You’ve just organized the perfect company event. Everyone has complimented you, and you’ve managed to bring the whole team together and help them forge a stronger bond. As a result, you’ve got tons of awesome photos showing just how much fun everyone had. Now comes the next question — how do you make the most of those photos? After all, the smart thing to do is to use them as promotional material. They’re the perfect way to showcase your company culture to new recruits and the outside world. However, you’ve probably got tons of material from your last conference event — certainly more than you can use at once. With that in mind, your next step is to create a database with the photos and videos. It needs to be easy to browse so you can quickly pull specific resources from it in the future. If you’re unfamiliar with organizing photos and videos for business events, read on to learn more!
Digitize Old Footage & Photos
If you want to use old photos or videos from before digital cameras were the norm, that’s fine too. In fact, it’s a great way to highlight the long history of your company.
However, before you start organizing these photos and videos, you need to convert them to a digital format. With photos, you may use a scanner if your firm has one. But, if you’re not a professional photographer, mistakes are likely — ultimately reducing the quality of the digital version of the photos.
You’ll also need additional equipment to convert videos from old VHS tapes. At the end of the day, doing it yourself is simply not worth the hassle. Luckily, video and photo conversion services are affordable nowadays. When considering the cost of conversion, outsourcing this time-intensive and sensitive task is the reasonable way to go.
Naturally, if you only have newer material, it’s probably already digitized. In that case, you can move on to organizing photos and videos properly.
Organize File Categories
Regardless of whether you keep corporate videos and photos in cloud storage or on a local hard drive, they’ll be organized in a folder-based system.
To create an orderly folder system, start by placing all your materials in one huge folder. Then, consider which subcategories you can create to organize them better. Remember, the goal is to make an intuitive system that makes it easy to find specific photos and videos at any time.
How you choose these categories is up to you and depends on the specifics of your company. Take a look at the event itself and the materials for inspiration.
For instance, if most of the photos focus on individual people or teams, create categories based on who is in the photo. On the other hand, if specific moments during the event stand out, create folders based on that — like award speeches, for example.
Maybe the event venue is unique in some way, or was your company’s branding there particularly present? In that case, organize files according to different venue angles and highlights.
The list goes on — but you get the idea. Think of the central things your footage and photos revolve around, and make subfolders based on that. You can also organize them according to the purpose of the materials. For example, you can put materials for your website in one folder and photos for a company brochure in another.
Organizing By Date
Are you planning on adding new professional photos to your database regularly? In that case, consider organizing photos and videos by date as well. If there’s a regular corporate event on an annual basis that you want to document, add the year (or complete date) before the folder name:
- 2024_CorporateEvent
Also, avoid renaming folders and files once you’ve assigned the initial name. Consistency is key here to make searching via keywords or crucial dates easier. Once you’ve got this framework up and running, adding new materials will be fast and easy.
Always Make Backups
We can’t overstate how important this is — always back up your photos and videos. No system is infallible, including cloud storage platforms. Sure, the dispersed nature of cloud storage means technical malfunctions aren’t as likely as with a local hard disk. However, you never know when your service provider might suffer a hacker attack or go out of business — potentially resulting in heaps of lost materials.
With that in mind, make at least one backup of all your company photos and videos. If your main folders are on the company’s local network or in the cloud, keep a copy of everything on your company computer.
Wrapping Up
With a systemic approach to organizing photos and videos for your business, you won’t have trouble keeping and finding materials from all company events. To be extra safe, make backups regularly — and you’ll always have media content for branding and promotions!
Author bio:
Emily Parker is a digital media specialist and event strategist with over a decade of experience helping businesses capture and showcase their brand stories. She is passionate about creating organized systems for preserving memories and maximizing the impact of visual content in the corporate world.