Where Do All the Videos Go?

Video content is a great thing. Whether it be a 30-second viral video or a slick, magnificently produced corporate video, visual and audio content tells a story like no other medium.  We use video for everything from recreation to education and it has become our primary form of communication.
However, we have reached a stage where there is just too much for us to handle. For personal use, search engines do ok at finding public information. Normally when you search for something, you are willing to look at any video on the subject and are open to discovering new information and content. But if you own the video, your perspective changes. Producers of video content for a business, media company, or educational institution want to make sure that viewers are finding the right content in the way that fulfills your mission.

Questions You Should Ask

We manage video-based information for business purposes much like how we manage a library. Indexing and cataloguing form the backbone of any library. At any given time, you need to be able to take a look at your collection and be able to answer some fundamental questions about your content, like:

• How many books/videos do I have?
• When were they produced?
• How many do I have on each subject?
• Which items are the most popular?
• Which items are being ignored?
• Are there newer released versions that are more relevant/up-to-date that replace an existing version?
• In what other languages is this content available?
• What are the author and production company details?

And then there are the usage-related questions that have become even more important in the age of the Internet,  such as:

• What are people saying about the content?
• Who is creating the most content?
• Who is consuming the most content?
• How fast can new content reach the intended audience?
• What message is this content giving? Is it still a relevant one?
• How much money am I making/saving thanks to this content?
• How do I find new 3^rd party content?
• How do I control who can and cannot see my content?

If we take a step back and look at how video content is created and distributed, we see that these questions cannot always be answered. Videos and reactions to videos can appear multiple places—on organization YouTube channels, the Facebook page, other social media, customers’ reviews, or other websites that syndicate/share/link to the videos… and that is just the publicly available information.
Step inside the boundaries of a business entity and there are other videos, from knowledge sharing to CEO announcements, recorded meetings, and company events. All this information is often kept on desktops, or in random locations on the network or on the intranet somewhere. Very often,  there is pretty much little to no ownership.

The Case for Centralized Video Management

When storage was not as cheap as it is today, we could make the argument that by reducing duplicates, we are saving valuable storage space. That may not be the case today, but duplicates are still bad. Just ask the company that has decided to rebrand and, after all the effort of updating all their videos with the new branding, continues to find that old videos keep on popping up (much to the dismay of the marketing people!)
The missing piece of the puzzle that can make everything work in harmony is centralized video management.
When you only have a small quantity of video content, you do not really need any fancy equipment to organize your content. A central master location, a set of rules, and an approval process are enough to get you started. However, as the content starts growing daily, it can become more than a person can handle. Then, a centralized video management platform to help you maintain your video assets and provide you with the answers you need will become a valuable asset for preserving and maintaining your valuable information.
So the question is, do you know where your videos are and where they have been? Find out about our corporate video platform.