for proper management of digital assets. Metadata refers to tagging videos, digital images, and other assets with any number of descriptions, keywords and specifications that facilitate finding them when searching the asset library. Tags should be relevant, easily searchable, and should come from a limited pool of predetermined vocabulary. Metadata models can vary by company and industry, but some examples of frequently used metadata fields may be creator, creation date, region, marketing campaign, product, division, etc. Other critical DAM asset management criteria include using release and expiration dates. It should also be emphasized that no matter how good your DAM is, it probably won’t be able to function at full capacity nor as efficiently until this first step is taken to organize assets.

Set up User Roles and Permissions – Centralized control of digital assets is one of the main benefits of having a DAM system and is especially important for corporations that make use of a large number of assets. However, having a central repository is only half the battle. Determining and setting up various levels of user access via roles and permissions should be done sooner rather than later to avoid problems related to brand control and consistency. Using appropriate roles and permissions structures, DAM tools can empower agency partners to upload and tag assets while providing downstream access for sales channels and marketing partners to extend the value of your brand assets. 

Leverage Software as a Service – It’s important to have service teams in place for user training and support to foster greater user adoption of your DAM system. Leveraging the expertise and resources of a DAM SaaS provider can make this easier on your organization as managing a large library of digital assets can be daunting (if not impossible) for just one person. With Software as a Service, the vendor helps you learn how to use your new DAM system by providing project managers to assist with the implementation and training for all levels of users, in addition to other benefits of leveraging the IT resources of a cloud DAM hosted provider. A SaaS DAM provider becomes a partner because they want to make sure that you are truly getting more from your digital assets and will do what they can to help you easily manage a library of assets no matter how large and complicated it is.

Sign up for a digital asset management sandbox to learn more about what it takes to effectively manage your growing corporate image library. Request a demo to learn more about metadata, user governance and SaaS DAM resources.

Cloud DAM software and storage hosted off-site (cloud computing) gained a lot of momentum in 2010 and will play increasingly larger roles as we move into 2011. By all appearances, cloud computing platforms seem to be set on becoming the infrastructure of choice for marketing asset management and other applications by the end of the year, if not sooner. Expect to see some of the following situations and changes in cloud computing in 2011:

More cloud computing options – With the realization that the costs and benefits of cloud computing outweigh those associated with in-house IT infrastructure, various companies and service providers are scrambling to set up cloud computing platforms. Many will offer their new cloud DAM option as a service to existing clients to keep them from jumping to cloud computing options offered by competing companies. A downside of this race to the cloud is the possibility that some offerings won’t work very well for digital media management because they were developed for local deployment. These types of companies may not have the internal expertise to deploy cloud DAM technologies, nor do they have the service architecture and service culture to support it. On the plus side, as with any process driven by strong competition, at least a few companies will develop some exciting innovations.

Competitive pricing – The high degree of competition in 2011 among cloud DAM providers will be demonstrated by differences in pricing. In addition, this will put a huge deal of pressure on non-cloud IT providers. Costs for cloud computing options are already so much lower than non-cloud options that it could be very difficult for them to compete in terms of pricing. Since costs for cloud computing options also tend to be straightforward, there will be a lot of pressure on non-cloud IT companies to be just as transparent with costs.

Software as a Service rises in popularity – As cloud DAM becomes the most cost effective and preferred option, Software as a Service will likewise increase in popularity for online video management and other marketing resource management purposes. The reason for this is because it’s easier and more efficient to simply leave the management of software hosted off-site to the people who designed it. This avoids burdening in-house IT people with the task of learning everything about the software in question in addition to providing updates, and periodic training for users on a cloud DAM model.

To learn about cloud DAM software that makes use of cloud computing technologies, request a demo to speak with a Widen representative or take the tour on your own.

Digital Asset Management for marketing is not just meant for large corporations. It is true that many large companies deploy asset management tools to manage their corporate brand assets but this doesn’t mean that mid-size companies can't benefit from having digital asset management for marketing too. In fact, even if their library of digital assets isn't as extensive as those of larger companies or they don’t have as many users, mid-size companies still have a great need for digital asset management software. Here are a few of the reasons why:

Videos are in high demand – Watching videos online has become a major pastime for huge portions of the world’s population and continues to grow in popularity. This means that any company with an online presence should invest in creating some videos. Since improvements in technology have lowered production costs while also increasing quality, an investment that easily falls within marketing budgets for mid-size companies could produce more than just a few of these important assets. Having a bunch of videos in the marketing arsenal can help one compete with larger companies but they tend to take up a large amount of storage and bandwidth. Taxing the space of in-house servers and stressing out the IT people, however, can be easily avoided by managing video assets on third-party servers as is the case with cloud hosted digital asset management for marketing.

To grow the business – Having a system to support DAM for marketing can spur growth in a mid-size company because it is such a valuable and cost effective toolset. Digital Asset Management for marketing considerably augments efficiency and allows for tracking and reporting so you may better analyze the ROI of brand assets. This level of intelligence from a system can greatly support management in making the most of your marketing budget and future planning. When using web-based DAM software, a higher number of brand assets can also be put into action because they are stored in off-site servers and thus don’t require heavy investments in internal IT resources. This is especially helpful when you can rely on a service provider to supply the necessary IT resources to support ever-changing online marketing practices such as with social media marketing, which may requir large numbers of assets or access by large numbers of external users.

To compete with larger companies – Digital Asset Management for marketing from a SaaS provider supplies tools that help level the playing field for mid-size companies to compete with their larger counterparts. It can help increase market share because of the low implementation costs combined with its ability to make marketing much more efficient, targeted, and effective. Having a web-based system among your slew of marketing resources helps internal teams work like a smarter, high-powered company which adds greater benefit in collaborating with external partners, sales channels, agencies and media.

Request a demo to speak with a Widen representative or take the tour on your own to see how online DAM for marketing software can help your mid-size organization do more with less to compete with larger companies.