Digital asset management is a key discipline for all enterprises and content marketers. Surprisingly, it is often still enabled by disparate technologies and unintegrated processes.

Integration is the key

Digital asset management is all about the control, flexibility, portability, access, and reporting of digital assets between organisations, customers, partners, and suppliers.

It is concerned with delivering the right content to the right people, on all devices, mostly in real time, with the ability to track and measure digital asset engagement across an enterprise and its potential global reach.

A digital asset is more than just the media file. To realise the value of a file, you need to have additional information about how that asset can be used, when and by whom and in which channels and under whose authority. In short, you need metadata.

That requires integrated processes and workflow.

Essential capabilities

With Sprinklr – our favourite enterprise social media management platform – recently being identified by Forrester as the clear leader in content market platforms we thought it an opportune time to review asset management.

Essential capabilities for asset management include:

• Expiration dates for assets that take content out of commission past a certain date;

• Dynamic user permissions that ensure there’s no need to manually control each individual with access;

• Controls that restrict the online channels on which assets can be used; and,

• Automatic deletion for already-published content that removes the need for human review and removal of posts, and ensures that no assets exist on historic social timelines after a license for use has expired.

Collaboration across teams

When multiple teams play a part in the creation and publication of digital content it’s essential that they are able to collaborate effectively.

That means easily, without duplication, and within each participant’s authority level.

This requires:

• Project workflows that automatically track the content creation lifecycle for assets, with automatically assigned tasks and status updates;

• Role definitions for the participants, so that their permissions are appropriate to their authority;

• Audit trails of all actions on each piece of content;

• In-tool editing capabilities that allow for visual content to be edited without ever leaving the platform; and,

• Support for internal communication that lets users automatically notify key stakeholders with @mentions when their input is needed

Actionable asset performance insights

The content creation lifecycle is a complete cycle, including a feedback loop. Think of Plan – Do – Check – Act.

It doesn’t just end with the online publication of assets. It requires that their performance be checked and benchmarked and then acted upon. In order to make your content production process as effective as possible you need to know what type of content performed best, and on what medium. For example:

• How did the same content perform on Linkedin versus Facebook?

• Are there some gems which should be reshared, with similar supporting stories?

• Why did content vary so much in performance when it seemed very similar?

Initial insights need to be available quickly, with a click or two. If more research is needed the integration of the asset manager with the publication, engagement and analytics capabilities is absolutely crucial.

In this way, your marketing strategy can be refined via improving iterations of your content lifecycle.

Other features for generating key insights should include:

• Artificial Intelligence for content retrieval e.g. visual filters that can quickly find image assets based on relevant objects, scenes, and activities;

• Insights on audience engagement across channels that let you understand how assets are performing across social; and,

• All associated publications of assets accessible with one click – allowing you to gauge the response of your audience based on their comments.

Conclusion

The days of content “collaboration” via email threads and comments have long gone. Effective and efficient digital asset management isn’t just a nice to have. And it is not something that can be enabled by a disparate combination of spreadsheets, folders and point-solution publishing platforms.

Content performance is a linchpin of effective and efficient social media marketing, and the Plan – Do – Check – Act content lifecycle underwrites the return on content investment.

That’s why at KINSHIP we love to demonstrate Sprinklr to our clients and prospects.

To learn more, contact us today!