What if you lost your wedding photos? The video of your toddler’s first steps? All of the photos and videos on your phone right now? Just thinking about losing any of these things is enough to make anyone nervous.
Now, shift your thinking to your brand. What if your brand lost the photos of your grand opening? Priceless video footage of a major event in your organization’s history? Every photo and video on your server? Yikes! That would be terrible!
So why am I bringing up these cringeworthy possibilities? Because today is World Backup Day – a day when people around the world make a copy of their most important files, and ensure the safety of their photos and videos. If you’re not convinced yet that you and your team need to join in, check out this fascinating (and scary) video:
According to the video, more than 60 million computers worldwide will fail this year. How many of those will be computers in your office? It’s vital for brands to back up their data, especially their visual assets. Some photos and videos are extremely costly to replicate, and some are impossible to replace. Having a solid system for backing up your visual assets can protect your brand from serious risk. Here are 3 ways your organization should celebrate World Backup Day today.
1. Find the Content Hoarders.
You know who they are. The people who keep photos in email inboxes and videos on their desktops. You might even be one of them! PhotoShelter CEO Andrew Fingerman says the content hoarder is your organization’s worst employee. If your staff members are keeping files to themselves, without backing them up, they are taking a risk that could impact the whole organization. If a content hoarder’s computer crashes, your brand can lose valuable assets that could have been used to benefit multiple departments. When content hoarders leave the company and their old emails are disregarded, photos and videos buried in inboxes disappear with them.
On World Backup Day, have your content hoarders sift through their inboxes and personal devices and make sure everything is backed up in your organization’s centralized repository, which brings me to…
2. Centralize Your Assets.
Make sure your organization has a centralized media library that is backed up regularly. Brands can host a local archive on a shared network or a workstation inside the creative department. This local archive should also be supported by professional backup systems, like external hard drives.
3. Back Up to the Cloud.
Cloud-based media libraries create redundancy for your local systems and make your assets easily accessible to your team. Cloud-based DAM systems like PhotoShelter for Brands have redundant servers, so even your backup copy in the cloud is backed up. Plus, they make it easy for your team members to upload their images to your brand’s centralized media library. If all a content hoarder has to do is drag and drop to add their files to the central repository, they’ll be more likely to reform their hoarding habits. In turn, your organization will have better digital hygiene.
The Takeaway
Celebrating World Backup Day by taking these three steps can have a big impact on your organization. Your brand will be protected against the loss of valuable assets, and you will see a higher return on your visual content investment. And, if you and your team build a system for regularly backing up your assets, you won’t even have to worry about celebrating next year. Instead, you’ll be celebrating a redundant, reliable media library every day of the year.
