A healthy DAM program consists of people in the right seats, well-thought-out and documented processes, and a platform capable of supporting these people and processes. Stacks consistently works with platforms like Widen, an Acquia company, to guarantee all three of these pillars are in place for brands of all shapes in sizes, maximizing the value of their digital assets.
We all know the headache that moving from one place to another can be. Large-scale DAM migrations can be the same. There are ways to minimize the pain and maximize the return on investment in both moving and migrations, however.
Large-scale file migrations are one of the biggest headaches your organization could possibly face. They are also inevitable for almost any business in today's content-driven world. Given both of these things, how should you navigate these headaches to minimize risk and maximize ROI?
People in any organization, on any team, and running any program need to understand their role in the initiative and the responsibilities they are accountable for. This allows employees freedom and ownership to grow the program and elevate issues that arise. Learn the most critical DAM-related roles today!
The job of creating compelling and on-brand content, consistently, in the correct format, and in a place others can easily find it is often overwhelming to individual creatives. Learn how digital asset management (DAM), its strategies, principles, and best practices can support your creative teams and ensure that content strategy and brand guidelines are easy to follow.
Marketing is hard. Every day, new content is needed on new channels, in new formats, and appealing to new audiences. Juggling all these variables is hard enough without also having to manage the planning, implementation, and governance of a DAM program. Learn how DAM can simplify and enable your marketing efforts today.
The last thing you and your team want after going through the process of finding or changing to a new DAM platform is a lengthy and labor-intensive implementation and onboarding process. To ensure this doesn't happen, we've outlined 5 steps your team can take before making a buying decision that will make your implementation smoother, no matter what platform you choose. Learn how to save your team time today!
How does DAM help your team overcome challenges in real life? What are common struggles that DAM can solve for your brand and its employees? How did some of the world's largest brands use external and internal resources to develop a DAM program that enables growth across the business? Learn how here!
We talk a lot here at Stacks about healthy DAM programs, how to manage and govern them and the assets that live within them. We wanted to take a step back, though, and take a look at what makes up a good, healthy DAM program. Read more about the 4 pillars of DAM architecture here!
Collecting information and comparing technology vendors can be difficult. That's why many organizations choose to build and issue a formal request-for-proposal, forcing vendors to submit information in the same way to make evaluation easier. Managing a DAM RFP can be difficult, however. Here, we outline a few best practices in this process.
Every great organizational program runs on great processes. Digital asset management is no exception. Learn more about the essential processes and workflows that create the foundation of a scalable and effective DAM program.
How can you enable your sales team to track and send high-quality, compelling materials to prospective customers in a consistent, standardized, on-brand way? By connecting your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems! Learn more about these programs and how they work together today.
Producing compelling content is the secret to success in today's market. Managing that content effectively is the key to sustained success. Using that well-managed content to design and build an actionable and attractive website is the secret to achieving your goals today and in the future. Learn how to do all of the above with a well-managed DAM program and CMS.
Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems are one-stop-shops for all things marketing operations and enablement, but often they are useless without a solid digital asset management (DAM) program serving as the foundation. Learn here what MRMs are and how they can connect with your existing DAM program.
You may have heard of a PIM. You may have heard of a DAM. Other than a collection of letters, what do these acronyms mean? How do they work together to empower your e-commerce efforts? Learn more today.
Many of us have tools at our disposal that we aren't even aware of that have the ability to make our professional lives easier. This is especially true of Digital Asset Management (DAM), a field growing daily in relevance and value to organizations. Learn the DAM tools at your disposal here.
Metadata gets talked about and thrown around and praised a lot in our world today, but what is it? Learn about all the relevant metadata definitions and best practices here.
With the ever-changing state of the job market and the rise of digital asset management's value to many organizations, finding the right digital asset management (DAM) job, applying, and getting an offer is difficult. Stacks works with brands big and small that with needs in this area and offers a few ideas for making yourself stand out in the process.
Remote work isn't going anywhere. Employers and employees alike have experienced the freedom and flexibility it offers now that technology has made the dream a reality. Supporting a remote workforce isn't without its challenges, however, for individuals and organizations alike. Read more to learn what the future may hold and begin preparing your organization to face what comes next.
As the importance of digital asset management becomes more and more prevalent across industries and brands, the need for DAM professionals does too. Learn how plan for and hire the perfect fit for the digital asset management role your company has need for using Stacks' best practices for filling your open DAM positions.
Each stage of the digital asset lifecycle has its own set of challenges and opportunities. Learn about each stage and what you should be thinking about when planning your DAM program’s workflows and standards.
How does our team of creatives, DAM managers, and consultants approach building DAM programs that are successful for the long-term? Why does this work get us out of bed in the morning? Read more about how to facilitate growth through DAM in your organization!
Content marketing builds trust and loyalty in consumers as you consistently provide valuable content that tells your brand's story. Find out how your team can empower these efforts and unify your content to get these efforts off the ground.
A strong brand identity works wonders for achieving your goals and creating a lasting impact on consumers, but how do you achieve it? Read more to see how to build consistency in your content through digital asset management.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at one number to quickly know whether something is wrong with your DAM program? With a DAM health score, you can quickly diagnose issues and deploy resources to fix them. Here's how to build it.
Establishing folder structure best practices will help you find the assets you need quickly and efficiently. Today we take a look at the best way to build out a folder structure from scratch and launch it within your organization.
You may have heard the phrases DAM system, DAM platform, and DAM program used interchangeably. At Stacks, all of these things are different, so we went to the trouble of defining all of them for you.
You may have heard the term "taxonomy" thrown around as you began building your DAM program and been confused or lost as to what it meant. Read more below to understand the definition of taxonomies and how to build them.
You may know that your organization needs a healthy, scalable DAM program, but convincing others that the time and money required to build it is worth it can be difficult. We lay out some best practices for building buy-in across the business of the value of DAM.
The process of culling is one that photographers of any skill level are all too familiar with. In a perfect world, every capture is perfectly in focus, our compositions follow every rule to the T, and our subjects never have to blink.
How does Stacks work with NFL teams and other leagues to optimize gameday workflows and overall DAM programs so that highlights and stunning photos find their way to your feeds as soon as possible?
You may know the baseline metrics that make up the health score of a DAM program, but do you know your organization's unique DAM needs? Are you managing your DAM in a proactive or reactive way?
File types are confusing. Read more about the differences between file types, as well as the nuance of managing these different types of assets to grow your brand.
When you hear the term "digital asset", what do you think? Some of us probably think of Bitcoin or a picture on our company's CMS, but digital assets are so much more. Read here to find out the true value of your brand's digital assets.
DAM platforms are very valuable and important if you want to expand and scale your organization's overall DAM program. However, there are activities your team can take to ensure that the people and processes surrounding the platform are prepared.
Nowadays it seems like every platform your team uses to leverage digital content requires different file formats. Managing these requirements without cluttering your DAM system or personal hard drives with many versions of the same file is difficult. Read here to find out the five steps your DAM manager can take to make formatting easy.
Video content is some of the most shared and viewed in today's marketplace. This means that the high-quality video assets in your library are among some of the most valuable. Make sure that you capitalize on this value by implementing a robust DAM program into your business.
What is a Digital Asset Management platform? Take a deeper dive the system that can be the centralized home for all of your digital assets that is protected, customizable, and the central hub of all your creative and content-oriented workflows.
E-commerce is the future of consumer goods brands all over the world, no matter what they sell. Learn how DAM can empower your e-commerce tools, workflows, and platforms.
In sports, content may be king more than any other industry. Learn how to capitalize on the buzz your team creates on the field, ice, or court by putting digital asset management to use.
Anyone who has spent an afternoon cleaning out their downloads folder knows that file names matter. Creating a standard convention, applying them, and managing them is complex, though. Learn the best practices for file naming here!
Sharing files is a vital piece of almost every workflow nowadays, especially in the era of remote work. Learn here how to share files securely and effectively no matter what systems you use through DAM processes and best practices.
Consulting for any field can be a large financial and time investment. Make sure that investment is worthwhile by taking a few steps beforehand and identifying the perfect time to bring in third-party expertise.
With branding efforts growing increasingly important to customer engagement and retention, and depending more and more on compelling content, digital asset management practices also grow in importance. Use these resources to optimize your DAM program to ensure a flourishing brand.
Like Hollywood rebooting famous movies, brands consistently update and change their branding, creating tons of different versions of assets. Learn how to manage these versions of files with digital asset management.
With a proper DAM program, there are many built-in lines of defense against off-brand content reaching the marketplace. A formal asset approval process, however, all but guarantees this doesn't happen. Learn how to built that process here.
You may have heard the terms "upstream" and "downstream" when discussing your organization's creative workflows. In this article, we clear the air about what those terms mean and how they relate to the lifecycle of your assets.
Core values are the secret ingredient that makes everything in your organization run more smoothly, but they don't just apply internally. Consumers want to see and know your core values as well. Learn how DAM can help you identify and communicate your values in an authentic way.
Stories are great ways to identify how we can solve our own problems, as well as bring some much-needed cheer to the office. Read how Santa's elves used DAM to save Christmas this past year.
Folders are something we all know how to use and manage, but what about a system that doesn't use them? As folderless interfaces and systems gain traction, learn their benefits, challenges, and a few tips for implementing and managing them effectively.
As you go about gaining DAM expertise and knowledge, you'll likely hear about "headless" systems. Rather than try to navigate through technical jargon and confusing language, Stacks makes understanding if this kind of system is right for you.
What is a CMS? What about a PIM? A CRM? All these acronyms can get confusing when discussing how your technology fits together into a cohesive, holistic system. Learn how a healthy DAM program helps you fit all of your systems together and increase efficiency.
Due to the cost and headache of breaking up with your current tools and methods of managing digital assets, it's worth it to put time into running your organization through "DAM Therapy". Get thoughts out in the open, identify challenges, and create a plan for change.
Just like that ugly, ill-fitting sweater you get for Christmas, DAM systems sometimes sit in the closet unused, despite the time, money, and energy invested in building them. Learn how to motivate your end-users to adopt new and improved systems.
Photos are the only kind of digital asset that needs proper management. Before you implement a DAM system, think through all the kinds of assets that could benefit from improved management.
When your team agrees on the most important boxes your DAM platform needs to check, the evaluation process becomes far easier. Read our top 10 most important criteria when evaluating a DAM platform.
Do you feel alone in your struggles to manage your organization's valuable digital assets? We've got a secret for you: You're not. Find out what the most common issues organizations of all shapes and sizes face and how we've seen them overcome them.
Ben lives in Richmond, Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech. He enjoys writing about DAM and, above all, making DAM easy on creatives and marketers so they can use their talent for their brands.
