If you’re a fan of Netflix or have been browsing social media outlets lately, then you’ve probably heard about the new Netflix show, “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo”. Thanks to this show, and the growing trend of ‘decluttering,’ Americans are starting to get rid of all that extra ‘stuff’ at an impressive rate. In fact, NPR reported that many thrift stores are becoming swamped due to the increase in donations.
It sounds quite cathartic, right? To get rid of all that excess stuff and free up some room in your home. Well, what if you could do that for your Google Drive too? If you use Google Drive to manage brand assets for your business, then it’s likely that you could use a little refining in terms of organization.
By efficiently organizing your Google Drive, you can save precious time locating files when you need them. This is essential to generate content with speed and to avoid using the wrong assets.
So, if you need some assistance tidying up your brand assets, allow us to be the Marie Kondo to your Google Drive. Here are 5 simple tips and tricks for organizing your brand assets on Google Drive efficiently.
There are two types of Google Drive users: A.) Those who use way too many folders and B.) Those who don’t use nearly enough folders. With the former, it can be difficult to track a specific asset if you have folders that can be grouped together, but are not. For example, having two separate folders for Facebook and Instagram assets. With the latter, you’re probably spending too much time scrolling for an asset in a sea of other files.
Your Google Drive should look like a nice, tidy, and well-organized closet that uses ‘folders’ instead of shelves or hangers. You have your pants hung up together (pants folder), your work shirts next to each other (work shirt folder), your jackets side-by-side (jacket folder), and hats stacked on the shelf up top (hat folder).
Your Google Drive should look just like that, with folders for social media assets, email assets, website assets, and so on and so forth. When it comes to folders for your Google Drive, start with broad categorizations so that anyone in your organization can find what they need. When you need to get more specific, that’s where subfolders come into play.
Sticking with the closet analogy, within each of your ‘folders’ you can have a subfolder as well. Let’s say in your closet you have all your button shirts lined up together. You could create a subfolder based on how heavy each shirt is. For example, all your heavier button flannels may be on the left side and as you move to the right, they become lighter and lighter. That way, you can easily find the shirt style you want based on the weather.
With Google Drive, you can get much more specific and detailed when it comes to your subfolders. Within any given folder, you can create multiple subfolders to narrow down assets. Going back to our social media example, let’s say you create a “Social Media Assets” folder. Within that folder, you can create a “Facebook Assets,” “Instagram Assets,” “Twitter Assets,” etc.
For those who like to visually organize your belongings, Google Drive also allows you to arrange your folders based on colors: green for marketing, blue for sales, red for creative, etc. So, just like you might organize your clothes by color, you can organize your brand assets this way as well. However, you should still make sure you are descriptive in naming assets and folders. Which brings us to our next tip…
Your file and folder names should follow the same structure throughout your drive. You should use dates, version numbers, departments, clients, and other variables in the names of your Google Drive files.
For example: RedAcreBrewery20191221BrandLogo
For more tips and tricks on file names, check out our File Naming Best Practices for Asset Management post.
When Google Drive isn’t enough, turn to MediaBeacon digital asset management (DAM) to make your assets easy to find. With a DAM, you can attach metadata to your assets to make them searchable by dictionary and thesaurus terms, color, file type, association to other assets, and more. Our services team can help set up the DAM according to the specifications that work best for your company. Request a free demo today!
