Inside UVA Athletics’ Smart Content Strategy with PhotoShelter

A Championship Program Needed a Smarter Content Strategy

The University of Virginia Athletics (UVA) is home to 25 NCAA Division I sports teams and has captured 92 Atlantic Coast Conference championships since 2002, more than any other ACC school. With national championship-winning teams, UVA has built a reputation for both academic and athletic excellence.

Managing the visual storytelling of such a prestigious program was becoming increasingly difficult. Scattered storage systems, inefficient distribution, and lack of metadata organization made finding and sharing content a challenge. 

The Challenge: Scattered Tools Made It Hard to Build Hype

As Director of Athletics Photography, Jamie Holt is responsible for overseeing all photographic content for UVA’s sports programs, staff events, and recruiting materials. Her workflow was burdened by a fragmented system of tools, making content organization and distribution inefficient.

• An inefficient mix of storage solutions. Jamie Holt inherited a system that was “not well-organized” with files across multiple platforms like Teams, Box, and DriveHQ. With photos living in so many places, searching for specific images was time-consuming and challenging.
• Inconsistent file naming with a lack of metadata. There was “no systematic file naming,” making it difficult to find, sort, or credit images. If a file wasn’t in the correct folder, “it was difficult to find” and without metadata, there was “no way to know where things were” via search or who took the photo.
• No efficient way to distribute content. There were persistent bottlenecks when sharing photos with athletes and brand accounts. The images had to be manually sent, slowing down how quickly teams and players could post content.
• Unrestricted access and potential misuse. “There were so many people that had access to all of our content at any given moment,” making it difficult to control sensitive assets like uniform reveals. In Microsoft Teams, “we had a lot of interns moving files around or accidentally renaming things or accidentally deleting folders,” and there was “no way to control that.”

“There were so many people that had access to all of our content at any given moment. And you trust the people you work with, but when we’re doing a uniform reveal or something that we want to keep under wraps, we have to make sure it doesn’t go anywhere. So it’s important to be able to really tailor who has access or who can view our content, but not download.”

Jamie Holt, Director of Athletics Photography, University of Virginia Athletics

The Solution: Unified Storage, Faster Content, Bigger Impact

UVA’s content workflow was inefficient, and managing content manually was overwhelming. With PhotoShelter DAM and Socialie, 90% of the process is now automated. Holt and her team can quickly locate, distribute, and analyze UVA’s visual content in a structured, intuitive system.

Here’s how UVA transformed its content management:

• One centralized, organized archive. With PhotoShelter, UVA finally had “an easy, systematic way for us to get photos, whether we took them or not.” Everything now lives in a single searchable, structured database where files are properly tagged and easily accessible.
• Automated content distribution saves time. Socialie ensures that images are instantly delivered to athletes and team social media accounts. “When I’m live-transferring at an event, it’ll get sent to their sports accounts directly in Socialie, and they can post a photo really quickly right from there.”
• Stronger access control prevents mistakes. PhotoShelter allows UVA to control who can view, edit, and download files. “The only people that can delete things, rename things, or change things is my staff who I trust to do that correctly.” This prevents accidental deletions and ensures sensitive content is only seen by the right people.
• Content performance is now trackable. “Now, we can see that they downloaded this, they posted this, it got this many engagements, or this many followers came from this post.” With analytics, UVA can measure engagement, track athlete reach, and optimize their content strategy.

“It’s very hard to quantify our job sometimes. You can say, I took this many photos, but as far as quantifying it and asking, what is it actually turning into? Is it turning into more fans? Is it turning into more people showing up to our games? Is it people buying more tickets? I can actually start to quantify that a little bit more now, thanks to PhotoShelter and Socialie. So that’s been a huge plus.”

Jamie Holt, Director of Athletics Photography, University of Virginia Athletics

UVA Athletics’ Content Workflow is Now a Competitive Advantage

PhotoShelter and Socialie have transformed the way UVA Athletics manages, shares, and tracks visual content. What was once a scattered, inefficient workflow is now a seamless operation where images are easily found, securely stored, and automatically delivered to the right people at the right time. Athletes get their content faster, teams maximize their visibility, and the creative staff spends more time producing great work instead of managing files. Whether it’s driving social media engagement, attracting recruits, or preserving historic moments, PhotoShelter and Socialie ensure UVA is always ahead of the game.

“This is one of those mottos I live by: It’s only a good photo if you can find it in 10 years. You can take a great photo, but if you can’t find it a couple of years down the road, it doesn’t exist. So you need to have that organizational piece and be able to find content. That way, if you’re celebrating the anniversary of a championship, you can find the files 10 years from now.”

Jamie Holt, Director of Athletics Photography, University of Virginia Athletics