Your users are the key to a successful DAM. In this article, I want to discuss the importance of your DAM user community and keeping that community actively engaged.

Tools provide particular functions. Your Digital Asset Management (DAM) is your company’s toolkit. It integrates many aspects (functions) including the ingestion, organization, distribution, and retrieving of your company’s digital content. 

This is much easier said than done. If you discover your users, whether internal or external, are struggling to complete any of these actions, you run into the very big challenge of your DAM not being used.

Understanding DAM User Roles

Different roles equal different permissions. Not every user will need to upload digital content, nor will every user need to have access to internal company content.  

If a user is overwhelmed with content they consider “useless” or gains access to functionality they will not use, it can create a narrative that the DAM is not helpful and is not meant for their particular needs.

To avoid this disconnect, understanding your end-user roles and classifying your user groups helps to determine how they will view and navigate your DAM. With clearly defined user roles, you have the opportunity to tailor training to meet their business needs. Defining this early will be beneficial and should be part of your DAM governance process. It will also provide a positive digital experience to increase your DAM use. 

Engaging Your DAM Users

Keeping your users actively engaged goes beyond standard support for issues or questions. Don’t get me wrong, those things are important, but we want to create a relationship where users want and know to come to the DAM for their digital content needs and not just when something is wrong.

As I mentioned in my previous article, using your company’s communication channels is an effective and easy way to not only create awareness of the DAM but to serve as a way to keep your user community engaged. Here are some ideas to engage your users. These can be modified, to be used for internal and external audiences.

• Provide resources such as documentation and videos that can easily be accessed.
• Announce new assets of the week.
• Provide tips and tricks on how to use the tool. Have a common issue? Use it as a topic!
• Introduce new features after each new release. Be sure to point to any new training resources too!
• Announce when there would be a system outage. 
• Show appreciation for your most active users. This can be done through email, newsletters, and social media channels. 

Users Supporting Users

Recognizing your most active users is an excellent way to deputize those users. What this means is, as your base grows, specific users will be able to assist with training others. These users will also be able to answer questions that may arise about the DAM. This is especially important if part of that base consists of external users such as media partners, vendors, or agencies.

All in all, this comes down to your end users having a positive experience when they use the DAM. If people praise the tool, word travels fast and more people will use it.