Listen to Rebecca Schneider talk about Digital Asset Management and Content Management

Transcript:

Henrik:   This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Rebecca Schneider. Rebecca, how are you?

Rebecca:   Good. Thanks.

Henrik:   Rebecca, How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Rebecca:   So I am a Content Strategist. I have a background in library studies and library science and I often am involved in digital asset management projects with my clients.

Rebecca:   How do you help organizations understand their content, advocate for realistic solutions and evaluate those implemented solutions over time?

Rebecca:   I work with clients to understand their current state through interviews and content audits and understanding where they are currently at. And then I work with them to define their goals for their content in relation to their business and where they want to take the content in the future. I always advocate for practical and realistic approaches to content because not every content solution is perfect. So we have to be practical in our approach to make sure that, you know, the solution is effective and mindful of cost. I try… I strive to help my clients get as much return on investment as possible. And for me, the key is to understand that content is a corporate asset and it needs to pay its way.

Henrik:   What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Rebecca:   A really big challenge that I see is just the sheer number of objects, you know, images, videos, etc. That are now being managed even compared to just five years ago and think about the technology that allows us to create 4K images and videos which will require a great deal of storage. There’s just so much stuff out there. So I really feel that that is a really big challenge just to manage all that information. And a success in some ways is the realization that from organizations that they need the proper tools and processes to manage their content. I think a lot of people are having a bit of a come to Jesus moment, so to speak, when it comes to their content and realizing that they have to manage it. They can’t just put it on a shared server and call it a day. It needs active management and maintenance in order for that content to be useful to the organization.

Henrik:   You are going to present at the Insight Exchange Network DAM Summit in New York on January 24 and 25th of 2019. Tell us more about this.

Rebecca:   So the presentation that I am giving on the 24th [of January] is focusing on tagging and empathy. So what is that about? So this actually sprung out of a comment that I made at last year’s summit [in 2018] where I said it would be nice to see more tagging, focusing on empathy to help enrich the content experience and that’s a nice thing to say, but what does that really practically mean? I mean, we use empathy to understand and relate to customers and users and to create appealing content interactions and a lot of organizations and brands are using empathy as a tool to encourage user engagement with the brand and imagery and videos. Most certainly played a significant role in that kind of messaging. Right now I’m seeing a lot of, you know, a lot of campaign-related, kind of one-off attempts to create sort of an empathetic marketing focus, but nothing that seems really long-term and for me the primary challenge remains and how do we tag all of this content that we’re dealing with and support empathetic communication across multiple channels.

Rebecca:   And as I said before, it’s one thing to add content for a specific campaign. What about entire websites and apps and mailings and all the things you used to reach out to your client or customer base? So, I’m using this session as sort of a launch pad to explore how tagging based on empathy can increase the brand engagement, but also sort of the practical aspects of how we could potentially make this happen, you know, also thinking about the context of the user experience itself, you know, regional, cultural, socio-economic and how we can approach tagging in that regard practically and have it be leveraged in a manner that would really increase the interaction between the brand and the customer or the client, and I certainly don’t have all the answers for this, you know, but I think it’s really worth having the discussion and getting input from the attendees regarding the need, the practical aspects of implementation and how the success of this kind of tagging can be measured. I’m also going to be on the future digital asset management which is earlier in that day and that’s always fun because it’s always really fun to hear about what other people are thinking about where digital asset management is going and what the issues people are grappling with and how do we get there.

Henrik:   What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Rebecca:   One of the first things that I encountered when I became a full-on content strategist with the amount of education that I had to do with clients about what content strategy is, what digital asset management is and the approach to managing content. I think everyone should always be prepared to educate others on why this is, what they do, why this is important and how it can really help the, you know, the organization. Every new client I have, it’s always an education and you know, on both sides, you know, I’m learning about them. They’re learning about me and my company and what we can do for them. But you always have be prepared to talk to people about why it’s important, what you’re doing because digital asset management is not a well… outside the particular field, it’s not particularly well understood to a certain extent, so it’s always important to have that put on your teacher hat role and then one of the other things I would also recommend is that when you work with clients or work with people in your organization that you have to lead them on this journey, but you also have to partner with them on this journey. It’s not like you say, okay, well this is how it needs to be done. You work with people, and incorporate them along the journey as you go figure out what your content management process these are, you know, how you’re going to focus on managing assets and those sorts of things. So they’re part of the journey with you. And then my third recommendation would be to say that metrics is your friend. You must be able to measure how your content is performing, good or bad, you know, success or failure in order to help make strategic decisions regarding the direction of the content. You know, maybe having to do it successful…well, that’s great, let’s do more of this, or you may need to do some course correction. It’s super important to have those KPIs and metrics defined and baselined so you can understand how your content is performing.

Henrik:   Great. Thanks, Rebecca

Rebecca:   Thank you

Henrik:   For more on this, go to anotherdampodcast.com for over 200 interviews like this. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

The DAM Summit was created for Digital Asset Management professionals on topics requested by DAM professionals and created by the Insight Exchange Network. #IENDAM

Use discount code M123ADC15 for 15% off registration to attend. #IENDAM

There will be a NYC DAM Meetup on January 23, 2019 too. See you there. #IENDAM

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