Video can be amazingly efficient in communication. When properly done, it is decisively the best way to convey a message today.

However, there are times when you should NOT make a video.

Ask yourself the following questions. If you don’t have clear and fairly decisive answers, hold off on writing that script or hiring a videographer.

–Do you have a story? What are you trying  to convey to your audience and what’s the angle or framework you are starting from? (I.e. If you’re hungry, go to my restaurant. If you want to laugh, watch my show, etc.)

–Do you have an audience in mind? Even if you end up being wrong, having an audience in mind for you message will help you craft and hone it

–Do you know where you’ll put the video when you’re done? If you say “just my website” you should have a really good reason as wh you would limit the exposure to just one distribution point. Having a larger distribution plan that you can monitor and gauge success with will help you reach your goals and learn more about where your target audience lives and consumes content

However, rushing to make a video can be a huge mistake. You need to think through the purpose and message of the video and decide to dedicate the appropriate budget to the project.

The funny thing is that while the tools to make video have become cheaper and more accessible, it still doesn’t change the fact that the actual process of making a video is a craft that must be learned by experience.

If you  want a message from someone in your office then using an iPhone or a cheap camera can work, but it can easily come out poorly produced. A bad video is worse than having no video at all.

The point? Seeking professional help can never hurt.

We thought we could definitely help.

Then we got to see the video.

While it was extremely well produced, its focus was on selling the viewer on a product. Actually, it was a hard sale for the product.

The video wasn’t the problem though. Content like that can be necessary and effective to close gaps in information for a potential buyer and lead them to a purchase.

The problem was what the client initially wanted, a distribution game plan.

This video was so focused on the last stage of the sales cycle that its only natural home was on the product’s purchase page. Putting it “in the wild” on video portals (like YouTube) felt very forced and the message was flat, if not abrasive to the viewer.

What was needed was a video that spoke to the pains that the product solved, thus creating a dialog with a potential buyer. From there, the viewer of the video could opt into the next step: visiting a site with a more focused message on how product X could solve the problem.

Somewhere on that site is where this video belonged. When we did distribute it outside of their site, the view counts were low and the conversion to a a sale was non-existent.

The two take-aways here:

1) Think about who you want to talk to and what part of the sales cycle they are at. Then tailor your video (if not multiple videos) to them.

2) Think about where that message lives and how your potential customers will react to it.

It’s easy to come up with a great pitch, and getting superb production value at an affordable cost is readily available, but those two things won’t add up to a sale unless you’re putting the right message in the right place.

However, what they don’t do is “everything.” They have a niche, a focus, a strength.

What’s fascinating to me is understanding, even in simple concepts, what they do. Even more interesting is then trying to explain that to the next person who doesn’t get it at all (teaching is learning after all, right?.)

Often, they don’t want to get it. Why? Because, they’re great at what they do and they just want to get better at that thing… and that is totally OK.

To me, it is fascinating to learn new things. I feel I can say that for myself and everyone here at uStudio.

When I realized that, I realized that is uStudio’s niche, our focus and our strength. In all things video, we want to learn and strive to understand. Next, we’ll build awesome tools to turn knowledge into action.

Finally, we want to teach it to you — as much or as little as you’d like to know.

As far as video consumption goes there are two very interesting tidbits in the report. First, that 9% of those surveyed had canceled their cable bills and cut the cord. More interesting is that an additional 11% are considering it. Through a variety of new content platforms and new devices to consume them on, more and more people are realizing they can do without that hefty monthly bill.

Industry site ReelSEO, has a great point — sports programming is the lynchpin that keeps people on cable. If more sports programming was available online, you would see a substantial increase in those both cutting the cord and thinking about it as well.

At the same time, Cable services are highly valued. To make sense of these seemingly opposing trends, you have to overlay the data and get a picture of the “new media” consumer. Just because these consumers are cutting cable or thinking about it doesn’t mean that they don’t value cable. Simply put, most people are keeping their cable bills, but the amount of time spent watching media from streaming media is surging. It’s not a simple either-or proposition anymore. One Monday night, a “new media” consumer might watch football on their cable service, Tuesday a movie on Netflix, Wednesday a sit-com during its initial broadcast, but Thursday is catching up on an old series on Hulu.

One last piece of data, that is food for thought if you haven’t begun thinking about how to get your content into the appropriate digital streaming platforms, in 2009 only 28% of people streamed movies. In 2011, that number jumbed to 42%. Don’t be surprised if that number doubles again over the next two years. If that percentage is streaming movies, think of the substantial audience available for streaming all kinds of content there is.

Now is the time to start getting your content digitized and available through as many appropriate content platforms as possible. Those who don’t may face the painful reality of playing catch-up in an incredible diverse and complex environment.

Boy, did I hate the end of the month. I’d visit each site, whip out a calculator, add up all the views across all the videos on each site manually, write that number down on paper (gross!) and then repeat the process until I had accounted for each place any video I was in charge of was.

After that exercise was done I was exhausted. I didn’t care about much else other than the fact I had the numbers I was seeking in the first place.

When I first started using uStudio to manage and publish I knew that the pain of wrangling all that data would go away. Lo, it did, but there was an unexpected consequence.

Instead of just being relieved that I didn’t have to do this exhaustive manual thing, I found I had the time and energy to ask questions. Questions like, “Why did this video perform better on this site and not on the next?” and “Why does this keyword attract views, but this one doesn’t?”

It allowed me to evolve from simply managing videos to creating a feedback loop that improved how I was producing, describing and where I was publishing my videos.

Making a process efficient makes everyone feel like they’ve saved time. The true benefit is that it allows you to do a better job at what you intended to do in the first place.

While Steve Jobs finally figured out television (presumably with a voice activated TV guide), Sony CEO Howard Stringer also had his “A-ha” moment and has quietly built a content eco-system over four screens (laptops, tablets, phones, television.)

Shame on me for not including Sony in my blog-post a few weeks ago. With over 18,000,000 Playstations sold in the U.S., there is a nice opportunity here for them if they can get the content deals done.

There are some bare minimum things you need to do, like understanding your target audience and where they consume media the most.

Then there are the table stakes, which is posting a video on your site and also to YouTube (partially for views, but primarily for SEO benefits.)

But there is no turn-key answer regarding where you should place your content. Take some time, think through your goals, make baseline distribution plan and then add new destinations as needed.

In software, many people use agile development to build their products. This means they do little pieces of the work every week rather than saying, “This is all going to be done on day X.”

That same approach applies to video distribution. Create a basic distribution strategy based on informed decisions, then add new destinations as they become viable.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to make changes to that plan. Keywords, titles, and even the places you are distributing to can all be altered and modified.

Don’t try to do everything at once!

Let’s look at each of them.

Apple: Has a great closed environment and solid content deals with most providers for their iTunes store. Will that carry over with the release of their TV set? Will this foray sound off alarm bells at cable companies if Apple starts gobbling up content deals for a TV set with broadcasters like Disney, Fox, Scripps, etc.? They should be going off now, in my opinion. Food Network? There’ll be an app for that.

Amazon: How well the Kindle Fire tablet sells and performs will be telling of how well Amazon can penetrate the streaming video market and compete with both Apple and Netflix. They have the deep pockets to sustain competitive pricing on the Fire and with an ever-growing library of streaming content available pretty much anywhere, I think Amazon is poised to really heat this space up after years of dominance by Apple.

Facebook: I know it seems odd to add Facebook here, but they are very relevant to this conversation. Video is a social medium. People like to watch videos that their friend like and share. That recommendation is inherently more valuable than a search engine result which has zero taste. As online video consumption grows, Facebook is poised to play an integral role and may even become more relevant as time goes on. Their pay per view experiment seems to have been lackluster (based on the fact no one has really talked about it for a long time), but after opening up and allowng video embeds into the site, Facebook cemented itself as part of the discovery and consumption eco-system of online video.

Google: With the launch of Google TV 2.0, it looks like Google has improved the product substantially. However, with Logitech getting burnt to a crisp over the first Google TV launch, I feel that it will be difficult to find a hardware company that will as gladly work under Google’s fairly stringent standards (you MUST have a QWERTY keyboard, for example.) Where Google really intends to disrupt the industry is with YouTube, who just announced a slate of professionally made programs for the site. Think of it as an online cable provider with content spanning any desired genre and most demographics. If they can continue to get the engagement out of their current audience with these new shows (many of which will be longer format) then, again, alarm bells should be going off at cable companies.

I’ve left out myriad players that have some part of the market, like Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Roku and more, but these four players seem to have emerged as the leaders in new media/internet video.

Will we look up in five years and have one of these four be dominant, will they all be on relatively equal ground (but with different pockets of consumers) or will someone else rise up that no one suspected?

That I can’t answer, but I sure am interested to find out!

Postscript: Interestingly enough, I wrote this on Wednesday this week and Thursday NPR released this story.

Also, here’s another interesting and relevant article on the subject.

I’m talking about OTT TV, which is an acronym for “Over The Top” television.

OTT is market-jargon for devices that deliver content to a television via an internet connection.

Xbox, Roku, Boxee, web-connected televisions, tablets, are all example of OTT devices.

Large and growing audiences are using these devices (especially tablets) daily to consume more and more of their content.

Does your video distribution strategy include ways to make sure your content can be seen where your audience wants to watch it?