When we first designed NetX Portals, we wanted to create a clean, yet powerful way for companies to share their brand stories. But one of our favorite things is when customers find new use cases for our platform.
Portals are a branded interface that allows companies to distribute branded assets, both within their organization and to outside users, and for Jenn Kennett, the founder and principal consultant at MOSAIQ, the NetX Portal is the key to her business.
MOSAIQ uses a NetX Portal — which is a module of the NetX digital asset management system — to connect publishers who want to develop a specific text book or other educational content with publishers who have third-party content available to license.
On the demand side, publishers looking for specific third-party content to use in their publications have traditionally searched the internet or the local library. And because criteria are often so specific — they may be looking for a 500-word short story written at a 3rd-grade reading level about an Asian-American girl on a sports team — content has historically been tough to find.
On the supply side, small publishers who want to build a revenue stream based on licensing content to other publishers have tried to advertise their content through outreach and by creating spreadsheets and PDFs. Not only is this a scattered process, but it also doesn’t mesh well with the product cycles of their target market.
After almost a decade helping publishers grow their content licensing businesses using digital asset management software, Jenn Kennett wanted to create a single solution that would serve multiple companies. But rather than set up a separate DAM for each company, her vision was to bring all available third-party content into one easily searchable place.
To help publishers with content to license and to meet publishers searching for content, Jenn decided to set up a marketplace in a NetX Portal. “The biggest part about selling the content is having the content discoverable,” said Jenn. “The Portal is really my lifeline to my customers. It’s my sales tool.”
Jenn wanted publishers who were looking to license third-party content to easily be able to find what they need. She created a taxonomy in NetX with over 70 potential tags that can be attached to each asset, allowing interested publishers to search for specific content, then narrow down their search using filters like:
As Jenn considered solutions, one of the biggest things that steered her toward NetX was the ease of use on the back end. For example, it’s simple to edit the metadata on multiple assets through the batch editing feature in NetX, saving her time and energy with such an extensive tagging system.
Another great feature for MOSAIQ are the MicroCMS pages in the Portal, which allow users to create text pages to present brand guidelines, background information and more, all with no coding required. Jenn uses this feature to create pages for each publisher where they can highlight their mission and content. She can also include links to their website, teacher and classroom resources, and more.
Because MOSAIQ’s business model is so unique, Jenn worked closely with the NetX team to come up with a solution that met her very specific needs. “NetX is very entrepreneurial in their spirit and they love to work with entrepreneurs,” said Jenn. “I felt like I was working with people who really get the idea of having a vision.”
She worked closely with her account manager, Paul Fritz, to brainstorm ways that NetX could be adapted for her business. One key idea was to create a series of links by topic (such as Astronomy, Citizenship, Biomes and Habitats, and Multiplication) which would allow buyers to browse content based on the type of product they’re trying to create. The lists are dynamic, which means they automatically update when a new asset is tagged with that category.
”NetX gets excited about solving problems, which is great because many of my problems are unique,” said Jenn.
For more information on how NetX Portals can help you organize and distribute content, get in touch with our team.
