Digital Asset Management: The Key To Streamlining Your Digital Experiences

f the word "DAM" makes you think more of rivers and less of software… we're here to help. What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)? Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions provide a systematic approach to storing, organizing, managing, and distributing your organization's digital assets. (For our purposes, that means all of your files and metadata.) Finding the right DAM solution is important because without a centralized way to store and manage your assets, it's incredibly difficult to scale your digital strategy. When you have siloed assets, you run the risk of inefficiencies, brand inconsistencies, and more — especially as you grow. (To illustrate with an example: McDonald's has more than 40,000 locations that show up across thousands of touchpoints including local websites, third-party services, and much more. Making sure that every single one uses the same digital brand assets — logos, images, and the like — would be impossible without a unified approach to Digital Asset Management.) But you don't need to be McDonald's to care about Digital Asset Management. Every business needs a unified platform that serves as your foundation for building powerful digital experiences. That's where Yext comes in. Digital Asset Management With Yext Yext offers a next-generation headless Content Management System (CMS) that serves as the unified source for all of your business' information and assets. It makes Digital Asset Management simpler by streamlining the process for storing, sharing, and organizing your digital assets in one centralized location. Yext allows you to structure all of your content in one place with ease, and then distribute it to all of the digital channels where your customers see you and interact with you. Remember: in today's world, people turn to search engines, apps, voice assistants, and many more digital experiences to find information — not just your site. (In other words: your website is important, but it's time to start seeing it as just one of many channels where your content can be presented — and handling your content management accordingly.) Features To Look For In A DAM Solution Yext offers a number of unique, specific features that give you a leg up in Digital Asset Management.

1. The File field type in the Yext Knowledge Graph allows users to create dedicated fields for storing files. These fields, like all other fields in Yext, are included as part of the data model for an entity type. Additionally, since the fields available to an entity type are entirely within your control, you can add any other fields that are relevant, such as metadata for the asset (file). Then, when creating and managing entities, users can upload files into these fields, to store the file on the entity in question. Since entities can be referenced via relationships, you could have many entities reference a single entity which contains a file, which would be the model for a reusable asset. Ultimately, this support for file storage and flexible content model allows users to easily serve files in Pages, Search, or other custom headless experiences.
2. (Simply:, you can serve these files to the digital experience of your choice.)
3. Image Serving enables users to support a variety of on-the-fly transformations such as: setting custom quality factors for images, adding blurs to images, image cropping and sharpening, and more.
4. Reusable Assets enable users to leverage a library of shared, pre-approved content consisting of photos, text, videos, or any custom field types. Once in the library, the asset can be used in a variety of places throughout the platform. Assets empower field users to make updates with pre-approved content that is on-brand and easily accessible. Further, if you have Multi-Language profiles in your account, you can control whether the asset is available to apply on specific language profiles only. This allows you to create a consistent brand experience, anywhere. In conclusion, customers see your business online in more places than ever. As they do so, consistency in your brand assets is key. That can only be achieved if you have a unified source of truth — housing all of your digital assets — that serves as your foundation for building powerful digital experiences. Ready to learn more? Watch this virtual event to get a deeper understanding of Using the Knowledge Graph to Manage your Digital Assets.**