Digital asset management is an old concept. Yet, it is becoming increasingly relevant for a wide range of organizations. The rate of data production is accelerating. Organizations need DAM to ease collaboration and to save valuable time.
You likely manage your personal digital assets (photos, music, videos) using basic folders. This is no problem when it’s limited to your personal computer. But, sometimes a business needs to organize thousands of digital assets. This is where things become complicated. Digital Asset Management is the solution to the digital asset proliferation problem.
Digital Asset Management allows organizations to store, manage, and process digital files.
A lot of energy goes into creating a long-form piece of content. To get the most from this effort, you can repurpose this content into smaller digital assets. Examples are not limited to what is found on Facebook and Twitter. But can also extend to marketing emails and scripts for YouTube videos. When deciding which long-form digital assets to repurpose for social media accounts, you must look beyond clicks. It is more important to figure out what which pieces of content produce the most engagement.
Imagine a whitepaper receives a great reaction from your audience. You should take a look at which parts people found most valuable. This will indicate what should be shared across your social media accounts. Here you need an effective DAM system to get these snippets ready for use. This enables you to categorize the smaller assets based on what people find valuable.
Good photography is usually expensive. Fortunately, one image can be repurposed in many ways. Proper DAM helps ensure that the results of different uses can be recorded within its metadata.
DAM allows you to be consistent in your approach to reusing photographs. This is especially important if you are managing many social media accounts. Visuals are closely tied to your brand perception. More consistent visuals lead to more effective marketing. But when you have thousands of image files to work with across dozens of designers, it can become difficult to maintain consistency. This is why so many large companies rely on DAM to organize their photographic assets.
A video is another kind of digital asset that lends itself to creative reuse. Clients love well-produced videos. These are more readily shared across social media accounts. Yet, without proper digital asset management, reusing video effectively is difficult.
Low quality is the primary reason videos fail to resonate with consumers. But, this is not the only reason for videos failing to make an impact. Even a great video will fail if it’s stored on a hard drive somewhere for months. Video assets need to be stored in a centralized location so that marketing teams can produce effective campaigns to support it. This is what maximizes the value of video assets and it cannot be achieved without DAM.
How does your organization transfer knowledge from one department to another? Imagine your team has experienced a breakthrough in learning. Naturally, you would like to help others make use of what you have discovered. This is especially important for teams that may be facing a challenge like the one you have overcome.
What is the best way to structure that new data so that it is readily transferred to other people? One way to do that is to develop a knowledge asset. You then tag it with relevant metadata. And embed it within a well-structured digital asset management system. This approach allows you to capture operational knowledge. You can then store this in a way that makes sense to people who did not go through the initial experience.
Knowledge assets may be the most important class of digital assets. This is because they provide the substrate for all other assets to be created. Knowledge assets ease one’s ability to transfer learnings to others.
The most effective method of transferring knowledge is in a face to face interaction. However, this also happens to be the least efficient. Sometimes knowledge must be distributed at scale. In which case, a knowledge base that is tagged with relevant metadata is necessary. It must also be connected to a well-structured DAM system. This facilitates the transfer of knowledge between people even if their time at a company does not overlap.
There are eight steps necessary to create a practical knowledge base. This makes proper use of all the digital assets your business generates.
As you can see, this is a process that requires a long-term commitment. But commitment alone is not enough. Because we are dealing with intangible assets different rules for asset management apply. The whole workflow of the business must support the proper management of digital assets. This includes ensuring every asset has complete metadata. When this is done properly, data becomes manageable and users are able to find the content they need right when they need it.