Videos, infographics, brochures, blogs, white papers, and on and on —  there’s no shortage of content floating around the digital stratosphere. And this makes sense. Both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers create content for an average of four different audiences each. Apply that at large, and we’re talking about a heck of a lot of content.

Now depending on the maturity of your brand and your content efforts, you may already be feeling the weight of this within your own organization. Content takes time, money, and resources, which are all lost if you don’t have a plan for creating, maintaining, improving, and storing your valuable content. 

How you interact with your content should be dictated by where it falls in its lifecycle. For instance, you will treat a new case study differently than one that’s been around for years. In some cases, as content reaches the end of its lifecycle, it may be time to retire it altogether. Having a solid understanding of your content lifecycle will help you keep track of your content during each stage of its life and get the most out of your investment.

Call it what you will, a site audit, an assessment, a snapshot, an overview. Any way you look at it, you need to know the current state of your DAM system before you can get it where it needs to go. And while the path might not always look the same, there are four important stops everyone should plan to make along the way: analytics, users, aesthetics, and governance.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade...or so the saying goes. And that’s exactly what we did for this year’s Widen Summit. While we all would have loved to meet in person, we needed a different game plan during a global pandemic. So we moved the event to a virtual platform, and are thrilled that it allowed us to share the Summit experience with more people than ever. Over 500 registrants to be exact! And here’s everything you need to know about this year’s event. 

This year’s Best DAM Contest brought together admins who overcame big challenges in how they worked and accessed their content. The teams at Autodesk, Life Time, and NVIDIA took different approaches to accomplish the DAM goals they set for themselves and had some fascinating ideas to share with the Widen Summit audience.

Read on to learn more about these inspiring transitions and watch the full Best DAM Contest here. 

With more companies working remotely than ever before, dropping by a coworkers desk when you have a question isn’t really an option anymore. As a result, teams are finding themselves rethinking their processes and the tools to help them work at maximum efficiency. 

In recent years, brands have turned to cloud storage tools — like Dropbox, SharePoint, and OneDrive — to organize, manage, and share content. While these tools can help companies begin to shape their content management workflow, many find themselves quickly outgrowing the functionality and in need of something more. And these growing pains have never been more apparent than now with more dispersed teams. 

That’s where DAM comes in. 

First off, if you’re researching digital asset management (DAM) for the first time, welcome to the world of DAM puns. You’ll have plenty of DAM meetings, DAM calls, and DAM work to do.

You’ve likely heard that DAM provides benefits like increased brand control, improved productivity when finding and sharing content, and an accelerated time to market. But is that just marketing speak? If not, how do you make that a reality for your organization?

In an earlier article, we walked through the key abilities of a successful DAM admin. In this article, we’ll explore five core concepts that build out the value of DAM. These foundations lay the groundwork for businesses to realize its benefits.

As employees and companies see the benefits of remote work (fewer distractions, flexible schedule, higher employee retention, just to name a few), it’s no surprise that working from home (WFH) — or working from anywhere (WFA) — is becoming more widely accepted and expected.  Tasks that could once only be done only from the office are now being completed in homes, coffee shops, and coworking spaces around the world. With this increase in remote teams, the need for reliable, flexible technology is at an all-time high. 

If you want to get somewhere in the quickest way possible, you map your course. The same is true for metadata. 

Metadata powers search within a digital asset management (DAM) system. Without it, your assets become unfindable and ultimately, unusable. But we know entering metadata can be time-consuming. So how do you ensure you’re entering metadata in the quickest way possible? Metadata mapping. 

Building trust is tricky. And as the saying goes, trust is hard to earn but easy to lose. So what does that have to do with digital asset management (DAM)? A lot!

Each year, the Widen Summit focuses on concepts that are key to DAM success. 

In 2017, we honed in on what it takes to set better goals. Expanding on that in 2018, we learned how to tackle those goals using a strong strategy framework. This year though, we took a step back to realize that in order for people to believe in your goals and strategy, you need to first earn their trust. And this theme carried throughout our three days together — taking center stage in workshops, sessions, and keynotes. 

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…