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…

The search system within the Widen Collective^Ⓡ allows our 500,000+ users to find the digital assets they need. Across every Collective site the search system's job is to store all of uploaded asset information in a format that can be searched in a wide variety of ways; so that it can return results that are accurate, complete, and in compliance with the platform's governance structure. All in a matter of milliseconds! This is a highly complex system that has gone through several major overhauls over the past 15+ years to keep pace with the exponential growth of data that Widen handles. This post is the tale of that evolution over time, and the steps we take to ensure its ability to scale into the future.

Anyone who has worked in digital marketing knows that marketing and technology go hand in hand. Successful marketing strategies rely on a variety of tools to evaluate data, connect with audiences, and create engaging content. With thousands of martech tools to choose from, the key is determining the right ones for your team. 

The names of people, places, and things help us understand and navigate the world. The same holds true in digital environments, where descriptive names allow files to be easily understood, located, and retrieved.