DAM for marketers - the best marketing tool you need in your life

There's an abundance of marketing tools on the market. But are they really all they're cracked up to be? What if you could use just one tool that could save your hours every day?

Well, we know one tool that's certain to change the way you work. Digital Asset Management (DAM).

In this episode, we chat with Libby Marks, DAM copywriter and all-around tech expert. She writes many of our articles about DAM and knows her stuff when it comes to benefits and how your business can reap the rewards.

In this episode, we explore:
✅How DAM can help marketers get creative again
✅How to calculate the hours and money you are losing, simply by not having easy access to your marketing collateral
✅The super-easy way to implement a DAM in your organisation

RESOURCES

• Five reasons your marketing department needs (a DAM)  
• Three ways savvy marketers scale their social media with DAM
• The Great Suppression: Why Marketing Teams Need More Freedom
  
  

Interviewer: Amy Burchill 

Guest speaker: Libby Marks | The DAM Copywriter | Write-on-Tyne

Podcast produced by Let’s Talk Video Production

Transcript

Hello and a very warm welcome to The BIG Bright Podcast. I'm Amy, the marketing executive at Bright and today we are delving into a topic that is very close to our hearts. For those of you who don't know, we are a global digital asset management provider based in Brighton. We build software for marketers. It's a tool that many new starters often have never even heard of before. The term digital asset management we admit sounds a bit financial or corporate, but the actual tool itself will take your marketing to the next level. Joining us today is our very own damn expert Libby marks. Libby is one of our valued content partners and is the author of a number of articles about DAM, and our flagship solution Asset Bank. So she really knows her stuff when it comes to the way marketers and other departments can use DAM to better improve their workday. So welcome, Libby.

Thank you for coming on. So let's jump straight in and let's talk a little bit about your background. So you are a content writer, you do some work for us. And you're also a DAM expert. How did this come about?

My background in DAM started when I was working in the marketing team at a leading UK university and I dotted about between a few different teams. So I used to write the prospectus. I used to help manage prospectus production. I used to be invovled with photoshoots, so I did all sorts of things in the marketing team. And one of the things that I was tasked with was to find a better way to look after our digital assets. Because as you can imagine, at a university, we had tens of thousands of images across campus of students of staff members. And this really was the olden days, because they used to be stored on CD ROM in physical hardcopy.

There was a whole room dedicated to storing them. So if anybody around the university needed to use any of those assets, they had to call us up, we had to get up from our desk, go to a cupboard, unlock it, find the CD ROM, put it on our desktop, and find a way to get those assets to people. So it just wasn't ideal at all. And that's when I discovered DAM systems generally. And of course, this is when I discovered the wonderful Asset Bank as well, which we went on to implement.

After about 18 years in marketing and communications, I just thought I need to change. And that's when I decided to go freelance as a copywriter and content marketer. It was terrible timing, because it was just before COVID and lockdown started. Though it wasn't the best start to new business, but it's gone really well. And one of the tips I've got from the wonderful freelance community is that B2B tech marketing is where the opportunities are, it's where there's a lot of growth, the people in my line of work. So all the advice is find a piece of tech that you're familiar with, you love, you're happy to write about and try and make that your specialism. So of course DAM just demanded to be my niche topic, because I'd seen how transformative it was at the University. And I just knew that I could talk about it forever. So that's kind of how we've ended up where we are now. And I've actually just developed a new website to promote specifically my DAM copywriting offer. And because it's where I really want to double down this year, and develop what I'm working on with clients.

Well, that's fantastic. And it's such a niche, isn't it? I think, especially and if you can get yourself into a niche like that, then you'll have lots of clients coming to you, hopefully.

Fingers crossed. And I am genuinely so  in love with DAM. I'm such a nerd about it. I'm absolutely not somebody you want to talk to at a party, because if you asked me what I do, you will find out about DAM, and you will hate me for it.

Let's go back to the very basics. And for anyone listening who doesn't know what digital asset management is, could you give us your definition?

As I say I can bore people forever about DAM. So this is a bit of a difficult question because as you acknowledged in your introduction, it's really easy to make DAM sound quite boring and turn people off. It does sound corporate and it does sound financial. Somebody the other day thought that I worked in Bitcoin because they thought that's what digital assets are. And it's such a shame because it is such a transformative tech.

So if the listeners can just bear with me for a minute, I'll go through a bit of a corporate description of what it is, and then I'll tell you what I think it is. So digital asset management is actually a methodology really, and it's about having a systematic and strategic approach to managing your digital assets to make sure that you can use them efficiently. And you're not wasting time and money by mishandling them. So that's the approach of what digital asset management is.

But then a digital asset management system or a DAM is the software that you use to achieve that. So a DAM is a centralised place where you store search, share and use your digital assets. And by digital assets - even that phrase in itself is quite off putting, isn't it? So digital assets just means any of the building blocks you use to create your marketing collateral. That might be photos, illustrations, video, podcasts, logos, artwork, PDFs, you know, anything that you need to be able to put your hands on to deliver your marketing campaigns and collateral. You know, that's a digital asset really.

So you often hear a DAM referred to as a 'single source of truth', for your digital assets. I hope you can hear that I'm putting that in air quotes because that's a phrase you will see everywhere referring to DAM. I love it because it does describe the fact that everything's in one place. You haven't got assets distributed all around your organisation or lost or in silos.

 But it sounds a little bit passive. And I don't think it does DAM justice to make it sound passive. So what I prefer to think a DAM as is mission control for your marketing assets, basically. So it's more active than just storage. It's about you as a user, having everything you need at your fingertips to deploy those digital assets really quickly and really confidently in your campaigns. So you know that you're allowed to use them, you know where they are, and you can just get straight back to work and doing what you do best.

And what's the core functionality of a DAM that makes all of this possible?

First off, there's a huge variation in DAM. They range in sophistication and functionality massively. There's so many of them on the market as well. So for the purpose of talking to you, I'm really just going to stick to the core functionality that all DAMs have, you know, even the very basic ones. So for me, the three main functions of a dam are the searching, sharing, and using digital assets easily.

So we'll start with searching. The biggie with DAM is discoverability. The ability to search you're DAM and find exactly the asset you need in just a few clicks is an absolute game changer. Because most marketers will know the pain of scrambling around looking for assets and nobody knows where they are. And they're on Jane's desktop and Jane's on holiday, or they're buried in Bob's email because he hasn't transferred them to a centralised storage yet. Just trying to track things down can be a real pain if we're totally honest. So just centralising them and knowing where they are is huge.

But they're not just centralised, because if you just want to centralise, you could do something like SharePoint. The magic of DAM is the metadata that you attach to those assets. So metadata means that you don't need to know the name of an asset to be able to find it, you don't need to know when it was created, or where somebody stored it, you can just type in some descriptive words, perhaps. I could type in 'Amy, red jumper', and it would pull up a picture of you, even though the file itself was called something ridiculous, like 001-a-JPG. It just makes it really easy to find what you want. And one of the big innovations in DAM at the minute is the use of AI to add that metadata. So you don't even need to be sitting there typing it 'red jumper', because AI will just look at the picture and say, 'Okay, I recognise that person, that's Amy, we know that, we know she's wearing a red jumper, we know she's got a blue background', and it will apply all those keywords so that if somebody comes along later and says, 'I really want a picture of somebody against a blue background', it will bring up a picture of you. And they can decide to use your one or not use it depending on what they need for the project. So that searching for you.

The other thing to say about metadata is it's not just about finding assets, it's about knowing whether you can use them or not. Because what if that picture of you was purely a headshot to use on a staff page, and you definitely don't want to be plastered on a billboard somewhere in Milan. So you could put that in the metadata to say this is purely to use for this purpose, don't use it for any other reasons. So it's just about being confident when you use those assets.

The next main functionality that I mentioned is sharing assets. So I love this functionality, because I can guarantee, if you send me a wetransfer link, I will just let it expire. And you will be really cross with me because you will have to send it to me again. There was so many little problems with sending files by email or by an FTP site or whatever. And with a DAM, you can just share files within the system. With internal colleagues, with external agencies, everything can be done within the DAM, and it just makes life a whole lot easier and much more secure.

And then the last thing is actually using those assets. I think sometimes people might think, 'Oh, you've got a DAM, people upload pictures, and then other people download them and use them'. But that's really not the case because DAM integrates with lots of other systems, particularly that marketers use on a day to day basis. And because it's integrated, it just removes a lot of friction from the creative process. You can integrate your DAM with your CMS that you use to manage your website and have that full DAM functionality and searchability at your fingertips to put great assets on your website. Or you can integrate it with InDesign, for example. So instead of having to go out of InDesign, find the assets, place them in InDesign, upload them, whatever you have to do, they're just there for you. So they're tiny little time savings. But over the course of doing your job on a day to day basis, they just add up massive savings, just all of these little time savings with DAM add up to huge productivity gains. And that's the main benefit of the functionality.

So we're talking about the differences between assets and files. For example, an asset for me is so much more than just a file. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's actually the process of putting that file into a digital asset management system that makes it into an asset. The word asset obviously implies value, doesn't it? And if you've got files that are just sitting on your desktop, or hidden away in a folder somewhere that nobody knows about, those files have fairly limited value because you know, they're there you might use them once or twice in your marketing materials. But other teams don't know about them. So they can't use them. They might even commission their own version and duplicate work that you've already done because they don't know they're there.

 It's when you put those files into a DAM, and you attach the metadata that makes those files discoverable, more usable, reusable by other teams, that really maximises their value. So they get used more often, that helps your business recoup the money that they invested in creating them. And you can just use them in making these fantastic marketing campaigns that bring commercial benefits to your business. So yeah, a DAM system is is like the catalyst that turns files into assets and makes them more valuable for you.

At Bright, we get a lot of marketing teams who purchase our software. Why is dam so beneficial for marketers?

I can absolutely see why the bulk of your client base would be marketers because for me, DAM is absolutely essential for marketing teams, especially overstretched marketing teams. And let's be honest, is there any other kind of marketing team? I've certainly never worked in a marketing team where there's enough team members, there's enough time, there's enough budget to deliver strategy comfortably. So people are always running around trying to get things done. And if I'm wrong, if there was somebody out there in a marketing team, who's like, 'Oh, me? I've got everything I need. And you know, I finished my Friday, completely happy that I finished my workload' then please get in touch because you are a unicorn, my friend, I do not believe you exist. I would love to hear from you.

They're probably using a DAM. I imagine.

Oh, yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, I like that. So marketers are constantly being asked to do more with less aren't they? I hate that phrase, do more with less. So you've got channels that are multiplying, budgets just aren't always keeping up because senior management don't necessarily see the value that marketing can bring. So anything that a marketing team can do to reduce wasted effort and improve productivity is an absolute must in my book. And to me, that just makes DAM a complete no brainer for marketing teams.

What does that look like in practice, then?

Okay, so I might be a little bit lazy here and reference the fact that I wrote an article for you guys a few months ago. And that listed my top five reasons marketing teams need DAM. And I was reading it last night to refresh my memory and laughing at my own jokes, which isn't good is it but I think it's quite a good read. And it's certainly not stuffy or boring.

In the article, I gave quite a detailed breakdown of the benefits of DAM. And to be honest, I could talk for a whole day on the benefits of DAM to marketers, it's not something we can boil down into soundbites, but I'm going to try!

So, out of the the four things I'd say, speed is the first one. Having a DAM system, as we've said, it eradicates these manual processes, this tedious admin, the inefficiencies that slow your team down, it reduces friction in your workflow when you integrate it with other tools.

And more advanced DAMs make genuine workflow automations possible. So having a DAM can just speed up everything you do, speed up your time to market - and in marketing that's essential, isn't it?

Collaboration's the next one. So DAM makes it easier, faster, more secure to work with internal and external agencies. And actually, especially at the minute when people are working from home, when people are experimenting with more agile ways of working, there's team-lancing and going on where you draw on freelancers with flexibility, it just adds extra capacity to your marketing team when you need it. And lets you get more done.

Brand consistency is a big one. Certainly, when I worked at the university, this was huge, because if you can imagine, as a large university, we had four global campuses, we had I don't know 20 faculties, 50 departments and central marketing couldn't do everything there. So people had to be entrusted to do their own marketing materials. And some of them didn't have the skills or the knowledge or the digital assets that they needed to be able to do distinct the brand in a consistent way. If you're in that kind of situation, maybe a big global corporation, maybe you're a charity with, you know, divisions throughout the UK, you need a DAM to be able to support people, to present your organisation in the best way possible, like a brand portal.

And then the last one I would say is reducing your legal exposure. It's another really boring one to talk about. But without doubt, it's really easy to accidentally misuse assets. Like I said, with my example with you earlier, you don't want to find yourself plastered over a billboard somewhere, when actually you'd only given permission to have your picture taken for a staff page on the website. And if people have digital assets out of context, if they don't have that metadata that says how they are and aren't allowed to use it. Then that can really damage relationships, it could damage your reputation, and it could leave you open to legal risk as well. I can't actually remember what the fifth thing was in the article. So we'll just leave that as a little surprise for people if they do go and have a look at it later.

I'll leave a link in the show notes as well so they can have a look. Just going back to your first point about speed. That's really key, isn't it? Can businesses calculate how much time DAM could actually save them?

I mean, yes, it's possible to do a rough estimate and quite a lot of DAM vendors have a calculator on their website that gives you a chance to enter some data and work out what it could mean for you.

For me, I'd say, talk to some of your team members and ask them if they can record for a week, those tedious little time-consuming things that suck them away from the work they're supposed to be doing. Speak to your designer, speak to your marketing assistant. And just find out how often they're gettomg tapped up things like reformatting assets for different use cases, or tracking down missing assets or manually importanting assets into other applications. And once you've got that down as a sort of baseline, you can aggregate that out across everybody in your team. Work out roughly how much time you're wasting each year.

And if your asset handling processes aren't very sophisticated, I think you'll be surprised when you actually take the time to look at it and see how much time you could save if you tighten that up using a DAM system.

 And whilst saving time in itself is fabulous - who doesn't want to save time? - it's what you can do with that time. That's the really important thing because it's just sometimes you think "God, if I only had an extra hour in the day, I'd be able to do X, Y, and Z". And that's literally what DAM is giving you.

I feel really passionate. Please people do this exercise and work it out, because marketers are creative people generally. And they want to be telling stories, they want to be creating amazing artwork, they want to be filming video and recording podcasts. You don't want to be doing this tedious manual admin. And if you're not faffing around dealing with mismanaged assets, you've just got more time to do what you're best at. And that's the really exciting thing about DAM, I think.

We totally agree. We actually conducted some research, I think last year now around creativity and how marketers are losing that time and they can't be as creative as they want to be. So I'll also link to that as well.

So we're on a mission to dispel the myths and the confusion around DAM and showcase benefits. Do you think the term digital asset management is a barrier to entry for marketers? What do you think the industry could do to change or improve it? Do have any ideas of how we could rename it, for example?

I was thinking about this last night, and I absolutely have no ideas whatsoever. I'm so sorry, I know, I'm supposed to be the words person, but I just can't think of a better name for it. But I do agree that the current name is absolutely awful. The whole concept of DAM just sounds so dry, doesn't it like un-buttered toast, it's just awful. And it's not a concept that you immediately hear and think, "Oh, my God, that's gonna change my life, I need that in my life". You just hear digital asset management, it just doesn't grab you. But it's the actual outcome of implementing a DAM that's really transformative.

So it would be nice to enthuse people about it bit more. And I think a lot of the industry use a certain type of language that they think is proper, or impressive or formal or clever, and they think it's going to win around a business audience. I think it can be a massive turnoff to people.

 You know, I think business-to-business marketing is still person-to-person marketing. And even though businesses need more information and data and details to make decisions, people still need to be engaged by what you're saying about a product. So I think businesses really need to think about how they communicate about DAM. And often there's too much focus on the features and not enough about the benefits and what it means for marketers.

So there are definitely ways the industry as a whole could improve how they talk about things. And it's one of the reasons I absolutely love working with Bright because if you do ever read any of the content that I've written for you, it's quite different to what I write for some other clients and other people in the b2b tech sector, and it's just packed with personality. And it's much more customer-focused, much more benefit-led, and you know, there's a bit less waffle. So I really, really enjoy working with you guys.

Oh, fantastic. We love working with you, too. We think there's this sort of conspiracy going on that marketers just aren't being told about DAM enough. And you know, they're missing out on this really crucial piece of tech that could really aid their work. So yes, definitely something that we're aiming to try and, you know, banish the myths and all that kind of thing.

I absolutely love your kind of Illuminati-style, conspiracy video. It makes me smile every time I go to your website, it's just a great example of your creativity and how you do things differently. I love it.

For anyone listening, what are the top things they should be looking out for that might indicate they need a DAM?

Okay, so not meaning to seem flippant when I say this, but the biggest indicator for me that a marketing team needs a DAM is that they don't have one. I can't imagine any business that creates marketing content that does not need a DAM to manage all of those digital assets.

The new reality is omni channel, always on multiple platforms and all of those new content constantly. And I just can't imagine the mess that the marketing teams must be living with all of those digital assets just in a jumble. So please heed my warning, get yourself a DAM, you need one.

In terms of actual signs to look out for, when I was at the university, I think one of the signs that we had heard more than anything, were grumbling. It was people saying "oh my god were such and such things." When you hear those grumbles, you think okay, something's not working.

I'd say if your team is fielding a lot of requests from other teams and staff members for digital assets you need a DAM. If you're wasting a lot of time searching and downloading the latest version of assets or artwork, or you don't know if you'd like to use them or not, you need a DAM. If you're recommissioning assets or duplicating the work of other teams, because you didn't know they already had that particular photoshoot, you're going to need a DAM. But I say the key thing for me is if you are planning to scale your content production this year isn't going forward working with more external agencies, you have got to get a damn, because if you scale what you're doing now, you're just going to be scaling those frustrations and inefficiencies. And that is just not a good way to work.

When I've worked in previous companies, it's always been that thing that there's something there that you need, like, you know, to solve the problem, you just don't know what it is. And I think that comes back to this sort of education we're trying to do around DAM because sometimes people know they've got a problem, they just don't know what it is that is gonna solve it.

I think you're right because they don't know what to Google when they know they've got a problem. They're like, how do we fix this? And they don't immediately think, "oh, I need a digital asset management solution". Because it's just such a weird phrase, isn't it? A strange alien concept. So anything we can do to educate people about the fact though is this tool available, I think is going to be really beneficial.

There are hidden signs that you need a DAM as well. And I've worked with a lot of data vendors and their clients. And sometimes people start with a problem that they think is one thing, but actually, it turns out to be the fact that they need a DAM. One of my clients I worked is a consumer packaged goods business. And obviously, they're creating lots and lots of stuff.

They're taking pictures of products, they're making point of sale, they've got an E-commerce site, you know, catalogues, the whole shebang. It's really huge. And they just thought they had a problem with having too little storage for their files. So they initially brought in, you know, some IT consultants to say, "What's the best storage solution for us"? And it's only when they audited their files and they were like, "wait, what, why have we got 15 photo shoots of this particular product"? Seven versions of this point of sale, you know, our website - why are we duplicating all these files, and it was then at they thought, "okay, so we're working in silos, we're not communicating properly about what we're doing across our different marketing, press, e-commerce teams, and we're just duplicating a lot of work and wasting a lot of money".

And once they realised that was the real problem, they were like, okay, so we need a DAM. And that just totally fixed all of their problems. In that regard. I always say that DAM is just a better way of doing things. However you are doing things now with your digital assets, DAM is going to be a better way. And you are going to really reap the benefits.

That's such a great example. And I was just thinking, as you were saying that, that companies have always needed digital assets. But as more channels become digital, and we're needing more and more of them, you could say DAM is more important now than ever before.

Absolutely. I just think everybody's going to need a DAM going forward. There are two driving forces really, and I touched on one earlier. So it's the omni-channel marketing landscape, although  that is one of those phrases that I absolutely hate. But there's no other way to say it, you need to be on every channel where your customers are 24/7. And that just requires a huge amount of content. And that content requires a huge number of assets.

So the challenge of managing those assets is just growing and growing and growing. And people who aren't managing them properly, they're just going to be in a big hot mess, aren't they? It must be chaos in those teams. And you know, time to market is so crucial for marketing teams and for Ecommerce teams as well. And for the teams that have access to digital assets is going to be one of those areas that means you either win or lose compared to your competitors.

Let's be honest about it. If you miss the boat, and you miss the zeitgeist, and you don't get your campaign out there in time, that could lose you sales. So you really need that down with omni channel. And then the other thing is working from home, obviously, because what used to be a quick conversation like "Amy, have you seen the photoshoot from August?" is now right, we're gonna have to get in touch with Amy, I'm gonna have to set up a zoom call, you know, and you just can't do things as easily. So remote access to assets via a DAM. And let's just put it out there that a dam is normally something that's cloud hosted, though usually most people will be able to access it via a web browser anywhere in the world, anytime af day. It just makes it easier for internal staff and external agencies to get the assets they need and just work quickly and confidently with things.

What tips do you have for someone who might be considering implementing a DAM?

I say dam is fantastic software. And it's an amazing opportunity for marketers to improve their processes and their productivity. But there can be pitfalls, that limit its success.
 
My top three-pointers, if you like would be, firstly, have a plan for onboarding users once you've implemented your DAM, because the more people who use your dam, the better the return on investment, basically, the better benefits you're going to see for your business. But everyone's busy and I don't know about you, when I worked as an employee, I was so sick of new software being brought out perhaps by other teams, and it wasn't my priority and think everybody's a little bit jaded about new software. So don't underestimate the fact that that might be a little bit of a challenge. Make sure you have a plan for onboarding people and getting them enthused about what the DAMcan do and you'll be on to a winner.
 
The next thing I'd say is that you need to be aware that dam requires some ongoing management. It isn't just set and forget, you can't just implement it and leave it for five years. Because if you do that, it will become quite unwieldy. And when it becomes unwieldy, people won't want to use it. So there is a certain amount of making sure the structure still works. Perhaps some divisions have merged, and you need to change, your know default structure. Make sure the keywords are still meaningful, perhaps you've introduced some new product, and you need to introduce some new keywords for people to use, and definitely archive out of date assets. It needs to be part of some of these job description basically, and you need to factor that into your budget, there's no point hiding the fact is going to need a little bit of management.

The last thing I'd say is don't limit yourself by thinking of DAM as a standalone storage solution, because that's just not what it is. You will still get benefits from using it as a centralised place to store your assets, you'll get far more benefits if you think of it as part of a software stack, because you can integrate it with other applications really easily. And that will reduce friction in your workflows and just make things much more streamlined.

I know that Bright's product, they have some built-in integrations with CMS, lots of different CMS and also with some templating tools and things like that. So that's great benefit for the DAM, you know, if they were more focused on eCommerce say they integrate with him, you know, product information management system, they can be uploaded to the back end of an eCommerce site and things.

So there are loads and loads of different ways that you can integrate a DAM to just make your life kind of semi automated or streamlined much easier. So when you are thinking about implementing a DAM, think big picture, think about your best case scenario workflows, and what you'd like to be able to do and talk to your DAM vendor about how they can make that possible, because I think you might be surprised about what you can actually achieve.

So if anyone listening thinks it's time to implement a DAM, hopefully, they will if they haven't got one already. Have you got any advice on making the case to senior management?

The first thing I'd say is talk to other teams in your business, because it isn't just going to be marketing who benefit from a DAM, as I touched on before, you know, e commerce sales brand teams, your press office, there are lots and lots of use cases in an organisation and it's worth looking at it from an organisation wide perspective, because obviously, there's strength in numbers. And if you can go to senior management, and say there are lots of use cases for DAM in this organisation, I think you're more likely to be successful than just going as a single team.

And then I'd say, as with any business case, you need to really appeal to their financial interests. Now, I am not a numbers person at all. I'm a words person, but you need to try and quantify the time that your teams are losing each year through poor asset management, you know, and communicate that in a financial way. See if you can calculate the cost of delay to the business because of slower time to market, look at the savings you could make if implementing a DAM allows you to outsource to more affordable suppliers, things like that.

And I think it's once you make that argument with those bottom-line benefits, those financial benefits that they'll see DAM should pay for itself. And it just makes it a bit of a no brainer.

So we're obviously massive advocates of DAM. But we are aware there are other tools on the market. Have you got any other pieces of martech, or tools, which you think might help or inspire our listeners, particularly those involved in content creation?

I've got two really. So I touched on it earlier saying that bright integrates with templates and tools. And I think they're really, really useful, especially in the use cases I mentioned earlier, where you've got remote teams who you need to empower to create on brand materials. I think that's absolutely amazing and certainly when in the olden days, when I worked at university, that would have been such a helpful tool to have in our toolkit.

And the other thing I think, is exploring how down and editorial workflow software can work together, because I think that would really benefit content creators, because it makes it easier to coordinate copy and visual content simultaneously, and get all of your collaboration all in one system and just streamline that process. I work with another software company called WoodWing, in Holland, and they call this process content orchestration. And I've read so many amazing case studies about it. I've written so many amazing case studies about it and how its transformed working practices, particularly for content publishers, that I think I would definitely like to point people in that direction.

So I think a really great way for us to wrap up is to talk a little bit more about you and your content writing and a little bit about your freelance career. And for anyone listening who perhaps wants to do tech writing or anything like that. What's it been like branching out on your own? And do you have any things that you would do differently?

Oh, I mean, I could talk about this for ages. I'm a really passionate advocate of people who want to try freelance life just going for it. And I see people all the time in forums and you know, Facebook groups that I'm part of today, I really want to go freelance, but I'm just scared to leave behind that security of a salary and paid holiday and things like that. And it is genuinely scary. And I find that most people won't do it until they're pushed to do it.

For me, my push was coming back for maternity leave, after a really, really torturous journey to get my much wanted second child. And I just thought I can't go back to work, I want to be around when she needs me, I want to be able to take aher to play group. And that kind of pushed me over the edge and said, I've got to go freelance. And I think a lot of people through the pandemic have reconsidered their options and there's a lot of people there who don't want to go back to their old jobs. And too, we're thinking about branch house freelance, and my absolute heartfelt advice would be to go for it because I have never been happier.

I think I'm a bit of an introvert. And for me being in an office every day, and being kind of forced into interactions and experiences that felt uncomfortable, that made me very unhappy as an employee. But as a freelancer, I get to choose who to work with, I get to choose to work with lovely people like you. And I get to say, No, thank you to horrible people that I don't like, and it's just absolutely liberating. And my mental health is so much better now. And I'm not going to say freelance work is without stress, because there's lots. It's just a different type of stress. So you stress you think you're not, you know, imposter syndrome. Am I good enough?

You look at LinkedIn, you feel stressed, because everybody seems to be doing better than you. Or do you stress about whether you can get clients, but other types of stresses are really relieved. And for me, it's just been the best decision I've ever made. I absolutely love it.

Oh, amazing. Well, I'm so pleased that you're enjoying it and having a good time with it, and that you enjoy working with us, which is fantastic. The final question is if there's anyone listening who would like a new content writer, and perhaps they want someone who can write about martech tools or anything like that? How can they get in touch with you? Where's the best place to go?

Oh, well, I would absolutely love them to get in touch with me because January is quite a dry month for freelance work. So I do have some capacity at the minute, you can go to my website, which is the damcopywriter.com. And you can see some examples of what I've written about DAM or if you are not a b2b tech client or a DAM client, then you could go to my main website, which is writeontyne.com. And that's where I've got a broader sample of different types of work I've done for financial services clients and universities and things like that.

Fantastic. Well, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. So great. Thank you so much, Libby. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.

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