WordPress has 50 to 60% share of the global CMS (Content Management System) market, and it powers 14.7% of the top 100 websites in the world. With WordPress running a whopping 32% of the entire Internet, it’s no surprise to learn that companies, brands, bloggers, creatives, non-profits, and other entities of all stripes rely on the popular CMS to manage their websites and blogs.
WordPress is popular for good reason: there are tons of features, helpful tools, and integrations that make for a relatively customizable solution for all types of users. But managing your digital assets, such as images and videos, happens outside of WordPress, meaning you’re switching tools and disrupting your workflow. But what if digital asset management and WordPress could be integrated into one seamless, intuitive workflow?
Learn how MerlinOne can help transform your project workflow by downloading our white paper, A Workflow Engine, below.
Here are a few essential tips and best practices for choosing the right DAM solution for WordPress.
Choose a DAM with WordPress Integration
The first step to creating a seamless DAM workflow in WordPress is to choose a DAM solution offering WordPress integration. A WordPress-integrated DAM will make all the essential DAM features accessible from within the WordPress dashboard, from searching asset libraries to quickly discovering the latest, brand-approved media assets, selecting the proper format and size, and even distributing DAM assets to the website – all without leaving WordPress.
Take Advantage of Automated Workflows
Just because a DAM integrates with WordPress doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to streamline your workflows beyond searching for and selecting assets. When you choose a DAM solution with built-in, automated, customizable workflows like MerlinOne, you can automate boring, manual tasks that consume way too much of your team’s precious time (and patience!), like metadata tagging,
With MerlinOne’s DAM solution, you can collaborate and communicate throughout the entire content lifecycle and even automate approval paths by making reviewing, sharing, and versioning available to specific team members – or to everyone. Need to have an asset approved for use as soon as possible? MerlinOne allows you to assign assets to other users for approval and even add and view comments related to an asset’s status. And, at a quick glance, you can see what assets are waiting for the next action, such as approval, and what assets are complete.
Leverage Access Controls & Permissions to Ensure Proper Asset Utilization
One of the reasons WordPress is so popular is its incredible ease of use – you don’t need to know how to code, and you don’t need to be a web developer to publish a web page or blog post with WordPress. That means creative and marketing teams don’t need to rely on the IT department to publish new pages or posts. The downside to that, however, is that users have the ability to publish just about anything on your website. What happens if a blogger accidentally publishes a non-approved asset? What if someone uses a stock photo for a purpose excluded from the license? Without the ability to control access to restricted and rights-managed assets, you’re opening yourself up to usage violations and possibly costly consequences.
Fortunately, a DAM solution like MerlinOne offers robust access controls and user permissions, so you can control precisely who has access to what assets – while also ensuring that only the most recent, approved assets are available for use.
Built-In Formatting Tools & Distribution are a Must
When you’re working with a CMS like WordPress and a DAM solution, the last thing you want to deal with is a bunch of tedious, manual steps to download an asset from your asset library, re-size or re-format it in yet another program, and then turn around and upload it to your CMS. That’s why built-in distribution and formatting tools are huge time-savers. These features enable you to convert assets to different file formats, adjust sizing, and more within your DAM and easily distribute assets to WordPress (or any other CMS you might be using).
With MerlinOne, you can take advantage of one-click publishing not only to WordPress or another CMS, but also to social media and other channels. You can send a link to saved searches or custom asset collections to internal users, and even share with external users by sharing those links via email. All of these perks make it easier than ever for agencies and creative teams to collaborate with clients.
Download our white paper, The Content Lifecycle, to find out how MerlinOne can help you streamline your workflows from start to finish – even within your WordPress dashboard.
Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo today to discover how MerlinOne can transform your creative and marketing operations.