When implementing a digital asset management (DAM) system, you begin by adding the typical mix of marketing assets, such as images, logos, pdfs, documents, etc. Most of these file types are familiar to the average marketer, until you get to video. Because video files are much larger and more complex than other media files, we are frequently asked, “What’s the best video format to upload into my DAM?”

While most marketing teams are creating video content, storing it in a way that’s accessible and usable across multiple platforms is a challenge. Your website, a shared folder, YouTube, Facebook, and other channels all have their challenges. That’s why many businesses are using digital asset management (DAM) systems to manage their video content alongside their images and documents.

In this article, we’ll lay out different metadata you can apply to your videos to make them searchable within your DAM system.

Creating engaging videos that support business objectives is a challenge. And working with videos doesn’t get any easier after they are finished.

Videos are massive files which makes sharing and viewing them using email attachments essentially impossible. Cloud-based DAM systems like the Widen Collective® support video storage, sharing, and viewing. But treating videos just like images and other assets doesn’t provide the best experience for these powerful assets.

As organizations realize the usefulness of video as a sales and training medium, they will begin to create more and more of it. This does however create an issue of what to do with all of the footage. Video is significantly larger in size than other digital media files. You'll need to organize and store it all, including video and media you need to hold onto for business or legal reasons.

If this sounds familiar, it might be time to consider a video archive solution. Let's discuss!

Katherine Knight is responsible not only for marketing but also for the love lives of hundreds of thousands of relationships all over the world. As director of marketing at Zoosk, a leading online global dating platform in over 80 countries, her work powers a platform that over 33 million people rely on to find true love. She oversees all of Zoosk’s digital marketing and advertising and uses the Widen Collective to house all of their creative assets.

Sharon Doan considers herself the “Jane of all trades” at Poly-Wood, a manufacturer of fine outdoor furniture based in Indiana, but she’s also one of the global admins of their digital asset management (DAM) system. Anything that deals with content, whether it be digital or print, goes through both Sharon and their DAM.

Nikki Lebenson Angulo is a digital communications manager at the Institute of International Education (IIE), which is one of the largest and oldest global nonprofit organizations that administers and manages programs to support international exchange, like The Fulbright Program. They also work with governments around the world to promote the benefits of exchange.

Nikki’s position is critical in helping communicate the value of these programs with visual content that is published on the web, social media and through more traditional methods like newsletters.

Pioneer Balloon is a global company that offers balloons, promotional products, and partyware. In preparation for their 100th anniversary in 2017, they hired Teri Truesdell to research and implement a digital asset management (DAM) system to organize all of their historical assets and to offer a better distribution method for the thousands of products they sell globally.

Centria is a leading global manufacturer of design and architectural wall paneling used in the construction industry. They’re on the cutting edge of architectural system building technology with a wide variety of products touting advanced thermal and moisture protection technology. Chelsea Rommes is the media and content coordinator at Centria and is the global admin of their Widen Media Collective site. They rely heavily on their digital asset management (DAM) system to collect images of newly-completed jobs and tag them with the proper metadata so they can be easily found and repurposed by their sales team.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (otherwise known as UMass Amherst or simply UMass) is the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system. With approximately 1,300 faculty members and more than 29,000 students, UMass Amherst is the largest public university in New England and is ranked the 29th best public university in the nation. The university has also entrusted the Widen Media Collective to manage and distribute its most important branded and historical visual imagery. We had a chance to sit down with Maile Thiesen, global administrator of the UMass image library, to talk about the university’s past journey in digital asset management (DAM) and where they hope to go in the future with the Media Collective.