Drop video-sharing site opposition

New numbers from Pew Internet and American Life Project show that 48 percent of online users visited a video-sharing site in 2007, up from just 33 percent in 2006. That sort of adoption means we’re well beyond early adopters and are into the mainstream. People have figured out how to watch videos, how to add them to their Facebook profiles, how to put them on their own blogs or simply how to email a link to a friend who might also enjoy that video.

Now to be sure not all of these visitors are going to YouTube. Some are going to FunnyorDie. Some are going to Blip.tv. Some are going to PodTech. Some are going to Break. Some are going to Revver. Some are going to Viddler. I could go on and on, but you get the idea: There are a lot of video sharing sites out there.

Studios and TV networks often decide where and when to upload videos to sharing sites based, seemingly, on one or both of two factors. Either it’s because the site is owned by the same corporate parent as the studio or it’s because the video is deemed to be “important” enough for distribution online. Both of these reasons only serve to limit the reach of the videos and so need to be discarded in favor or these two overriding mindsets:

Go all in: If you have video, get it out there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a trailer, a TV spot, a promotional video, a behind-the-scenes interview or anything else. The rule of the Long Tail is fully in effect here. There will be an audience for it if it’s made available. It might be a small audience, but often that small audience is made up of people who are passionately engaged and who are going to think that video, if I might sound like a YouTube commenter here for a moment, rocks. Showing that you, as a corporate entity, are committed to making a wide variety of material available online also establishes you as an important resource for the audience, creating some of that elusive positive brand association so many brand managers are always chasing after.
Go all out: Don’t let the fact that you have a video-sharing site as a corporate sibling influence your uploading strategy. If that site, for instance, only enjoys a market share of 13 percent, the reach of your video is going to be a subset of that subset. Here’s a number you should remember instead: 100%. That’s how many people who use video sharing sites have visited a video sharing site. With the sheer number that are out there it makes sense to put videos on as many sites as possible so that wherever people are – something they determine and not you – they can find your content. And don’t let the notion of uploading the same video multiple times discourage you. There are sites like TubeMogul that allow you to upload the same video to multiple sites simultaneously so it doesn’t add unnecessarily to your workload.

Look at what CBS and, to some extent, other networks have done. CBS realized it was getting little to no traction on CBS.com with its streaming primetime shows. So it cut deals with Joost, Brightcove, AOL and other online outlets to distribute its programming, an admission that it’s more important that people see the content at all then that CBS.com get pageviews. Considering CBS’ livelihood depends on building viewership of shows the strategy makes sense. Demanding they visit the homepage would have continued a slide into irrelevancy.

Studios need to think the same way when it comes to distributing their trailers and other promotional videos (we’ll address actually movie distribution later) or they risk that same fate. So many choices await the online audience that they’re able to build their own media experience from a multitude of options. If you haven’t made yourself part of as many of those options as possible your message won’t just be ignored by the audience, it will never have reached them in the first place.