Change is in the air. It’s been over a year since Acquia acquired Widen and during that time we’ve been working to bring our two great brands together into one. So without further ado, let us introduce you to Acquia DAM (Widen). 

Consumers today have continual access to content across devices and channels, making it hard for marketers to cut through all the noise. Creating a quality product at an affordable price is no longer the only factor in a customer's purchasing decision. Brands need to meet customers where they’re at — wherever that may be.

Want to know how PIM and MDM differ? Master data management, or MDM, centralizes all of an organization’s information, while product information management (PIM) centralizes product data. A PIM solution is actually a subset of MDM and is most often used for marketing and merchandising purposes. At their core, both are information management systems that make it easy to create, manage, and distribute product data. 

A lot of hard work goes into launching profitable products. Many teams and stakeholders are involved — including product marketing and product management. This may appear to be different ways of saying the same thing, like Gershwin's "to-may-to" and :to-mah-to, but they’re actually more like apples and oranges. They’re separate disciplines with distinct and equally important responsibilities. The two roles need to work together to create harmonious interactions between people and products, so naturally there’s some overlap. 

Selling is a lot more complex than it used to be. Gone are the days when a little wit, a few product samples, and a firm handshake would close the deal. Sellers today need to do more. They need to communicate with and win the attention and trust of buyers. They need to “make the sale,” but do it in a way that upholds the integrity and image of the brand they represent. And they need to move fast. Doing all of this requires 24/7, on-demand access to the latest marketing brochures, demo videos, one-pagers, pitch decks, and more. 

Teams have been working remotely for a while now. While many are venturing back into the office, it likely doesn’t look the same as it did three years ago. While COVID-19 prompted the swift switch, it appears that many are embracing working from home as the new normal. 

It’s likely teams have settled into a rhythm by now, but there are still opportunities to optimize your remote workflow, especially when it comes to digital asset management (DAM). With dispersed teams, it’s more important than ever before to have quick access to on-brand content that can be easily and safely used by teams across the company. That’s why many organizations are investing more in DAM and other marketing technologies (martech). 

Locating the current version of a creative file — be it for a white paper, image, or event banner — can often feel overwhelming. You might have a dozen to choose from, each with a slightly different headline, or logo, or font. Why have they all been updated recently? Did the company font change? Which one do you use?

Trying to manage various versions of brand assets can be downright maddening. 

Fortunately, version control can help you easily organize every last asset and retrieve the one you need instantly. Leveraging version control functionality can help you keep tabs on the latest version and can even display notes as to what changed and why. Staying on top of each of your asset versions will help ensure you’re not wasting time or money recreating assets or misusing old ones.

More on that later. Let’s get into exactly what version control is first. 

With the growth of online shopping during the COVID pandemic, the digital world became the dominant customer environment. And post-2020, e-commerce continued to expand — in fact, the global e-commerce market size is projected to have a 14.7% compounded annual growth rate from 2020 to 2027. To be competitive today, you need to create a consistent brand experience across every channel — both physical and digital. And that means you’ll have to coordinate some of the in-person experiences that used to happen naturally with strategic digital interactions.

Impactful visual imagery — from logos to mascots — is crucial to today’s brands. What would Nike be without the swoosh or Frosted Flakes without Tony the Tiger? Well, they wouldn’t be the brands we know and love. Marketers need to have easy, secure, and reliable access to these assets. And this is possible by using image metadata. But what exactly is image metadata?

In this guide, we explore what image metadata is, why it’s so important, and how to manage it. Let’s get started.

The foundation of search engine optimization (SEO) starts with the content that makes up your pages. Digital assets like images and videos can add SEO value to your website pages when they have keyword-relevant information associated with them and are published in the appropriate format and size. Often, managing images for SEO can seem daunting but a digital asset management (DAM) system makes it easier to optimize all these crucial SEO factors at scale.

That’s because DAM features enable you to fill out the specific digital asset SEO details that build maximum value on a page once they’re published. You can use a DAM solution to do tasks such as standardize file names; add alt text to images and videos; and resize your assets to optimize page load speeds. 

Here are the main things to consider when it comes to using DAM to support your SEO strategy.