You’re struggling to keep track of your digital assets. How can you use content management tools to help?

Digital assets refer to any digital content, files, or resources that hold value to an individual or organization. These assets can include a wide range of items, such as documents, images, videos, audio files, presentations, spreadsheets, design files, software, and more. Essentially, any piece of content or data that is stored electronically and has potential economic or sentimental value can be considered a digital asset. Digital assets are often managed and organized using content management systems (CMS) or digital asset management (DAM) tools to ensure easy access, organization, and security.

Digital assets are digital files or content representing a brand or individual, including images, videos, audio files, documents, and design elements. They hold value and are used for various purposes, such as marketing, branding, and communication. Digital assets are managed and organized to ensure efficient access, sharing, and preservation. Examples include logos, social media graphics, video clips, and any media that contributes to an organization's online presence or content strategy. Proper management of digital assets is crucial for maintaining brand consistency and facilitating effective communication across digital platforms.

Content management tools are software platforms or systems designed to facilitate the creation, organization, storage, retrieval, and publication of digital content. These tools are used to manage various types of content, such as documents, images, videos, web pages, and more, across different stages of the content lifecycle.

The CMS is for managing webpages. The DAM is for managing files. You can use a DAM to serve files to much more than just a website. A CMS can be used to do something with the files served from a DAM.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are specialized platforms primarily focused on managing and delivering web content, including articles, web pages, and multimedia content, with features tailored to website management. On the other hand, Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems serve as centralized repositories for various digital assets, such as images, videos, documents, and design files, offering tools for storage, organization, retrieval, and distribution. While CMS platforms facilitate web content creation and publication, DAM systems are dedicated to managing and optimizing the use of digital assets across an organization.

DAM or Digital Asset Manager has a wider application when compared to a CMS. Projects or organizations who need to manage a lot of circulation of content across multiple channels in stipulated deadlines must use DAM. Only a CMS is good only for small projects with a low or moderate requirement of digital marketing activities. Overall, the usefulness of a CMS is confined only to the content creator and marketer team, whereas, a DAM is useful for the entire department, organization and collaborators of all types in a particular project.

The key thing is the organization. You need a taxonomy. An agreed way to categorize and label digital assets. Then stick to it. Otherwise you get a mess as things grow. The CMS should also help you, not hinder you from keeping a clean organization. Sometimes this means getting a plugin or some customization to your workflow.

The key thing is the organization. You need an agreed taxonomy for labelling things. Ideally your DAM should match what you have in the CMS (or vice versa, depending where you start). It makes finding and managing files so much easier. Much more efficient and easier to track.

Most companies need a CMS that will last 5 years, and support everything you want to do in that timespan. Using a subscription service can be an easy solution for smaller businesses. A "free" CMS will still cost you in setup and maintenance, or give terrible performance. Startups need something that gets the job done now. There's always an upgrade later when you need it. Worry about a more permanent solution when appropriate.

One such example of a DAM solution is the experience manager Assets by Adobe that enables users to manage, store, and access many types of digital assets. Few of its capabilities are listed below : -Upload?and?share?photos,?documents,?audio,?and?video?files?in?a?variety?of?file?types. -Organize?materials?by?tags,?lightboxes,?or?stars. -Add?annotations?to?assets. -Find?assets?by?searching through?file names,?full?text?of documents,?dates ,document?type,?and?tags. -Add?or?change?metadata?information?for?assets. -You?can?import?and?export?asset?metadata. -Using?a?WebDAV?or?CIFS?folder,?you?can?import?and?export?many?digital?assets?simultaneously. -Use?workflows?and?notifications?to?enable?for?shared?processing.