A well-built digital asset management taxonomy is a game-changer that helps to find any digital assets in no time. At its core, a digital asset taxonomy is the organization, categorization, and classification of brand assets for end-users of DAM software. It includes metadata and a controlled vocabulary of descriptive terms to tag and organize assets. The two main types are nested taxonomy and flat taxonomy.
A nested taxonomy features a hierarchy of parent categories with multiple levels of subcategories, resembling a computer folder structure or Google Drive. Users access subfolders by navigating through parent folders and high-level subfolders. E.g., images for social media posts. In other words, to access some nested folders, you need to manually click through all the folders on the top level. Such an approach is both inconvenient and time-consuming.
On the other hand, a flat structure in taxonomy supports multi-faceted searching, allowing users to apply any combination of facets or filters to refine their results. This approach is more modern and offers greater flexibility in searching for digital assets.
Flat taxonomy shines in digital asset management (DAM) systems - digital assets can be located in multiple folders at the same time and there's no need to create duplicates in different folders. In DAM, you can use keywords and other metadata to search for files faster and easier.
Let's talk about the same marketing assets we’ve mentioned when explaining nested taxonomy. Imagine you’re looking for the image used in yesterday’s Instagram post. For this, you only need to type the keywords “Instagram” and “post” in the search bar and choose file format - images in this case.
In the results, you will see all the images with these tags, which makes search much, much easier. There’s no need to go through multiple folders navigating to that one collection Instagram posts 2023, for instance.
What’s more, this picture can have other tags, like “newsletter” or “September 2023 Ads”, which makes it even more searchable. With all these keywords combined, other teams and users can easily access and use the same image.
A strong taxonomy structure gives users the ability to navigate through categories and utilize a search bar powered by descriptive terms (tags, keywords), making the asset retrieval process a breeze. So, whether you’re setting up your first DAM system, switching from another solution, or optimizing your current structure, investing time and effort into building a well-designed taxonomy will pay dividends in the long run.
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