Well, if you have a company logo and at least one colleague who sometimes need to use it, technically you’re already practicing some form of digital asset management. The question is whether you’re doing it well or not.
When you force your colleagues to go looking for your logo on a search engine (yes, it happens!) or pester the Marketing team for the latest product shots, that’s really more like digital asset mismanagement. But I get it. Keeping track of all your company content including new campaign material, staff portraits, template updates, and more can be quite the task. Not to mention making sure it’s available in all the right channels. So, you do your best to update what you can, field as many requests as possible, and improvise. You also learn to live with a constant lack of control.
Unless of course you choose to use a system. Enter the not-so-sexy world of DAMs. Digital Asset Management systems range from simple file storage solutions to state-of-the-art platforms with every imaginable feature under the sun. What they all have in common however is a pretty boring segment to reside in. We can admit it… file storage really isn’t that exciting.
But then again, neither is insurance or a trip to the dentist, but it’s still good for you.
Not convinced by a sentence with a vague dental hygiene reference? Ok, here are seven relevant reasons to DAM:
Better brand asset ROI
Organizations often see poor adoption of new assets, not because they’re no good, but because they’re hard to access. (Others just need to move on from sucky visuals and hire a better brand agency.) If you’re confident your content is good but you’re not seeing the usage you expected, try rethinking where you make them available. Often, distribution is the weak link.
One of our customers, PayEx, saw a 5X increase in the usage of the brand assets already available to employees, simply because they switched to Pickit.
Simplified workflow
Better distribution means a simpler workflow. Instead of context-switching between a presentation, search engine, file storage system and an email to the marketing manager asking for another .png, you can get the whole lot right from your PowerPoint menu. Genius.
Brand consistency
When all the latest images are accessible in one centralized location and all those old, embarrassingly outdated product shots (and staff photos!) aren’t, you no longer need to worry about inconsistent content that makes your brand look bad.
Actionable analytics
By getting data on downloads, inserts, popular search terms and more, your brand asset managers can get a better understanding of how your visuals are being used as well as what’s missing.
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Keywords and tags
Any decent DAM will (ok, should) let you tag your content with relevant keywords, making searching for (read: finding!) the right image a whole lot easier.
Curated collections
A good system will give you the option to curate your content into collections and use themes, cover images and visual indicators to make the browsing experience easier and more intuitive. Say goodbye to endless lists of files with names like IMG_8365.JPG.
Permissions
Any self-respecting digital asset management system will allow you to regulate who gets access to what by sharing a different set of assets with different departments, teams and individuals at your organization.
Voila! Seven solid reasons why you should consider finding a solution for digital asset management. We could have added Peace of mind to the list, but I read somewhere that posts with an odd number of points outperform those with even numbers.
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Who wrote this?
This was posted by Brad Hawkes, our Content Marketing Manager here at Pickit. He's not a professor of rhetoric and he's never given a TED Talk. He has, however, clocked up over 1000 presentations, seminars and talks over the last 15 years, picking up a few ideas along the way. He once spoke to a crowd of 5000, but mostly he's spoken to crowds of 5, and he's always looking for simpler, clearer ways to say things and get a message across. He also makes a fine cup of coffee.
