Keep it short
brevity is the soul of a good abbreviation strategy
Building an agreed upon abbreviation structure is vital to the success of the larger DAM strategy. Consistent, topical, approved and shared abbreviation lists can keep your asset names succinct, tag library free of near-duplicates and folder structure searchable.
Abbreviations should be:
consistent
topical
approved
shared
How can you ensure your abbreviations are consistent? In some cases, you need to go outside your company or even industry to a trusted universal source. When putting together a tag library, we wanted to ensure the language and country abbreviations were universal. What’s more universal than the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) lists for language and country codes, along with other useful standards depending on your industry. I have also used Andiamo for the more popular languages, Abbreviations.com to double check (more of a wild west there, check out the 45 options for DAM), plus countless more for specific fields like medicine, photography, history, government, media, law…if you have a word, someone has made it shorter.
As for topical, that might hit a little closer to home. Just like when building a naming strategy or getting user buy-in, look to your teams across silos to discover any business jargon that will need to be abbreviated. That could include project names, areas of content, department codes or anything specific to your business of company.
Next up: get your abbreviation lists approved. Take the information you have gathered and add it to tabs in a spreadsheet that can be edited or expanded as your areas of abbreviation increase. Once you have made a first pass, invite stakeholders to review and approve the structure. Set up time monthly or quarterly to continue the conversation and keep it current.
Finally, abbreviations can only be valuable if they are shared and used by as many people as possible on your project and beyond. If you have some team members using en-uk instead of en-gb for English (United Kingdom) it is understandable but incorrect. If some teammates prefer prof instead of pro to abbreviate profile, no one is incorrect but the abbreviation sheet can let them know which has been approved and select that one. I liken it to US postal codes - you could argue that MS could be used for either Massachusetts, Missouri or Mississippi, but only one will get your package to the right destination. Help your team deliver (ha!) by giving them the right abbreviations.