Social digital assets, are the resources you use to develop and maintain your online presence.

For intangible assets such as social digital assets, there are no mandatory rules, principles or regulations to follow.  It is up to each company to put in place their own system  of governance.

The storage and use of personal data is another matter.  In many countries, there are  laws and regulations in place that businesses must adhere to with regards to storage and use of customer data, For example, the UK has a law for data protection, called the Data Protect Act 2018.

Intangible assets

This article is not about crypto currencies but rather social digital assets that are used primarily for communication purposes.

Key aspects of digital assets include:

• The registration of
  • URL or web address
  • Social platform page IDs (Facebook, Instagram, and such)
  • Search engine page such as Google Business Profile
  • Map location
• Administration and editor credentials
• Creative content: copy, images videos, voice overs, blogs and customer satisfaction scores
• Customer engagement: “clicks”, “likes”, “shares”, comments, customer reviews, direct calls, and map directions.
• Digitally formatted advertising and communication material

Social digital assets are multifaceted and interrelated and so when combined create a value greater than each individual part.

Measuring value

A traditional challenge of marketing and advertising, is the ability to measure performance.  Digital marketing has an advantage of measurability, allowing the marketer to determine relevance and effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).

To measure performance, you need to have clear objectives, a defined budget and time period, and your objectives should to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic and Time-bound).

• Sales performance: conversion of “clicks” to the purchase of products or services
• ROI: comparison cost of digital campaign to the sales and profits generated by the campaign
• Customer engagement: number of page likes, shares, visits, call / map / ad clicks / customer reviews
• Number of physical store visits or call center calls during the digital campaign period
• Search: clicks to web page

Businesses need to be clear in what they want to achieve.  It is very easy to say something is not working or is too expensive, if you are not measuring performance in relation to an agreed set of objectives.

Back-end of the social digital assets

Registering a URL address is influenced by two things:

1. Generic: how unique or search ready the name is
2. Availability:  is the URL name already in use or for resale.

The cost of registering a URL address increase based on its “searchability” attributes.  To get past generic names, marketers have been creative in the use of spelling and phonics as a work around.  The first step is to identify what name you would like to register and then do a search to see if the name is available and price.  Have a couple options ready, incase your first choice is not available or is too expensive.

An important part of good governance is to keep track of the renewal of URL addresses.  This will avoid your website been taken down and mitigates the risk of losing your URL to predatory opportunists.

Lost access to website and social media pages, due to a disgruntled former employee or third party service providers with admin privilege’s, may seem extreme, but can happen if the administration side of digital assets is weak.  Remember the phrase, “you do not know what you have until you lose it”.

Websites and social media pages have an administration back-end function that provides you with options to manage this issue.  Good governance and management controls are needed to maintain ownership and accessibility of approved persons to manage, maintain and administer the various online mediums or presence.

Smooth transition of social digital assets

Create a social digital assets register, ensure that it is updated on a regular basis and stored in a secure location.

The Social Digital Register should include the following information:

• Website and Social Media:
  • confirmation of URL address ownership, where it is registered and who is managing the registration renewals.
  • Administration:
    • Identify who has access to the digital assets and their level of authorization, duties and responsibilities.
      • Administrators and Editors
    • Contact information as well as a signed agreement that all the digital assets including content is the ownership of the company.
  • 3rd party service providers:
    • Letter of agreement or contract, establishing that the business is the sole owner of its digital account with the social media platform(s) or website(s).
    • Contact information, confidentiality agreement, identification of duties and responsibilities

Storage and Access

It is important to store your social digital assets in a location that is both secure and accessible for authorized use.  Keeping your assets up-to-date is important, retiring old campaigns to avoid future use, changes to logos, current labels and product photos.

Without management of these assets, miss-use can occur, especially if the assets have a limited life or a defined use.  For example, paying for an advertising campaign for use in one territory, but then using it in another for which you have not paid the rights.  Using creative for a print campaign, but did not pay for the rights to use it on-line.  These types of scenario can lead to unplanned expenses, embarrassment or law suits.

There are cloud based services designed for storage and managing access to multiple users.  For small and micro businesses, there are some cost effective cloud based solutions such as Google Drive, Onedrive and Dropbox.  Businesses can also set up a shared storage file on its local network.  The key points are:

• the need to store your digital assets in a secured location
• authorized access only

Digital assets must be managed to ensure that they are up-to-date for use, are used for their intended purpose and there is accountability for their use.

Future use

Social Digital Assets are resources that are critical to how business communicate, advertise and drive future sales or services.  Like tangle resources, they needs due care and attention, to ensure that the assets are available for future use.

Businesses should ensure that it’s social digital assets are managed in a manner that when it is time to transition to a new team, access to the assets can easily be facilitated, with the least amount of disruption.  A history of the digital assets journey should also be maintained – with the knowledge of our past, we can better plan our future.

This article is written by Graham Greenidge, a Fellow member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.