The Media Library is a great place to store articles, images and files that can be used across your account or sub-accounts. As content starts to build up, it can quickly become unmanageable unless you agree to a few housekeeping rules that everyone should adhere to.
We’ve put together some tips on how to use folders and file naming conventions to ensure you keep on top of your Media Library:
Use folders to help manage content:
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Folders keep your content all in one place together, making it easier for others to find content.
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Create folders within your Library for particular file types (e.g. Brand-approved images, Executive team photos, approved articles etc).
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Create folders for major communication campaigns (e.g. IT or Change programmes, Financial results 2014/15), so that other users can quickly find related content.
(Note: If you have an Enterprise Account, you can create additional libraries within your master Library Link. Create separate Libraries for Images, Files and cross-company campaigns).
Keep content together:
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Try to keep related content together. For instance, if you’ve created a folder for a major communication campaign that all users need to access, keep images related to that campaign in the same folder as the rest of the content.
Delete old and duplicated content:
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Content that is well past it’s use-by date only adds to the clutter in your Media Library.
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Regularly give your library a clean to delete files, images and articles that are duplicated or are no longer needed.
Encourage consistent file and folder naming conventions:
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Ty to encourage everyone to save files and folders using a consistent naming convention when adding a document, image or article to the Library.
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We suggest using the governance outlined below, but feel free to tweak this to meet your organisation’s own requirements:
Suggested Naming Conventions:
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Keep file and folder names short, but meaningful. Try to avoid unnecessary repetition and redundant words in file names.
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Use capital letters to delimit words, not spaces (e.g. NamingConventions). This makes the file name smaller, helping others to spot what the content is related to.
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When including a number in a file name, always give it as a two-digit number rather than one, i.e. 01, 02 … 99 (unless it’s a year or another number with more than two digits).
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Include dates in the format YYYYMMDD. They will be much easier to find and will appear chronologically if placed at the start of the file name.
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When including a personal name in a file name, give the family name first followed by the initials.
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Try to avoid using common words such as ‘draft’ at the start of file names. You can only view a certain amount of characters when looking at multiple files in the Library, so if there are numerous articles or files starting with draft it will be difficult to differentiate.
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