Visual media is a must for today’s companies. Photos, images, and other visual assets are essential for capturing the attention of modern consumers, who are bombarded with thousands of messages every day. As such, companies are faced with managing a growing volume of images that are used across social media, email, websites, advertisements, and more. Companies are increasingly turning to image management software to centralize repositories, organize, and manage that ever-growing volume of images and other visual assets.
A Definition of Image Management Software
Image management software is a solution for centralizing, organizing, viewing, distributing, and tracking your digital images and photos. These platforms go beyond typical image libraries and help users manage and control how images are used. These software solutions enable users to set privacy and copyright options for image files and to allow the public to view images and registered users to download them.
Some image management software solutions protect images with branded watermarks and require users to agree to your terms and conditions before they can download them. Many online image management software solutions contain company images in a branded portal requiring a login that ensures everyone from partners to clients can access the latest image files.
Benefits of Image Management Software
Enterprises have a vast quantity of images that marketing teams, various departments, media, and others need to access. It is nearly impossible to organize the images and keep them up to date without 
Online image management software also makes it easier to share images while avoiding the restrictions of email attachments. The main benefit of image management software is the flexibility it affords creative teams looking for efficient collaboration solutions.
Other benefits of image management software include
- Workflow automation
- Archiving
- Backups
- Usage tracking
- Centralize images
- Save teams time
- Secure sharing and distribution of images
- Easily manage image requests
- Manage digital rights efficiently
Types of Image Management Software
As enterprises find themselves rife with digital assets in addition to images, they look for a software solution to manage all of it. As such, they need to choose between media asset management, digital asset management, image management, and photo library platforms and solutions. All of these types of image management software solutions organize images, but they offer a wide range of features and capabilities.
- Digital asset management (DAM) – Digital asset management platforms empower enterprises to manage photos, videos, audio files, and images by storing them, tagging them, controlling who accesses them, and finding them easily to reuse them.
- Media asset management (MAM) – Media asset management solutions are digital asset management software that is designed for film companies, broadcasters, and television networks that handle time-based audio-video assets.
- Image management software – Image management software centralizes and organizes images to make it easier for users to view, distribute, and track your digital images and photos.
- Photo libraries – Photo libraries are repositories for images. They do not give users the ability to manage images in the way that DAM and MAM solutions do.
Best Practices for Image Management
Visual content is a must now that major social networks like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram rule the day. According to HubSpot, 37% of marketers claim visual marketing is the most important form of content for their business and 74% of social media marketers use visual assets in social media marketing, which is more than blogs (68%) and videos (60%). Moreover, when relevant images are paired with information, people retain 65% of the information three days later.
Obviously, images are powerful tools for marketers. But, those images become more powerful when they are used correctly. Visually shares best practices for image management, and we explore them below:
- Don’t rely exclusively on stock photos – Stock photos look outdated and they are overused. If you cannot afford in-house photography, choose creative commons images from the internet with proper attribution.
- Use diverse images when possible – Use images that target your specific demographic. But, you should use diverse images when your product or service is not targeted to a specific group.
- Match images to content – Consider the demographics of your content sources and use images that match them. Put some time and effort into determining what works on your social platforms and mimic effective images next time.
- Deliver consistent messages – Ensure that you post images that align with your brand’s message. Periodically assess your images and make sure they tell the right story and remain relevant to your marketing strategy.
Managing your images will help your teams work more efficiently. Proper image management software solutions handle stores of images and help you keep them secure with restricted access. They also facilitate collaboration and sharing and ensure the most up to date images are able to be used and reused with ease. To read more about image management, visit the most recent relevant posts on our blog:
- What is Digital Asset Management? Definition of DAM, Benefits, Best Practices, and More
- Image Editing Tips for Marketers & Publishers: Evolve Your Imaging Workflow
- Digital Asset Management Innovation: 50 Expert Tips and Insights on Challenges and Solutions in DAM Software and Systems, the People Component, and the Future of DAM
Contact Us for the Best Image Management Solutions
At MerlinOne, we are passionate about sharing insights into what a digital asset is, the importance of an image management system, and the transformative capabilities of video asset management. We encourage you to reach out to us with any questions, inquiries, or if you’re interested in exploring our DAM services. Our team is dedicated to helping you harness the full potential of your digital assets. Contact MerlinOne today and discover how we can elevate your digital asset management journey, or schedule an demo now.