Taxonomy: Keeping Your Digital Marketing Organized

Being organized is essential for all digital marketing campaigns. The further you dive into digital marketing, the more files, data, and projects you’ll deal with. To make the most of all of your content, you must organize it effectively.

Sticking to naming conventions that ensure consistency is just one aspect of the marketing organization. If you want to actually automate processes and use data for actionable results, you must adhere to strategic taxonomy.

Taxonomy is all about how you organize your content, and it definitely requires some discipline. However, a thorough taxonomy structure is a key ingredient for an organized digital marketing strategy.

Here we dive deeper into the concept of data taxonomy and how you can leverage it for all of your marketing needs.

What is Data Taxonomy?

Taxonomy is probably not the first word that comes to mind when thinking about marketing, but it is a very important concept. We may be most familiar with taxonomy in the sciences, as it’s used to organize organisms into groups. However, the same organizational structure also applies to marketing data.

In digital marketing, data taxonomy is used to classify your data into categories and subcategories. The taxonomy draws on your naming conventions to introduce shared meanings for specific terminologies.

Naming conventions are the high-level names you give your campaign, and taxonomy is the classification of your data into predetermined standardized categories and subsets.

For example, a file may be named 20210725–JamesBDocument-V01, but if that file was just in a massive folder it would still be hard to locate and keep track of. Taxonomy would involve organizing the file by hierarchy. That file may be in a folder named “JamesB” (client name), then in a subfolder with the specific campaign title, and potentially even another subfolder with the type of content.

What This Means for Content Marketing Taxonomy

Taxonomy is an incredibly important strategy for content marketing. It simplifies the process of naming, organizing, tagging, and tracking content.

Undoubtedly, content marketing taxonomy improves findability. It streamlines the process of finding any necessary files or information. You, your team, your client, and anyone else who is looking for the piece of content can reliably find it when you organize your data with taxonomy.

Furthermore, content marketing taxonomy has many other key benefits including:

  • Assess if the content is aligned with the primary goals.
  • Identify gaps in the content.
  • Which areas require updating.
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses in content to aid future content creation.
  • Speeds up the process of revamping or updating old content.
  • Streamlines the process of repurposing content for different channels.
  • Automate data associations with tags.
  • Guides website content organization.

Despite its importance, content marketing taxonomy is vastly underutilized. A well-organized taxonomy can simplify content marketing, making it more efficient and easier to stay on top of.

Digital Marketing Taxonomy

Taxonomy should serve your organization and goals. To get the best digital marketing taxonomy, you should use these helpful tips to create your own:
  • Get everyone on the same page: Taxonomy doesn’t work if Gina from social media marketing is on a different page than Jim from website development. Get the whole team on board with creating a winning classification system.
  • Determine naming conventions: How you name your content plays a huge role in how you organize it. Use this helpful guide to determine your naming conventions. Go back and rename any old content following the conventions.
  • Choose categories: Categories should be linked to the goals and priorities of your organization. If you are a marketing agency, it makes sense to use the client name as the broadest category for any work. For example, if GreenLights, AthletiPod, and Vverver are all clients, they would each be a separate category with a distinct folder. However, if you are only focusing on your own digital marketing efforts, then the first category may be different.
  • Selecting tags: Tags can be used to cover all topics that a piece of content relates to. Tags are usually connected with keywords and phrases. You can use multiple tags on a piece of content. Examine your existing content to come up with tags.
  • Create a guide: To ensure consistency and help your team stay on track, create a guide to your taxonomy. Team members can easily reference the guide to determine how to organize content.
  • Update existing content: Go through existing content and apply the taxonomy. Yes, this is a tedious process but it is well worth the effort!
  • Audit content with the taxonomy: Once you’ve organized the existing content, you will be able to better identify strengths and weaknesses in content. This can help you determine the direction for upcoming content.
  • Monitor and adjust: The taxonomy that works best for your organization may change over time. Monitor your process and check-in with your team. This will help you make any necessary changes.

Engage 2 Engage is Here to Help

Taxonomy is one of the most important strategies for keeping your digital marketing efforts organized. More than that, it can help you increase the efficacy of your marketing efforts. An organized strategy is much quicker and easier to evaluate and adjust. Despite the importance of content marketing taxonomy, it’s something many marketers struggle with.

Understandably, creating and implementing an effective marketing taxonomy can be quite challenging. Engage 2 Engage is here to help! Our experienced team has the expertise to help you with marketing taxonomy and organization. Learn more about our programs and how you can benefit today!

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