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3 steps to superpower your DAM system

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3 steps to superpower your DAM system

A digital asset management (DAM) system is a must have for marketing organizations. They can accelerate time to market, cut the work it takes to find the right content and get it approved, while providing a single source of truth and brand messaging.

That’s the promise, but the reality frequently falls far short. Don’t despair. Michelle Tackabery, digital asset management specialist at Oneida Nation Enterprises, has three simple things you can do to superpower your DAM.

1: Capture workflow processes

Tackabery defines workflow processes as, “What you do and how you do it and what steps have to happen in what order to keep all the plates and all your various projects spinning without dropping on someone’s head.”

Why capture them?

Digital asset management is a process whereby assets are ingested into a digital platform or tool. Then metadata is added to the assets, as are user rights and permission related to the assets.

“If you don’t capture how, what, when and where your team is creating marketing assets your DAM solution is not really digital asset management,”  said Tackabery, speaking at The MarTech Conference. “It might as well be a folder on a server, a file cabinet in the hall or a closet full of unused merch. It’s not doing anybody any good.”

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But there is an easy way to capture all that, including what has to happen when and what stuff will stop if certain stuff doesn’t happen by a certain time. 

Dig deeper: We’re implementing DAM! Where do I start?

“All you need to start documenting how things get done is a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint deck,” said Tackabery. “If you don’t use Microsoft you can find images online of blank charts and print them out.”

There’s a feature in Microsoft Office called SmartArt that will get you the diagram you need. To get it:

  1. Open a blank document 
  2. Go to the insert menu
  3. Select the Smart Art icon 
  4. In the pop-up window click on ‘process’ option. 

That will show you a huge number of different graphics for capturing processes.

“The one I think that works well is the gear list,” she said. “I like the gears because they demonstrate how many moving parts are going on in a marketing project. Gears rotate in multiple directions and great project managers can keep them going in time to get the entire project completed.”

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Then you go around to each stakeholder and ask them what they do when creating or utilizing content, putting it all into the graphic you’ve chosen. An essential part of that is capturing all the dependencies – the things that must happen for the project to go forward.

Tackabery said there are only a few things you need to ask to get this information: 

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  • Describe a project that almost didn’t happen. 
  • What was the first thing that held it up? 

Once you have all the information, make a process flow template out of each one for every type of project you deal with. This translates the gears sheets into step-by-step flowcharts that you will need to give to your DAM workflow specialist. 

“The good thing about these workflows,” said Tackabery, “is you can also use them to [show] to the larger organization, especially executives, what your team does and how it does it. 

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These workflows will be used by your DAM team to apply workflow rules both in the DAM and any tools you attach on top of it. As a result, files that go into the DAM will retain all the dependencies, usage rights, licenses, copyrights, permissions, and any other important information. 

Also, the team will be able to use this information to add information to archived assets they migrate into the DAM. That makes them searchable in the ways your marketing team uses them in their work. 

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This will let you control access to the DAM, while still letting others use its content.

You only need to give access to the DAM team and the few super users you may have. Everyone else can access it via tools available either from your DAM provider, from your existing digital media solution or other tools. 

Dig deeper: 6 strategies for using a DAM to manage modular content

“It’s a serious mistake to provide your entire marketing team access to the DAM,” said Tackabery. “Doing so treats the DAM like your existing servers and hard drives. Users are likely to treat the DAM just like a folder where they can create their own folders and files, recreating the process, processes and problems that brought you to the DAM in the first place.”

A DAM is first and foremost a content library and archive. DAM specialists possess expertise in  managing, controlling, and administering assets. People without that expertise shouldn’t be mucking about with the system.

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But they still need to access its contents. Thankfully, because of its AI ready architecture, a DAM is built for integration via APIs and Agile workflows with tools that have existed for quite a while and that you already have.

Some of the tools it can work with are marketing asset managers, sales asset managers, enterprise content management platforms, marketing clouds, intranets, content management software, blogging, social media, and other native platforms that you just log into Via browser, calendaring project, asset managers, search engine indexers, semantic web platforms, supply chain and warehouse management, and your partners’ and suppliers’ tools. 

Not as complicated as it sounds

“So here is how you adopt or adapt any one of those tools to work with your DAM,” said Tackabery. “Ready? Pay attention because this is complicated.”

  1. Inside the setup or preferences section of your DAM is an option called API integration. Get an API key from that application. 
  2. Go into the same setup or preferences section of that other tool and get its API code.
  3. Copy that API key and paste it into the API integration box in your DAM. 
  4. (May be optional) You might have to press enter or submit

“After that you will need to step away from your desk and get a cup of coffee, because that was some hard, hard work,” she said. “Make sure to wipe your brow and look tired when you emerge from your office.”

This lets people  get marketing stuff in whatever app makes the most sense for them. “This little step is going to superpower your DAM. It’s going to make assets appear like magic in many, many places.”

3: Evangelize

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“This is about transforming hearts and minds, and it’s probably the most important step of all,” said Tackabery. “It is in fact the only way you can beat the bad odds that have plagued large scale enterprise software adoption projects for years.”

She believes the major reason enterprise software fails at companies is because nobody asked marketing to sell the projects internally.

“The latest statistics available are pre-pandemic,” she said. “So in 2019, ERP Focus reported that 60 % of enterprise resource Platform adoption projects failed. Worse yet 90% of users reported that their project failed to deliver ROI. That is Horrible. Of those 90%, 95% reported that they only spent 10% or less of their entire budget on education, training and change management. It’s shocking when you find out that failure happens when you fail to do something, isn’t it?”

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Do what marketing is best at

Tackabery said the way to prevent this is using your best marketing people to evangelize your DAM.

“And I mean evangelize. I don’t mean entertain, enlighten, or even enervate. I mean evangelize as in preach, as in convert, as in turn into believers. Because you’re in marketing and that’s what you do every day.  You turn suspects into prospects and then you wake up tomorrow and you do it all again.”

This doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds. Each step you’ve taken makes the next steps easier. 

Capturing workflows and putting them into your DAM means you now have statistics showing how great your team is at using your DAM and how much faster projects are getting completed. You can use those to evangelize in executive dashboards, reports, infographics and newsletters. 

With the next step you have enabled the viewing, searching and attaching of assets in tools that others across the company can use. 

“Salesforce executives can find the presentation or logo or picture they need to show Off at Whatever meeting they’re in and not have to track down 12 people and wait four hours for it,” she said. 

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Evangelizing means proving to people the DAM isn’t just another piece of software, it’s something that makes their jobs easier. Once they understand that, they’ll become evangelists.


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About The Author

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Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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