Digital Asset Management

How to Create a Professional Media Library for Your Business

Going from folder to folder to gather the creative assets you need to start a marketing campaign is a hassle, especially when you need to collaborate with other departments to create social media posts, website content, blogs, ads, or other projects that require visual content.

Creating a professional media library for your business can eliminate such a disjointed, unorganized process, which helps you organize all your business's digital assets, like images, videos, logos, and graphics, in one place.

Media libraries facilitate collaboration, streamline approval workflows, provide you with more control over your company's visual identity, and promote brand consistency.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What Is a Visual Media Library?
7 Tips for Creating an Organized Image & Media Library
Keep Evolving Your Media Library

What Is a Visual Media Library?

50% of marketers use video in their campaigns, followed by images at 47%.

This has created a need for a place to upload, store, manage, remove, and choose media for creating ads and other marketing campaigns.

Some people call it a brand image library because most businesses use it to store their visual brand assets.

That way, when marketing teams are ready to add visual content to campaigns, they can easily access it in one convenient location.

Whether your business is small, medium-sized, or large, you're probably dealing with a huge number of digital media assets that you've collected over the years.

Add to that many file types, content sources, and storage locations. And then, you've got multiple teams of people who need visual media and multiple purposes for visual content.

You can alleviate these challenges with an asset management strategy that focuses on preparing a digital media library.

This helps save time and energy when assembling your creative assets so that you can focus on the big picture — marketing your business‌ — ‌and not the little things.

Creating a professional media library for your business also ensures your brand image is consistent across all media channels, fostering a positive brand experience for your audience.

This is especially important in industries dominated by visuals, like real estate. For successful realtor lead generation, agents likely use a huge amount of visuals in their marketing campaigns.

A well-organized media library enables real estate agents and brokers to showcase property listings through captivating images, engaging videos, and informative brochures, all aimed at the right prospects at the right time.

Digital Asset Management: 7 Tips for Creating an Organized Image & Media Library

Here are seven simple tips for organizing your digital assets.

1. Evaluate Your Needs and Conduct an Audit of Your Current Media Library

A good starting point for creating a digital asset library is to evaluate your business needs.

What types of digital media do you need, and for what purposes? How do you want to portray your brand image?

As you define your goals and needs, consider what's already available in your brand assets. For example, if you want to create a more refined brand image, you might want to add more paid, high-quality images to your media library.

Getty Images offers polished, high-resolution photos that help build trust and authority.

2. Create a List of Image Priorities

After identifying gaps in your existing media library, you can start looking for visual content to fill those gaps.

For example, if you find yourself using the same images over and over in your social media content, you might begin a search for more images to add variety to your posts.

As you discover what you need, list it out. This will be the list you'll refer to when finding the right imagery for your brand.

Here are some pro tips for choosing images to add to your media library:

Find free stock images. You can find professional-looking free stock images on Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels.
Consider splurging on paid, quality stock images. If you're looking for more refined images and better search filtering options, you might enjoy sites with paid stock images. Getty Images and Adobe Stock are great options.
Use relevant keywords. The right keywords can elevate your brand image search experience. Find keywords that relate to your business and industry. For instance, if you're a financial services organization, try searching for words like finance, banking, or fintech. As you get deeper into your search and reveal relevant results, it'll fuel your creativity as more keywords pop into your head. And you'll get results that are even more on target.
Look for photos that incorporate your brand colors. During your search, prioritize images that complement your brand's color palette. This will help you maintain a strong, consistent brand aesthetic. But don't be too concerned with finding an exact color match. Even if an image features only one of your brand colors, it'll still create a consistent, cohesive look.

Take a look at these visually pleasing, royalty-free images on Pixabay that you can use to enhance your blog, website, and social media content:

3. Create Categories and Folders for Your Visual Assets

Categorizing your media files is a must if you don't want to go through the hassle of searching through unorganized digital assets.

You likely need visual content for different needs, so it helps to categorize your images based on those needs.

Original Photography

You might use original photography for specific branding, marketing, or advertising purposes. These images showcase your products, services, or company events, providing a personalized touch to your business's visual content.

In-office shots and team photos are also examples of photography that creates a welcoming, authentic experience on your website.

You might also want to capture employee celebrations, awards, and office get-togethers to showcase your company culture and build trust with your audience.

These types of images should be in their own folder so you can easily find them when you're ready to share them.

Stock Images

Stock images are great for companies that don't have the time or budget to hire a professional photographer.

You can use these visuals to supplement your marketing materials, website, and social media posts.

You might also need to access stock photos when you have a time-sensitive project or test various visual concepts before committing resources to a full-fledged photoshoot.

Store these images in their own separate folder for those instances when you need visuals for niche or specialized topics that may be challenging or expensive to capture through original photography. This can help you streamline the content creation process.

Graphics

Graphics include illustrations, icons, or infographics that help you communicate complex topics and concepts visually. And when it comes to marketing campaigns, graphics tend to perform the best.

You'll likely pull these out when you need to create visually appealing content for presentations, reports, and marketing campaigns.

Sticking these into their own designated folder provides easy access for marketing teams.

HubSpot seamlessly implements graphics into its blog posts, making content more enjoyable.

Brand Imagery

Brand images represent your company's visual identity. They include your logo, branded visuals, or any imagery that communicates your brand's unique qualities, values, and messaging.

Incorporating these images in your media library ensures easy access to visual assets that uphold your business's distinct brand identity and messaging in all marketing and communication efforts.

Videos

Videos are another visual asset you want to categorize in your media library for business.

These include your promotional videos, advertisements, tutorials, product demos, etc.

Audio Content

Podcasts, audio advertisements, and voiceovers are examples of audio content.

You'll likely use this type of media to engage with your audience through storytelling, interviews, discussions, and brand messaging.

4. Set Out to Organize Your Media Files Over Time (Not All At Once)

If you already have an established media library or some form of one, it can be overwhelming to try to organize everything all at once.

Your current media library may be disorganized, have duplicate files, and have a lot of people adding files to it.

So, instead of tackling the organization's process right now, start with the new materials your organization makes today. Then, gradually work on your old files over time.

Another key tip is don't get rid of your old system of managing files. Keep it in place until your new system is complete.

5. Use a Digital Media Storage Platform

Digital media library software allows you to store files like images, video, audio, and other media in one centralized location.

Currently, you may be storing your business media directly on your computer or a cloud storage platform.

However, these systems lack specialized organizational tools like efficient tagging, categorization, and metadata management.

They also don't have advanced search capabilities that allow you to quickly locate specific media files based on keywords, tags, or other customized search criteria.

Unlike digital media library software, the typical compute or cloud storage platform's file storage system doesn't enable easy access to media files for collaborative editing and sharing.

When searching for the best media library software, consider these factors:

Ease of use
Storage capacity
File type support
Security features
Collaboration tools
Integrations

Filecamp is a digital asset management (DAM) solution that offers all of the above features, allowing you to manage all your digital marketing assets with a user-friendly platform.

6. Create a Logical File Structure

For an even more organized media library, design a system that categorizes your media and image files based on purpose, category, and accessibility.

This will help team members in different departments easily find what they're looking for.

Previously, we discussed how to categorize your assets by type. But we didn't cover using a taxonomy or creating a file naming system.

Here's what that looks like:

Media type

Images
Videos
Infographics
Audio
Written content

Content theme/purpose

Marketing materials
Product demos
Educational resources
Branding assets
Internal communications

Target audience

Prospective clients
Current customers
Stakeholders
Internal teams

Content format

JPEG
PNG
MP4
GIF
PDF
WAV

Usage rights

Royalty-free
Licensed
Proprietary

Metadata tags

Keywords related to the content
Description of the assets
Relevant hashtags

Creating a taxonomy using the ideas above will allow you to standardize how you describe your digital assets, helping users find assets faster.

You can automate file organization with Filecamp. Our auto-tag feature automatically analyzes and tags your images to improve search and discovery.

Now, on to file naming. Your file naming system should be so efficient that people can guess the content of a file without having to open it.

There's no particular science to file naming. Just use standardized, consistent names that are meaningful, brief, and intuitive.

Here's an example:

[Content Type][Campaign Name][Date]
IMG_CampaignX_2023-10-01

Following this system, your team can easily search for the exact file they need without hassle.

7. Keep Security Top of Mind

One of the challenges of creating a professional media library for your business is ensuring that you have a secure and reliable way of authenticating your users and granting them access to the appropriate resources.

One possible solution is to use a standard protocol such as SAML or OAuth, which allows you to delegate the authentication process to a trusted third-party provider.

This way, you can avoid storing sensitive user credentials on your own server and simplify ‌integration with different platforms and applications.

Keep Evolving Your Media Library

Even after adding media files and creating a system to organize them, your job isn't done. In fact, it probably never will be.

That's because you'll likely be adding new assets as your business grows and your priorities change.

So, it's important to continuously audit your content to make sure your files are categorized and organized for quick retrieval.

START YOUR OWN FREE TRIAL NOW

Joanne Camarce

Joanne Camarce grows and strategizes B2B marketing and PR efforts @ codeless.io. She loves slaying outreach campaigns and connecting with brands like G2, Wordstream, Process Street, and others. When she's not wearing her marketing hat, you'll find Joanne admiring Japanese music and art or just being a dog mom.

Published November 20, 2023

Recent blog posts