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Maximizing the Value of Digital Assets Enterprise-Wide with DAMS (V.2) |1

DIGITAL ASSETS ENTERPRISE-WIDE

WITH DAMS The Ultimate Guide

for MarketersVOLUME 2


The idea of democratizing brand assets & content across entire organizations is new in many ways, but old in others. Democratizing brand assets & content simply means enabling everyone within and connected to an organization to have immediate access to the assets that they need, when they need them. Executed correctly, this will increase the influence, reach and impact of an organization’s brand, products, services, culture, and corporate message or story.

This eBook will explore how a properly implemented and integrated digital asset management system (DAMS) can help you and your organization leverage the hottest trends in content marketing today.

Learn how you can integrate your DAMS into the everyday software your teams, partners and vendors are already using and move it from being primarily a marketing department solution to an enterprise wide solution that has an exponentially greater impact on both the top and bottom line of your organization.



As a former media producer, I know first-hand how important visual content is to telling memorable stories. A picture can move a reader to tears, video can allow audiences to witness events on the other side of the world; and a company's logo can become a symbol of a brand's promise.

Visual content, or in a company’s case “brand assets”, are instrumental, if not crucial, in building brand awareness. But Enterprises today are amassing terabytes of invaluable content that's predominantly inaccessible outside of marketing departments. As a result, ensuring that brand assets are accessible and used appropriately by the broadest number of people is a challenge facing many Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) and their teams today.

To help manage access and usage within marketing departments, many organizations are turning to digital asset management systems, or DAMS. But the power and reach of DAMS can go well beyond the halls of marketing, extending accessibility and benefits of rights management and version control to the farthest reaches of an organization. This extension increases the value and, in turn, the ROI, of an organization’s brand assets.

Integrating a DAMS into the software that people use at work - such as Office 365 and HootSuite – makes it easy and incredibly fast for the right people, at the right time, to access the brand assets they need.

In my role as the Vice President of Developer Experience and Evangelism (DX) at Microsoft Canada, I'm delighted that challenges like the one above are being addressed by Microsoft partners building solutions on Microsoft cloud technology. I’m even more excited that a large number of these solutions are being integrated within many of Microsoft’s core productivity solutions, further increasing the value of your investment in Microsoft technologies.

One of our partners that is standing out in this area is MediaValet.

This eBook lets you explore how a Digital Asset Management System, like the one built by MediaValet on Microsoft Azure, will help increase the value of your investment in brand assets by providing access across your entire enterprise, while tapping into some of the key trends in marketing today.


Enjoy the read. At Microsoft we’re proud of the work our partners are doing to help organizations gain value in a cloud first, mobile first world.

Sincerely,

Mary Ellen AndersonVice President, Developer Experience and Evangelism GroupMicrosoft Canada


DEMOCRATIZING CONTENT

ACROSS YOUR ORGANIZATION


by David MacLarenfounder and CEO of MediaValet

Maximizing the Value of Digital Assets Enterprise-Wide with DAMS (V.2) |6Maximizing the Value of Digital Assets Enterprise-Wide with DAMS (V.2) |6


Contrary to what many people believe, content marketing and digital asset management is not a new concept. In fact it has been around since the 19th century. What is new is that the internet and cloud have changed how easily assets can be created and used to extend your brand with corporate storytelling. For companies who get this right, the ability that you have to connect with potential customers, increase visibility, extend your authority and influence buyers is enormous and unprecedented.

Personally, I am excited by the potential that any company has to leverage both the internet and the cloud to disrupt their industry and grow their business. One of the reasons I founded MediaValet was to help organizations leverage their brand assets and marketing material more effectively. For many companies today, their vast wealth of digital assets are collected, controlled and curated by a small group in marketing, and that causes a number of problems.

In doing the research for this eBook, I stumbled across several stories on the internet about companies who embraced content marketing early on. One of them, was John Deere who started its own magazine in 1895. Since its inception, “The Furrow” limited its advertising and instead focused on educating readers. Today, the Furrow is still considered a leading resource for information in the agriculture industry. Now available online in a digital format, it uses spectacular images, embedded video and strong storytelling to connect with prospectful and exciting customers.


DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT IS USUALLY SILOED

The first challenge is that digital assets are not readily available to all employees, limiting the value of the assets themselves. You may or may not have invested in a DAMS, most have yet to do so. For those that have, access to the DAMS usually remains squarely in the hands of marketing.

While it’s terrific that marketing has fast and easy access to corporate digital assets, it’s underserving the greater good of the corporation. There is a missed opportunity when the broader community of employees, contractors or even agencies can’t easily access the digital assets that marketing has painstakenly curated. The impact of a brand increases ten-fold when employees are empowered as ambassadors of a brand.


WE ALL USUALLY FOLLOW THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

At one point or another, we all need access to company logos, product images, case studies or other such brand assets and marketing material. When we do, we're usually in a rush, and as a result we take the fastest, and easiest, path we know. This is usually our own hard drive, a USB stick from a recent tradeshow - or worse, Google. We're all simply doing the best we can with the time and tools we have. Unfortunately, this creates more harm than good as it usually results in old logos, outdated marketing material, poor quality or off brand photos, or even a competitor's asset being used to represent your company and your brand.

I recall a story from a marketer who confessed that she was horrified when she recognized a photo representing a competitor’s service on their company website. The competitor’s logo had been photo shopped and replaced with their logo but the competitor’s image was iconic and it was easy for anyone in their industry – including potential customers - to quickly tell who the image really belonged to.


MISSING OUT ON THE CONVERSATION

There's a conversation going on. It's happening 24/7 and it is occurring on multiple platforms. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest are simply a few of the places that your employees, your customers and your prospects are gathering to connect.

Your employees can be the biggest brand ambassadors that you have. They're loyal, knowledgeable and they have a vested interest in your success as a company. By making your brand assets and marketing material easily accessible by all your employees, you can greatly amplify the impact & engagement your brand and your company have online.


DEMOCRATIZING CONTENT

At MediaValet, we're passionate about helping organizations democratize content. This simply means taking the investment you've already made in creating, collecting and curating the brand assets, marketing material and other content that represent your brand, your culture and your organization and extending that content out to the broadest audience possible. Putting this content in the hands of the departments and people across your company who can use them to extend your brand in a responsible, legal and ethical manner.

The internet, cloud and content marketing have created a “perfect storm” of opportunity for marketers. In the remainder of this book we'll explore the newest trends in content marketing and identify ways for you to easily empower your entire organization to be brand ambassadors, while wisely and securely using your content in their day-to-day work lives.

The time is now to democratize your content. For those of you who are able to achieve this, you'll leap ahead of your competitors!

I hope you find this eBook as worthwile reading as we did writing. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Sincerely,

David MaclarenFounder and CEO, MediaValet


THE HOTTEST CONTENT TRENDS

IN MARKETING TODAY



Trends can be valuable tools in helping us to see how other organizations are successfully adapting to change – and avoiding the re-creation of the wheel. Here are some that we’ve identified to help marketers navigate the complex world of asset sharing.



CONSISTENCY ACROSS THE ENTERPRISE

“Marketers will focus on the broader experience they are offering their audience, instead of looking at one-off pieces of content or even disconnected collections of content. This will require brands to prioritize things such as digital user experience, metadata, and taxonomies (so related content is more easily surfaced), and tone and brand guidelines (so the experience is consistent).”

MICHELE LINN, VP Content Marketing, Content Marketing Institutei

Content marketing is a prevalent cornerstone in most marketing strategies today. It is one of the key methods used by organizations to communicate with customers and prospects. But content needs to be rich. It must educate, inform and share material that is useful to the target audience.

Consumers and buyers are getting savvier and they have limited attention in our noisy world. The competition for attention is fierce and time is our most expensive commodity.

As a result, organizations are investing heavily in creating, and making broadly available, quality content - assets that are well-organized, well-written and visually appealing. In many cases, companies are looking to internal experts to become thought leaders and to create media-rich assets, such as video and photos, as well as general content, e.g. blogs, eBooks, infographics, or white papers, to enable insight and knowledge to be shared in a variety of formats. Actively encouraging conversations on social platforms and the publishing of opinions promotes engagement that drives relationships. It’s the stuff that is driving the new customer journey.

88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a documented content marketing strategy.

Source: Content Marketing Institute


But considering the importance of the customer journey, it’s surprising that many companies still have no documented content marketing strategy. This means that across the organization, departments and employees are often unguided in what they can post or share.

Part of a documented strategy means providing wide yet controlled access to corporate digital assets that represent the brand in a positive manner. It usually begins by aggregating all corporate assets into one central media library and ensuring they're tagged and organized in a structured manner, leveraging rich meta-data and taxonomies. This makes it easy for users to quickly find the right assets, for the right moment, when they need them. Best practice is to align to new media library with a corporation’s single-sign-on or identity management policies.

At the same time, it requires the ability to build in any licensing restrictions that might accompany third party assets, such as photographs or videos. The cloud enables content siloes to be broken down so that assets can overcome departamental and geographical restrictions, and ensure department or region-specific content, such as departament specific brand assets or localized content is used correctly.

“In order for content marketing to be successful, companies will need to end their content marketing silos and create a cohesive content marketing machine. In other words, in 2016, the silos of content marketing will end, and a new, more unified team model will begin”.

AMY HIGGINS, CMI 2016 Predictions

Another element to consider is how access to your content is provided. Tying into common tools that employees use every day, such as Microsoft Office 365, increases user buy-in, reduces training and makes peoples' lives easier. Since users are already familiar with the tools, acceptance and compliance are less of a challenge.



TV NETWORK EMBARRASSED BY WRONG LOGO

In the days leading up to the 2016 Super Bowl, sportscasters covering the event relied on digital libraries to augment their stories with pictures and video.

But Canadian newscaster Le Téléjournal was embarrassed when their Super Bowl coverage featured the wrong Panthers logo on air.

Instead of Carolina’s roaring black and blue Panther, the NHL’s Florida Panthers logo was featured alongside the Denver Broncos. While the Florida Panthers’ players may watch the Super Bowl, as a hockey team their aspirations are to make it to the Stanley Cup.

Social media sites lit up with fans ridiculing the station and the broadcasters. It was a simple mistake, but one that tarnished the reputation of both the network and the sportscasters. For companies whose employees don’t have easy access to the latest approved versions of logos, images and other content, the resulting inaccuracies may make the company look unprofessional, disorganized and lacking polish. Not the image anyone wants to foster.



ALMOND BOARD OF CALIFORNIA

California produces 86% of the world’s supply of almonds - close to 2 billion pounds annually. The Almond Board of California was set up in 1950 to represent the Californian almond growers on the world stage in matters concerning agricultural, government and scientific affairs, exports, partnerships and international marketing.

The Almond Board’s staff, and the marketing agencies they work with in 15 countries, were routinely frustrated with their in-house legacy digital asset management system.

Users simply couldn’t access the digital assets they needed in a timely and efficient manner and the Almond Board’s IT department was spending too much time supporting users’ digital asset management needs. The Almond Board needed a better way to aggregate, organize, secure and share its digital assets. In their ideal world, they wanted:

• A globally accessible, yet simple, intuitive and user-friendly digital asset management solution for its global staff and marketing agencies, and

• A digital asset management system that would greatly reduce the time its IT department was spending on support and maintenance.

“MediaValet is used heavily by our staff and agencies; assets are downloaded every day and we upload hundreds of MBs of assets every month. Yet, our IT staff hardly hears about MediaValet as we no longer receive any support issues from users regarding our DAMS.”

JOHN JOYNER, A.D. Corporate Technology, the Almond Board of California

Today, roughly one hundred users worldwide are happily using a custom branded version of MediaValet on a daily basis to access and share the Almond Board’s 2TBs and growing library of digital assets. Even happier is the IT department, which has seen some significant benefits from making the switch:

• The Almond Board is saving 50% on IT and administration costs compared to their previous in-house DAMS.

• Manpower dedicated by the Almond Board to maintaining their previous DAMs has gone from 10-15 hours per month down to zero.

• Time required to perform back-ups has gone from 16-20 hours per month down to zero.

“Help Desk tickets for digital asset management related issues have been reduced by 95%.”


If you think your entire organization might benefit from a DAMS, or from extending your existing DAMS, ensure you consider stakeholder asset requirements throughout the whole organization.

• Do people need access to digital assets in a variety of formats?

• Do people frequently receive assets in a format they cannot use due to software inconsistencies?

• Do people spend a large amount of time sourcing assets from or for other departments?

• Do any of your employees experience delays in sourcing content due to time zone or location constraints?

• Have incorrect versions of digital assets been used mistakenly because people didn't know how or where to find the correct version?

• Are people in remote locations required to collaborate on creation or review of assets, where there is a risk of multiple versions showing up due to simultaneous editing?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, acquiring a DAMS or extending your existing DAMS is a worthwhile consideration. Setting up a meeting with IT is a great place to begin. Collaborative exploration of your requirements will facilitate understanding of how identity management, single-sign-on, and integration with common productivity tools (such as Microsoft Office 365), can augment your existing IT functionality. These steps will help you define the viability and scope of your project.



MOBILE FIRST IS THE NORM

“Brands won’t think of mobile as a separate endeavor, but as the centerpiece of their overall digital marketing strategy. Figuring out how to tie mobile app usage with usage in other channels such as social, email, site and in-store will be critical for future success.”

MIKE WONG, Director of Marketing for PicMonkeyii

In 2016, the number of smartphone users in the United States is estimated to reach 207.2 million, with the number of smartphone users worldwide to exceed 2 billion users.iii As businesses strive to find ways of increasing employee productivity, enterprise adoption of mobile technology is also increasing at rapid rates. In fact, as far back as 2012, 94% of Fortune 500 companies were already either testing or deploying mobile devices for enterprise use, and tablet shipments for enterprise use could reach as high as 96 million units in 2016.iv

How does all this impact your organization? It means that mobile users, each with multiple devices, can be anywhere in the world - working in remote offices, meeting with clients, attending corporate events or even logging in while on vacation. And with a DAMS in place, they can access approved assets on their chosen device, from any location, or obtain marketing approval on images they’ve taken, and documents they’ve created, all in real time and ready to be made available, enterprise-wide.

Most organizations today have adopted mobile technologies, but even if your organization hasn’t, it’s employees have, and they’re using them to access applications and share information. As we rapidly continue down the path of a mobile-first, cloud-first world, the number of those who will want or need to access your company’s digital assets on a mobile device is on the rise… and this trend is here to stay!


MOBILE DEVICE ACCESS

As marketers have become more reliant on shareable content, such as media-rich presentations and HD videos, file sizes have increased dramatically. Without the right infrastructure or access in place, some files can be too large for sharing or viewing on mobile devices. This means that employee efficiency benefits of those devices are minimized, and the enterprise is no longer capitalizing on its mobile strategy investment.

And with more employees working remotely, needing access to assets, the burden of accessing IT imposed data siloes falls to the marketing team, making locating the latest asset versions cumbersome and frustrating for all involved.

When considering an enterprise DAMS strategy, ensure that your DAMS can render an original asset into multiple file sizes and formats. This means that mobile users will be able to easily access and stream content as needed, reducing frustration and increasing productivity.


Your employees are attending a trade show in Berlin. Awards for best new product are being announced and your company is selected. Smartphones flash and capture the moment your proud CEO crosses the stage. Those photos & videos are instantly uploaded into your DAMS, where your marketing team can now categorize and tag them with the right keywords. Your social team extends them across your enterprise and your employees sharing them across social platforms. The video is on your official YouTube Channel in under an hour, and the next day, your monthly newsletter distributes the photo evidence to more than 14,000 recipients on your corporate email.

Prior to today, marketers were forced to email employees and beg for their best shots from the event. Smartphones can be siloes too, but if leveraged right, they can be the front line of many of your marketing efforts.

A world in which all of the organization’s content contributors can have access to all assets, at all times, from anywhere on the globe, via any device for upload, sharing and download is not in the future – it's here today. Large sales forces are empowered by data in DAMS environments, rather than hampered by it due to lack of access and great moments, like a trade show booth being crowded by interested prospects or an award ceremony, can be captured, uploaded and instantly accessed and shared across the entire organization.

A cloud-based DAMS solution can deliver this ideal state, making the marketer’s job easier and the organization more effective, by ensuring that all stakeholders can take control of their own asset requirements, and customers have a consistent brand experience.

Cloud-based assets can be made accessible across the enterprise, at any time, meaning that a creative team in San Diego can share files for review with an account team in New York, while a travelling CMO provides comments from an airport lounge in Singapore, all without timing delays or security risks.

STREAMLINING AND UPLOADING


Marketers who are considering a DAMS to support their mobile strategies should consider:

• Evaluating the spectrum of usage requirements across the enterprise;

• Establishing how stakeholders will access assets, and from which devices and locations;

• Ensure users are trained on how to upload, share and download from mobile devices;

• Provide methodologies and processes for reviewing and publishing uploaded assets; and

• Work with IT to understand the current data volume of assets that would require storage, the projected volume of asset growth in the foreseeable future, and access protocols for those who would need to obtain those assets.



BRAND USA

Established in 2011, Brand USA is spearheading the nation’s first global marketing effort to promote the Unites States as a premier travel destination to worldwide travelers. They wanted a massively scalable, globally accessible and highly secure digital asset management system that could easily handle over a hundred terabytes of high definition media assets, and allow thousands of users from around the world to access and share them through an intuitive user interface.

When Brand USA conducted their search for a system to manage all of their assets, they had already decided it had to be cloud-based, plus easily and cost effectively scale beyond 50 TBs; manage user access and asset usage permissions; allow administrator approval of all assets before making them available to users; enable simultaneous upload of assets from various international locations; and, offer powerful search and filter capabilities via keywords, embedded meta-data, file names, file extensions, file types, asset ratings and asset rights.

In Summary: Brand USA’s huge library of images delivers the promise of travel dreams to many different audience segments in the travel and tourism category. Today, thousands of tourism partners globally are using the MediaValet DAMS to upload enticing images, and Brand USA’s global team is now able to access assets remotely, and in real time.

Brand USA relies on roving ambassadors to catch everything from a spectacular exhibition of northern lights in Alaska, to a humpback whale rescue off the coast of California. Iconic images captured on mobile devices and uploaded not only increase the library of rich digital assets, they also are “in the moment” and timely as events are happening. Examples like The Macy’s parade in New York City, the 4th of July celebrations in Washington, or a movie premiere about National Parks. Images captured and shared as they happen – not a week later. Being able to capitalize on trends on social feeds helps Brand USA continue to raise awareness and increase site traffic.

“Managing digital assets seems like a simple process, but it’s really more complex than just ‘parking’ your videos and photos in folders. With 50 TBs and thousands of users worldwide, we knew this would further complicate the process. MediaValet met all these needs and is well positioned to meet our future requirements.”

MARK LAPIDUS, Brand USA’s Director of Digital and Social Media


MAKE A CONNECTION – THE POWER OF PICTURES

“Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.” v

As marketers, our goal is to provide people with a brand experience that will help them to make an emotional connection with our brand. Both internally and externally, across multiple departments, customers, and suppliers – we want anyone who comes in contact with the brand to make a positive connection. A brand experience can take many forms, from seeing images of corporate success in a training video, to feeling our heart strings tugged by a tear-jerking image or video from a corporate charity event.

“The average person’s attention span in 2015 was a mere 8.25 seconds, a reduction of almost 4 seconds over 15 years.” vi



THE RIGHT ACCESS TO THE RIGHT ASSETS MATTERS

As brands compete for people’s attention in a field of media bombardment, rich content matters more than ever. Equally important, however, is enabling your team to have access to those approved shareable assets. Whether its for the building of your brand by enabling your employees to share assets with connections on social networks; productivity gains and improved professionalism by enabling team members easy access to the images, videos, infographics, or photos they need to do a great job; or asset consistency across each media type for a reliable brand experience; access to the most current approved assets matters.

“Visuals absolutely have to be original and authentic to the story, the publisher, and the brand. We never use commercial or stock images in our branded content - we create visuals ourselves to cater to our visually-driven audience. Having a strong visual identity, and retaining this aesthetic throughout content helps maintain an authenticity that is important to your audience.”

ANNA PLAKS, VP of Brand Experiences, Refinery29

ASSET SHARING GONE WRONG

Marketers know the pressure of the big presentation. The opportunity to sell your organization’s attributes to a prospective client and illustrate the value of choosing your company over the competition.

Imagine this scenario: the company has a multi-million dollar opportunity with a new client and the team, scattered around the globe, has worked around the clock for weeks to pull the presentation together. Hopes are high and energy is flowing, with everyone working in departmental groups to fine tune their component and showcase the benefits of working with this highly professional and streamlined organization.

Presentation day is here, and everyone has flown in for the grand event. The client arrives, introductions are made… and the show begins. As the slides start to flow, it becomes obvious that the communication and consistency between departments has been lacking in the presentation development. With iterations of various logos, font styles and product images, the presentation team looks like a bunch of amateurs. Embarrassing and disappointing for the team… and a situation that could easily have been avoided.

A DAMS would have enabled the team to access the approved assets they needed – and bring the business home.


EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS CREATE BRAND CONNECTIONS

Audience retention of your content is of prime importance in creating a brand experience; if they don’t remember it, it didn’t happen. And with the volume of content we are all processing today, information can easily be forgotten or ignored if it doesn’t resonate strongly with its audience. By providing your loyal army with rich content that they can freely share on their favourite social platforms, you can turn your employees into valuable brand ambassadors. Having employees who are truly engaged as brand advocates gives you power that’s difficult for competitors to replicatevi, creating a strong competitive advantage.

The integration of visual content can enhance your audience’s attention, absorption and retention levels. The following infographic illustrates how our brains not only process visuals faster than text, but they retain and transmit much more information when it’s delivered visually.viii

Creating unique digital assets and content based on company culture, knowledge and social initiatives is a winning strategy for leading marketing teams who build brands that stand out, and are loved and followed because they do so much more than just push their products. The content itself becomes a huge part of the company and a true asset to the brand. From inspirational Nike videos that move thousands of athletes, to CMI (Content Marketing Institute) posts that educate a generation of marketers, original, relevant and unique media content drives bottom lines and differentiates leading brands against their competition.

A DAMS can empower the marketing team to encourage employees’ use of assets. By giving them free and easy access to shareable content that they feel will strike a chord with their social network, they can become brand ambassadors, creating brand enthusiasts from amongst their own connections. And while your team is happily sharing images and video clips, you can confidently assure your CEO that nothing sensitive is open to inquiring eyes.

Source: www.thenextweb.com


MILLENNIALS ARE THE CARRIER PIGEONS OF THE DIGITAL AGE

In the perpetual race to obtain a greater share of the consumer wallet or the corporate budget, marketers know that social media impacts buying behaviour – in a big way!

And with tools like Hootsuite, which supports the management of multiple accounts across various social media platforms, the potential of this channel is very enticing.

Marketers also know that building a list of followers across these platforms takes time and effort – along with a great deal of valuable content.

Yet, what they possibly haven’t realized, is the wealth of social media expertise and reach sitting in cubicles on every floor of their organization. Their own employees, particularly the digital-savvy, smartphone reliant millennials are eager to share everything that impacts their lives.

With a string of connections that would make a veteran sales rep proud, 54 percent of millennials feel that new technology helps them be closer to their friends and family, with over 74 percent reporting that it makes their lives easier. Plus, reinforcing the image that they can’t be separated from their phones, 83 percent say that they sleep with their smartphones.ix

“More than three-quarters of U.S. consumers report that social messages directly influence their buying decisions.”

RYAN HOLMES in Fast Company

www.fastcompany.com/3035621/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-tap-into-your-best-resource-for-expanding-your-companys-social

Source: Nielsen U.S. Social Media Survey, 2013


IT’S A NUMBERS GAME!

So just how powerful can your organization's collective reach become? With the clout to reach audiences you wouldn't otherwise have access to, unbelievably powerful! Let’s play with some numbers. Imagine a scenario in which you’re a large enterprise employing forty thousand people, and millennials comprise approximately half of your payroll. Each of those has at least 250 Facebook friends, and over 100 Twitter followers, not to mention the other social media platforms that they use. Now, we can assume some overlap in connections, so let’s say each of your twenty thousand millennial-aged staff has access to approximately 300 contacts… probably conservative, but the numbers don't lie: 6,000,000 connection opportunities. Wow! And yes, we did the calculation twice too! That's six million people that could be exposed to your brand.

By inviting your employees to share content with their friends, family and professionaly networks, you’ve tapped into a huge social media audience, each with their own social reach potential.

Of course, it goes without saying, that all sharing should be voluntary – which takes us to the deeper, intangible value of employee sharing: their network already trusts the value of the information they share, so you now have a leg-up in building deeper trust and engagement with this larger audience. Remember the old saying: garbage in, garbage out. Take the time to create compelling and valuable content - the extra effort will pay off in the additional social reach (ie. number of shares) your content gets.

MAKING IT A REALITY

Encouraging employees to share digital assets that they know their network will enjoy is low-hanging fruit for marketers, and an opportunity with rich potential that shouldn’t be ignored. Equally important, however, is ensuring that only the right assets are being shared, and that sensitive corporate assets remain protected from overly enthusiastic and well-meaning employees.

As the creation and consumption of rich media soars, it follows true that the management and delivery of digital assets becomes more complex and requires thoughtful planning of technology and distribution.

Adoption of an effective DAMS enables the marketer to control which corporate assets are able to be accessed by whom, while still providing the flexibility for employees to access shareable content, and allowing for re-sizing and re-formatting of assets to suit any social media platform. And taking this a step further, integrating with software already used across your organization, such as Hootsuite or Office 365, and extending DAMS capabilities with minimal disruption to existing processes.


PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK

The mission of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is to advance research, support patients and create hope for those affected by pancreatic cancer. The organization, in conjunction with volunteers across the U.S., organize and host events such as PurpleStride and PurpleLight to raise awareness, to remember and honour those stricken with the disease, and to inspire people to take action. The organization utilizes a vast catalogue of photographs and videos to support these events.

With an outdated internal storage system, assets were scattered on a variety of servers and personal hard drives nationally; they were misused, misplaced, and challenging to locate, due to the use of arbitrary taxonomies and keywords.

MediaValet has enabled the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to continue its vital work in providing research, awareness, support and hope to families facing pancreatic cancer with a DAMS that provides:

• Accessibility: staff and affiliates can now access assets when they need them, anywhere in the country and around the world.

• Structured Permission and Control: the right people can access the right versions of assets with the appropriate usage rights.

• Easy Search & Sharing: assets are organized in one central library and are easily keyword searched, allowing teams to quickly find and share assets internally and externally.

• Streamlined Work Flow: volunteers can find the assets they need, when they need them, without having to ask PCAN staff members, who in turn would have to spend time (sometimes hours) looking for the assets.

In Summary:With the strength of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s story, its visual assets serve to depict that story in powerfully emotional images. The MediaValet DAMS provides the organization with streamlined asset sharing opportunities internally and externally… and many more opportunities to broaden reach and deepen engagement.

“Photos and videos are important tools in our campaign efforts. You can’t look at the faces of a thousand people – all sporting purple T-shirts or carrying purple light wands – see their hope, their determination, and not be moved. We can write reams about their personal journeys, but it’s the pictures that tell their stories.”

JENNY ISAACSON, Vice President, Marketing & Communications at Pancreatic Cancer Action Network


Take an inventory of the potential within your organization. Perform an in-house focus study to:

• Understand the degree to which your employees are interested in sharing assets;

• Recognize whether they feel comfortable sharing corporate assets on personal devices;

• Learn how they feel about the organization’s existing assets, or what they’d like to share;

• Educate your departments on the value of sharing your company story and culture through their social networks;

• Discuss the scope of the benefits of sharing beyond the marketing impact, such as attracting top talent and technology partners, retaining customers, and the impact on employee satisfaction.

• Make corporate images from specific events available and encourage employees to share them across social networks. For example, trade shows or events that your company is participating in, corporate charity events, images of new product features or enhancements, great customer stories, and fun corporate events are simply a few of the approved images that can extend your brand in the hands of your new brand ambassadors.

• Figure out how you can engage employees in the development of a sharing strategy, protocol and program.



THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO DAMS



Digital assets stored in a secure, easily accessible cloud environment can be accessed anywhere, any time on any device, representing enormous enterprise efficiencies.

Recognizing you need a DAMS is kind of like realizing your team needs a coordinator – once you’ve identified the need, you want it fulfilled YESTERDAY!

We completely understand, that’s why we put together this simple guide to help you on your way. And, of course, we’re always here to help should you have any questions or need assistance.

Before you start, think about the impact this may have on your own team and your personal role. While a DAMS will be enormously rewarding for your organization, it will take time and effort to implement, and you’ll want to ensure that all stakeholders’ needs are met.

So, here’s our recommendation:

DON’T TRY TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF - DELEGATE!Form a committee of stakeholders who will each contribute based on their respective departmental needs. Working on a major project, outside a prescribed job role, allows people to put an additional feather in their corporate cap, so don’t hesitate to invite peers to join the team!

IDENTIFY YOUR STAKEHOLDERS BY GROUPConsider the needs of different departments or external providers to define your working group. Your team could include: Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Manufacturing, IT, C-Suite, Agency Personnel, Freelance Providers, etc. Each organization’s list will be different, and the list can be as long as the entities that come together to fuel your organization’s effectiveness.

DEFINE DIGITAL ASSETS WITHIN YOUR ORGANIZATIONEach group will have different storage needs, and equally different access & privacy requirements. For example, Marketing might have massive files, some of which can be widely shared, while Legal & Compliance, or Human Resources, are likely to have documents that are low on storage requirements, yet huge on privacy. A DAMS can address the needs of all your stakeholders and still make access to necessary documents simple and easy.


SUPPORT YOUR ITOne of the success factors of using a DAMS to democratize content across your organization is an integrated environment with single-sign-on to minimize the number of passwords employees need to remember. Working with IT to establish integration with your Active Directory, including authentication, role-based access and security protocols will go a long way to easing the adoption of DAMS across your organization.

IDENTIFY YOUR COMMON TOOLSConsider Office 365 (Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and Excel), SharePoint and other communication and productivity platforms which you can integrate into your DAMS and provide access to approved corporate assets in a secure manner.

DEVELOP YOUR IMPLEMENTATION PLANBuild asset distribution and metadata models, and develop a taxonomy protocol with consistent nomenclature, so that assets can be easily searched and located by:

• Theme (what kind of content)

• Audience (who is it intended for)

• Purpose (when and how people need it)

• Ownership (department, creator)

• Permission (who needs access)

CREATE CHAMPION TEAMSInvite your committee stakeholders to define small champion teams within their respective disciplines or departments and ask for their feedback to fine tune the new systems and processes. People like to contribute; corporate projects in which employees are personally invested are more likely to be widely embraced.

FIND THE RIGHT VENDORIdentify a DAMS vendor that will align with your unique needs and support you with your implementation every step of the way.

And, just like that, you’re on your way to improved content sharing capabilities, greater corporate efficiency, and more productive employees. All this with the security that will let your C-Suite sleep soundly at night knowing that productivity and corporate reach is maximized, while assets are fully protected.


i http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/12/content-marketing-predictions-2016/

ii https://insights.newscred.com/12-content-marketing-trends-for-2016-mobile-niche-real-roi/

iii http://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/

iv https://www.brainshark.com/ideas-blog/2012/August/8-cool-stats-enterprise-tablet-2012

v https://blog.kissmetrics.com/visual-content-you-need-to-use-in-your-marketing-campaign/

vi http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/

vii http://www.jrsconsulting.net/freearticles_12.html

viii http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/05/21/importance-visual-content-deliver-effectively/#gref

ix http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/millennials-technology-social-connection.html

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