A powerful content strategy has become the bullseye of modern marketing. But all too often, marketers miss their target.

We might have the sharpest arrows (content), but without the right bow (technology), it’s hard to aim. Digital asset management (DAM) is the bow that allows you to launch content with precision — and nail your content strategy.

To help you hit more bullseyes, we’ve created the Content Activation Model, a game plan that aligns your DAM system with your overall brand strategy. Our goal is to help you build a stronger brand by using DAM software to its full potential.

Standard content management systems (CMS) power your website content. But enterprise organizations often need more robust content management features to run their whole operation. If you manage everything from product content to secure financial records, it’s time for an upgrade to an enterprise content management (ECM) product. 

It’s crucial to choose the right features in ECM software if you want to get the most out of your investment. You can use an ECM system to increase productivity and efficiency, give global teams access to the same content, and automate content processes. Let’s take a look at what ECM software is, some of the common top features, and explore a few platforms that could work for you.

It’s easy to confuse digital asset management (DAM) systems and content management systems (CMS). That’s largely because the words “content” and “digital assets” are often used interchangeably. But each term can have quite different meanings to marketing teams. That overlapping language isn’t likely to change, so understanding DAM vs. CMS starts with knowing what each type of system does and how they can work together.

A CMS is responsible for managing content on your website and a DAM system manages content for your whole organization allowing for distribution across multiple channels. DAM systems can publish and manage content on your website too (and a good one does) but that’s not its only function. Let’s start with a clear definition of each and then take a close look at the differences between DAM and CMS tools. 

With paper almost extinct, your vital company documents and information need to be digitized, stored, and used in a way that supports transforming processes, workflows, and business goals. Enterprise content management (ECM) systems make it possible to rethink how you manage your enterprise content and choose more interactive ways to work with information across your organization.

Chances are, you use a digital asset management (DAM) system to handle your customer-facing content for products. But do you have centralized management for your internal documentation, invoices, training materials, contracts, financial records, etc.? If you want to reduce the time and cost it takes to manage all your content lifecycles, it’s time to think about ECM, too. 

Keep reading and you’ll learn what enterprise content management is, see examples of software choices, and get an idea if it’s the right fit for your business. 

The e-commerce space is overflowing with revenue potential for brands, but that’s no surprise. Online shopping has been on the rise for quite some time, affording brands with what’s projected to be a $5.4 trillion opportunity in 2022. But just because there’s opportunity, doesn’t mean every brand will find success on the digital shelf. 

In our 2021 Widen Connectivity Report, we explore the role of product information in helping brands achieve e-commerce success. We learn that while every brand is different, there are best practices that brands must follow in order to get the most out of their product information, strengthen audience connections, and ultimately deliver customer experiences that count. 

In the world of digital asset management (DAM), embed codes are often an unsung hero. While DAM systems get a lot of praise for storing, organizing, managing, tracking, and analyzing your digital assets; embed codes quietly make publishing content easy.

Embed codes are asset-specific HTML that allow you to publish visual content across multiple platforms with ease. Whenever updates are made to the master file in the DAM system, the new version is automatically updated everywhere it’s embedded. 

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 audiences. 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. For example, there are over 4.2 million blogs written each day. Pair that with the nearly 1.8 billion websites out there — and you have a lot of content to contend with.   

To break through the noise, you need to add some horsepower to your content marketing efforts by incorporating visual content. To help you do this effectively, it’s important to know the what, why, and how behind it.

Video has proven to be one the best tools — if not the best — for communication and promotion. Its ability to convey and elicit emotions is without equal. So it’s not surprising that video is now the number one form of media used in content strategy, overtaking blogs and infographics. 

And while demand for video is expanding, so are the tools to take high-quality video. Cameras in today’s smartphones have better video capabilities than professional cameras had as little as 10 years ago. With the right knowledge, they can yield extremely high-quality results — without a George Lucas-level budget.

Let’s explore four areas where the right tricks and tips can help your videos look professional and achieve the desired impact:

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.

Marketing teams are always looking ahead, preparing for deadlines that will bring the next big campaign or project to life. But it’s important that they also periodically look back, and review all of the content that’s been created. Conducting a content audit gives teams a holistic view of their content inventory, helps them identify gaps, and surfaces opportunities for repurposing or reuse.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to a content audit, there are four major steps that any team or business can do. Plus, there are tools to help make the process more manageable.