Smart businesses of every kind know that they need a content strategy to create a stellar customer experience and succeed in today’s information-overloaded world. They need a guiding beacon, a grand vision that’ll steer the development, delivery, and management of their content.

Your digital asset management (DAM) solution is one tool you can use to support your content strategy. Here’s how!

Marketing organizations today are in constant competition to deliver the absolute best customer experience possible. But in a mad dash to achieve excellence, many businesses fall short. They are focused more on speed for the sake of speed, rather than ensuring their teams, assets, and processes can move more nimbly — and therefore more quickly when their customers need it most.

At Widen, we know how important agility is in fueling a superior customer experience. We also know how critical an organization’s digital assets and their content marketing efforts are to this endeavor. After all, a brand’s photos, images, videos, sales content, and other digital assets are how they bring their content marketing strategies to life, tell their brand story, educate consumers, and ultimately mold the experience of their customers. 

To explore this topic further, we joined forces with our friends and long-time partners at The Content Advisory (TCA) and Content Marketing Institute (CMI) to discuss how agility, not speed, is the key to better customer experiences through faster content marketing. 

Back in 2011 when we first published this article, referencing “the cloud” still felt fresh and cutting edge. Almost a decade later, cloud-based solutions are standard for collaboration, communication, project management, and many other business needs. Digital asset management (DAM) is no exception.

The very nature of DAM – management, organization, and distribution of digital assets from a central content hub – is a perfect match for the cloud. Businesses rely on content that comes in many forms, and has countless sources and destinations. To facilitate that flow of information, you need a scalable, secure, and cost-effective system.

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. 

When a t-shirt is no longer wearable, is your instinct to throw it away or to turn it into a dust cloth? When you cook bacon, do you toss the grease or save it for your favorite chili recipe? Repurposing is a smart and effective way to get more use out of your resources while preventing waste.

More and more organizations are reaping the benefits of content repurposing. For example, a graphic for a slide deck can be repurposed for a social media post. A clip from one video can become b-roll for another. This savvy approach to content creation and repurposing not only helps your team extract more value from content but also supports a consistent message and brand style across multiple channels and campaigns.

A digital asset management (DAM) system plays a crucial role in an organization’s ability to reuse and repurpose content. A DAM system facilitates secure storage, searchable metadata, file conversions, and easy sharing for your digital assets, whether those assets are final content deliverables or individual pieces.

Want a surefire way to make your legal team love you? Learn how to properly manage stock photos and other licensed assets with your digital asset management (DAM) system.

In a notable passage from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet ponders the value of a name. She says, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In other words, she thinks that names don’t really matter all that much. 

But here at Widen, we disagree. After all, names are an important part of any branded experience. And when it comes to tools like a digital asset management (DAM) system, the right name can go a long way in bolstering system adoption and ongoing user engagement. 

That’s why many of our customers give their Widen Collective^® site a name that is descriptive, unique, or memorable. But finding a name that reflects your site’s purpose and company brand can be challenging. So let’s look at some tips and best practices that will help you choose a top-notch name for your Collective site. 

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. 

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.