As countries around the world respond to the coronavirus pandemic, many people have made the shift to working from home. For businesses that had already adopted agile digital tools, this transition might not have caused many disruptions. But for companies who relied on face-to-face meetings or physical tools to execute their content workflow, these changes upended processes and forced teams to search for new ways to work. As a result for many, today’s working life is more chaotic than ever before.

To dig into these new challenges and understand the additional impacts they’re having on businesses, we interviewed Nick Barber, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, who says the coronavirus has changed consumer behavior. 

As businesses look for new and effective ways to engage customers, many are exploring how to advance their content marketing strategy into brand publishing. As publishers, brands form connections through high-quality stories created by talented journalists, photographers, videographers, and illustrators. Content is continually created and shared to cultivate a stable audience and build long-term brand awareness and growth. 

One distribution format that is gaining traction among brand publishers is podcasts — not only are they relatively inexpensive to produce, but they have growing consumer interest. According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, roughly 55% of Americans (or 155 million people) have listened to a podcast — up from 23% a decade earlier. And there are now over 800,000 active podcasts with over 54 million episodes available worldwide. From news and history to true crime and culture, podcasts span every subject and interest. 

But podcast distribution entails managing feeds to a variety of networks — including iHeart, Google, Spotify, Tunein, Stitcher, iTunes, and more — which can be time-consuming. Any Widen customer can use our digital asset management (DAM) software, the Widen Collective^®, to streamline their podcast production process and publish content efficiently across various networks. To explain how, let’s look at an example from a Widen customer.

The Portals app in the Widen Collective^® offers a flexible, attractive, and easy way to share content within a branded environment. 

Our blog post Portals Examples and Use Cases showcases a range of creative and powerful ways that our customers are using portals to share assets, connect teams, and advance brand stories. In this article, we’ll share functionality details and best practices that will help you build a portal that meets your unique content and business needs.

Products are becoming whatever shoppers can read, see, and hear. They use everything from product descriptions and technical specifications to inspirational videos and detailed photographs to inform their purchases.

In the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus, many of the world’s businesses have pivoted to working remotely and are looking to trim operational costs. This heightened focus on efficiency means that teams need to have access to the right digital technology. 

The Portals app in the Widen Collective^® allows users to easily present and share curated sets of assets with specific audiences. 

They can be used to share all kinds of content...brand guidelines, media kits, training content, HR resources, sales materials, product information, you name it! Our customers even rely on portals to distribute content that changes quickly, such as COVID-19 resources. 

With Portals, your teams or partners are able to access content without logging into the digital asset management (DAM) system. All asset activity is tracked to capture who is using which files, and how. And every portal can be customized to provide a fully-branded experience. 

Managing your brand to deliver great customer experiences is no easy task. You need efficient content distribution, effective marketing automation, on point social media, relationship management, and so much more. A digital asset management (DAM) system helps teams create, organize, publish, and analyze content in today’s complicated marketing environment. It is the central content hub from which you can deliver top-notch customer experiences.

COVID-19 precautions are requiring teams to work in new ways. Across the globe employees are working remotely for the first time, and many are without access to servers or tools they typically rely upon. 

While in the past the responsibilities of a digital asset management (DAM) admin might have been considered “nice-to-have,” in today’s world they are critical. You have the opportunity to help your team overcome the challenges of the present to create a better way forward for your company using DAM. 

Video content continues to grow in popularity and importance among marketers. According to research from Wyzowl, 89% feel video marketing results in positive ROI — up from 33% in 2015 — because it has the ability to increase traffic, leads, sales, and audience understanding. Further, faster connection speeds and improved hardware make daily video consumption the norm.

Because video assets are increasingly vital to current marketing strategies, this content needs to be managed effectively throughout its lifecycle. Let’s take a closer look at how the right technology can extend the reach and value of video content across phases — including archiving.