3 Tips for Organizing Your Digital Content Library
As a design minded brand, sharing high-quality pictures is crucial. It helps your audience better understand your style, see if you would be a good match for them, and find inspiration in your content.
Having unique lifestyle pictures on hand can really make a big difference and add value to your content. But today we want to talk about how to keep this content organized and why it is so important.
Photo Credit: Redmond Marriott, designed by PDG Studios
Not having clear organization for your content library will not only make you lose time but also opportunities. Imagine you have a great picture to illustrate your content or to send to the press but you can’t seem to find it. First, you will spend a lot of time trying to locate it, then you end up giving up feeling frustrated, and will find a replacement that isn’t as good and won’t add as much value as the original one you had in mind.
Here are 3 tips to avoid these types of situations and to keep your digital content library tidy.
Store your files on the Cloud
Backing your files up is really really really important and super easy. Yet even though we know it, we don’t always get it done which results in losing data and pictures which can really hurt your business. So before doing anything else, make sure your files are properly saved on an external drive or on the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) and set it up so it backs it up automatically, that way you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Build a content library
Having a content library helps you to access your various content easily. Whether you are working on a proposal, on social media posts, with the press… if you need a picture of a specific project you should be able to access it right away in just a few clicks.
We suggest you create multiple folders:
Lifestyle: Those are lifestyle shots that you can use to show off your style. They focus more on the general atmosphere.
Projects: Make sure to separate each of your projects with its own folder. That way when you need to reference a project in particular, you can find it all in one folder.
Brand: This folder can hold everything that is related to your own brand like your logo or specific pictures you always use.
Headshots: Have pictures of you and your team available. This is particularly great for press coverage but also your website, social media, etc. People want to see who is behind the brand and they will connect more if they can put a face on a name.
Behind The Scenes: People enjoy seeing how things come together, having some behind-the-scenes pictures from projects, but also at the office for example can always be valuable.
Stock: Stock or royalty-free pictures can come in handy when you need some extra content for your blog, website, or social media. This can help share a story and show inspiration.
Blogs: Keeping blog articles and pictures in one folder is also useful especially when you will need to upload the blog on your website. Having everything in one folder will make it so much faster.
Photo Credit: HGI Sunnyvale, designed by PDG Studios
Update the name of your files
Another very useful tip is to update the name of the picture to make sure you always know what it is referring to. We recommend you to include the name of the project, the year and eventually the month, and any other adjective that can help you like “lifestyle”, “bedroom”, etc.
For example Jkl-2020-lifestyle-1.jpg
This will help you to know right away what this picture is and this is also better if you need to send pictures to the press for example.
Photo Credit: Nashville, designed by PDG Studios
Organizing your files can seem like a tedious task at first but believe us, it really will make a huge difference on a daily basis and will help you save a lot of time in the long-term. When you are well-organized you will always have a rich database to pull from and offer diversity in your content.
The beginning of the year is a great time to get organized and plan for the whole year. If you are ready to take your brand to the next level, click here to schedule a Complimentary Brand Consultation.