Why integrating stock image databases into my Content Supply Chain Management Platform or Digital Asset Management (DAM) System? What are the benefits for me as a marketer or product owner in my daily work?
Well, adding stock image databases to a Content Supply Chain (CSC) Management Platform can bring great benefits to all users of the system, in particular to marketers and designers. Let’s break down why this makes sense and how you benefit from it:
Content
What we will cover:
- How do you benefit from integrating stock photo providers into your CSC?
- How to use the integrations in practice?
- Additional information
Your advantages
Access to a Huge Collection of Images
Stock image databases offer a vast collection of professional-quality images, illustrations, videos, and other media content. By integrating these databases, you get access to a huge, readily available collection of diverse visual content that you can use in your marketing campaigns.
Time and Cost Savings
Instead of spending time searching through different stock image folders or local storage locations one by one, integration with your CSC or DAM system allows you to search and access stored or purchased images directly from your centralised Content Hub. This single source of truth for content saves time and reduces the effort required to find the right images for your projects. You also save costs because existing material can be reused, and duplicate purchases are prevented.
Licensing and Copyright Compliance
Image databases usually take care of the licensing and copyright for the assets they offer. A powerful DAM system imports the information included in the metadata. This ensures that all asset users comply with licensing agreements, reducing the risk of copyright infringement and potential legal issues.
Easy Asset Organisation
A Content Supply Chain (CSC) System is designed to effectively organise, categorise, manage and distribute assets. By connecting image databases to the CSC, you use the organisational features of the DAM to tag, label and sort images so they are easier to find and reuse in future projects.
Metadata mapping is done using AI and bulk upload functions, minimising the manual effort for you.
Streamlined Workflows
A functional CSC also offers the opportunity to automate workflows. With an automated approval process, marketers can optimise their creative workflows. They can quickly access assets, modify them, integrate them into the online proofing process and then distribute the approved assets. This speeds up content production and marketing campaign execution.
Improved Teamwork
When all team members have access to the same pool of stock images within the DAM system, collaboration becomes easier. Marketing teams can efficiently share, review, and select assets for their projects, which promotes teamwork and communication.
Analysis and Performance Tracking
An advanced Content Supply Chain System can provide analytics on asset usage. Thus, marketers can see which materials are most effective in their campaigns, enabling data-driven decisions and optimisation of future marketing efforts.
In summary, integrating image databases into a CSC is a smart move for marketers and other users. It simplifies image search, ensures copyright compliance, enhances the use of existing resources and facilitates efficient collaboration, ultimately leading to better marketing results and a higher return on investment (ROI) for your marketing activities.
How does this work in PRACTICE?
Now that we understand that connecting CSC and stock databases is a good idea, let’s take a look at how we can best use such integrations. We do that by taking a look at the CELUM integrations with Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Unsplash.
Saving time and resources
Until now, the use of stock assets involved a time-consuming, manual process. After licensing, each asset had to be downloaded individually and then uploaded to the content management system. With the integration between CELUM and Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Unsplash, this tedious step is eliminated. The assets are automatically imported into your CELUM system without any manual effort. This not only saves time, but also significantly reduces the administrative workload.
See the integrations in action
To use an asset from Unsplash, log in to your Unsplash account, search for the right image and add it to your desired collection with the “+” button. In the background, this image is now automatically synchronised with CELUM and the image including all metadata is saved in CELUM. Of course, you can set the synchronisation interval according to your requirements during the installation of the integration.
With this simple activity, the new asset is now available for you – and all other authorised stakeholders – in CELUM.
To demonstrate the other benefits of the integration, let’s assume that you have logged into CELUM and are in your central repository. On the left you will see the Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Unsplash subfolders. These are synced with your user accounts and assets are displayed in the appropriate folders according to user preferences.
Efficient use of assets based on metadata and keywords
As already mentioned, metadata and keywords are automatically imported directly from the stock media providers into CELUM. This metadata includes information such as file size, file name, stock provider, licence status, an external reference/URL to the image database and so on.
The keywords imported into CELUM play a key role in simplifying the management and retrieval of assets.
You can also create filters to further narrow and speed up the search.
Integration with external applications: Microsoft 365 PowerPoint and Social Media
The seamless integration of Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Unsplash with CELUM provides many options for using assets in external applications.
Using assets in Microsoft 365 PowerPoint
You can access the integrated assets directly from CELUM with CELUM OfficeLink by CI HUB and insert them into your PowerPoint presentations. You can do this in just a few steps:
- Open your PowerPoint presentation and select the slide into which you want to insert the asset.
- Click on “Asset Add-in” in PowerPoint.
- Find the folder where the asset – let’s say the freshly imported image from Unsplash – is stored. This would be the “Unsplash” folder.
- Select the desired asset and click on “Insert”.
- The asset is now inserted into your presentation and can be positioned and scaled as required.
Using the assets for social media – for example in Microsoft Dynamics:
You can also use the assets in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing to create posts for social media. Again, it’s very easy to do:
- Go to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.
- Connect the asset to one of your social accounts (e.g. Facebook).
- Then create a new post and add the asset.
- Add text and integrate the imported metadata if needed.
- Publish the post to share the asset on your social media account.
As you can see, you don’t have to leave the third-party system once to use the Unsplash assets for either use case. This is both convenient and efficient, as a lot of valuable time is lost switching back and forth between applications.
Conclusion: Time savings and optimised workflows
The integration of Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and Unsplash in CELUM provides a powerful means to speed up your content production and make it more efficient. The seamless integration saves time and resources, makes it easy to manage and search assets, and simplifies their use in external applications such as PowerPoint, Adobe Suite or for social media. By using stock media efficiently, you can focus on creative tasks and create stunning content for your audience. Get started with CELUM integrations today and experience the power of efficient content production!
Additional readings and videos:
- Learn more about metadata and metadata mapping in this quick guide for DAM users.
- Watch the webinar on image database integrations to CELUM
