These days, you can do some pretty impressive things with content. However, you’re not the only one using content to win the attention and mindshare of consumers. Thanks to the success that content marketing has seen over the years, there’s a lot (and we mean a lot) of competition out there.

To break through the noise, you need to add some horsepower to your content marketing efforts by incorporating visual content. But, to do this effectively, you need to understand what visual content marketing is and how to create a winning strategy. 

For over a decade, video has been the rising star of marketing. First gaining speed back in 2005 alongside the launch of YouTube, video has managed to climb the ranks to near-celebrity status with enterprises around the globe. With 87% of businesses now using video as a marketing tool — up from 63% in 2017 — it begs to question why video is so popular.

Are businesses just blindly following trends or are their investments in the creation, management, and distribution of video assets more deeply rooted? Let’s have a look. 

Accurate metadata allows users across your organization to find and retrieve assets quickly. With rapidly growing libraries of content, keeping metadata up-to-date can be a time-consuming challenge. Digital asset management (DAM) admins are often tasked with applying metadata for large batches of assets from activities like photoshoots, product updates, and rebrands.

By now, it’s no surprise that video is a popular marketing tool for brands. The numbers are staggering. YouTube has over 1.9 billion users. A whopping 87% of businesses use video content. And, here’s a fun one — Cisco estimates that by 2021 it will take an individual over 5 million years to watch all the video that’s uploaded to the web in a single month.

So yes, video is popular. But, just because brands use it and people watch it, doesn’t make all video effective. Video for the sake of video won’t cut it, which is why the savviest of marketers have set their sights on what’s called “branded video.” 

For better or worse — but hopefully, for better — my fashion sense has evolved over time.  It’s changed with the times, my environment, and my purpose. 

Your brand is exactly the same. No one gets their look and feel right on the first try. It’s an evolution influenced by many factors. Including company acquisitions, updates to an organization’s purpose statement, expansion into new locations, or just the march of time. You’re slowly acquiring the pieces that make you, you and the same is true of your brand. 

That’s why it’s important to be strategic in your approach to a brand relaunch. 

In today’s modern workplace content creation is almost constant. New files like contracts, presentations, photography, and creative files are being added daily.

When these files are created, inherently, so is their metadata — or data about data. Metadata includes things like the document name, date, size, and creator. 

As a result, companies are awash with content and its related metadata. They need a system for keeping it all organized. That’s where metadata management comes in. 

A digital asset management (DAM) system is only as valuable as the content in it. A consistent flow of new, useful, and usable assets keeps teams coming back for more. Eventually, using the DAM system becomes a key part of their workflow. But enabling content creators to properly upload assets can be a challenge. So our team set out to make the process simpler.

Whether your brand is traveling down the hall to a colleague's office or across the globe, you need to safeguard it for the journey ahead. With freelancers, marketing agencies, internal teams, and many others using your brand in communications and content, it's easy for inconsistencies and misuse to arise. A brand identity kit can help by providing disparate groups and individuals with the tools and information they need to uphold your brand consistently. In fact, a brand identity kit is an absolute must-have for all businesses!

When it comes to digital asset management (DAM), there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your business has different needs, workflows, priorities, budgets, and resources than your neighbor, so finding the best solution comes down to what is right for your organization.

Before getting too far in the evaluation process, take some time to understand what you need out of a DAM solution. Only then can you figure out which DAM delivery model will best help you achieve your goals.

Media asset management (MAM) is sometimes used interchangeably with digital asset management (DAM). They both help manage assets, but are they really the same thing? Sort of…