Maintaining a well-branded web presence seems to be the largest enigma of the past few years. If you have video on the internet and have the incessant need to establish a strong brand without selling your soul to Oprah like Dr. Phil did, then you too realize that there must be another option!

Many will deny, often with exceptional conviction, that they need help in creating a brand for their business. The business of online video. No, you don’t need people to truly know what the name of your show is. Surely, you would never want to monetize off your content. Nor, would you, want to sell accompanying merchandise. Those simple ideas of business are for someone more traditional, pretentious, stuffy and downright uptight! Never would “new media” types want to profit, they’re pioneers of the future! Oh, wait! Yeah, they do, they call me every week wanting me to pay, exorbitantly mind you, for their self-absorbed, egomaniacal, and wholly thoughtless show. Many new media amateurs aren’t wanting to be fairly compensated for their hard work of creative arts, they want to extort you, for everything you’re worth.

Amongst my rant though, let me clarify, there are many new media types who produce quality content that are worthy of making large, ridiculously, risible amounts of money, hopefully in Euro rather than the weakening US Dollar.

Having a destination, a place to call home, where it is all about you and your brand is so vitally important. It seems so distant of a business practice; to create strong brands. Many consider their business model to “just be viral” and money will roll through the door eventually. A business model as such, would be so eerily ridiculous if it didn’t work for a select few of talented, creative and just plain lucky individuals. But as this industry wanes on, the possibility for daft, fatuous programming to succeed closes rapidly. Many say the industry is sick, fatally ill from a lack of traction in the market. Traction has been achieved no doubt, strong branding has yet to be so lucky.

Having all media viral or social seems to create a problem while solving another. Everyone knows, or should know by now, that you should have a social strategy/plan for your company and most definitely for you video/brand. The problem begins when you tell people where to go to consume your brand. What address do you give them? YouTube, WordPress, Ning, Shopify, Revver, Flickr, FeedBurner, etc.? Many think their brand is truly only their video, however, branding is so much more than just a “video.” For instance, if you have an off-road video show you produce, don’t you really have an off-road brand? Isn’t there more to your business than just a video? There are blogs, articles, community, syndications, advertisements, photos and e-commerce. There are probably some I missed here as well. How do you execute each of those effortlessly, without failure, while maintaining your social presence? Without failure may be difficult but let’s try all of the above mentioned with embarrassing, disappointing failure mixed in. How do you manage it all?

Sure you could use Content Management Systems (CMS) that are popular and even modify a blog engine but what about those not technically savvy, those who haven’t embraced technology, you know those who don’t know how to send a simple text message. They are continually, thoroughly confused as to why you would want to type a message on such a small keyboard to someone rather than just call them. How do these people thrive in this industry? The are talented, creative, experts in their field who are branching out, exploring, pioneering into this seemingly ‘Gold Rush’ times of online video. Don’t they deserve the same opportunity as the perverted, pimply-faced thirteen year old who films his friends kicking each other in the ‘below the belt’ zone? As the industry matures I believe it will be harder for geeks to become creative content creators as technology begins to consolidate in order to help content creators to have the same power as the geeks but without the lonely nights and flats of Mountain Dew.

Now, some might want to point out to me, many pompously, pontifically haughty, how important social media/interaction is in our world today. My feeble mind, in all of its simplicities, have not overlooked the importance of social media. Hell, everything should be social these days! If you don’t interact with your audience today, you won’t have them tomorrow. But there is a colossal need for some sort of “point of origin,” what did we all call them a few years ago while describing web sties before “Web 2.0” became the oh, so tiresome cliche, ah, I remember now, “destination sites.” There must be a home for your audience, scratch that, audience is so corporate, your die-hard fans, those who live for your new release every waking moment. You remember them, you know, those who make those grueling hours of veritable horrors we call art, worth every moment. What is that called again? That’s right, validation. It’s our fans, those who love us at our best time and at our most embarrassing times. Where is their home? Why should they live on twelve different networks just to embrace your creative prowess? Don’t you owe them something more? Sure they love scouring YouTube for your video, hitting up Ning, posting bulletins on MySpace and even moderating a group on Facebook but how is that a sustainable business?

There is an obvious need for consolidation and management, a need to have your “home” and your social outreach. But where do you go to get this service needed? Very few companies provide this, at least for the smaller, growing companies. I feel with roughly three-quarters of United States broadband users consuming videos online I believe it is important for service to become available. A select few companies should rise who can do for online video what Salesforce.com did for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by offering a platform as a service, something that can be built upon. This is an area we (Global Independent Media Productions, Inc. or GIMP) have been working on silently for the past two years. Now, I’m not into completely pimping out my company, however, I think you should know that we have been thinking about these issues. I know there are many seemingly, well-built platforms that can be built upon and modified but I’m not talking about complete adaption. I’m speaking more of a Salesforce.com model, they do CRM well, very well, probably the best, if you live in sales then this company is for you but every industry and sub-group of an industry is different. They made a platform for industries and sub-groups to build upon. There should be a platform for the entertainment industry to build upon and not the big studios, they already have them. Whether you like it or not you reside in the entertainment industry, you may be talking about the geekiest of things but you are still providing entertainment.

So, now you ask yourself, “Ok Justin, I get it, now what?”

Well, I didn’t get that far but here are some helpful hints to help your destination/social balance.

1. Setup a release schedule (Week 1 @ Destination, Week 2 @ YouTube, Week 3 @ everywhere)
2. Don’t wait for advertisers to come, format your show for free and premium models. (Your fans will gladly pay you for your talent, pimp the free content everywhere)
3. Sell accompanying merchandise (AskANinja does this well, sells DVDs)
4. Partner with a Network (I know, it sounds like I’m recanting my previous statements, continue to have a home but partnering with a network often enables you platform, structure and most importantly more fans.)
5. Talk to your fans constantly (If you don’t respond to every piece of communication, they will eventually move on, that is the downside to social media and the internet, more opportunity presents more choices for media.)
6. Stop changing your destination site or telling everyone to move over to the new social media site that just came live or is now passing out invites. (People get comfortable in one or two spots and as you move your focus to other places you will inevitably lose traction which you worked so hard to gain.)
7. Love what you do (Sounds simple but you need to love what you do in order to addictively keep up with every aspect of your business.)

We (GIMP) were out filming a nice little piece for Ford on the Explorer today, we were doing some great driving shots. When shooting driving scenes it is always about safety first, even though you are driving at relatively low speeds (always looks faster on camera) you can still damage the vehicle or worse get injured.

There are so many things to watch out for when filming a driving scene here’s 7 quick ones to consider:

1. Where are you driving? (Terrain, Temperature, Climate Conditions, Sun Rise/Set)
2. What are the capabilities of the vehicle (Is it 2WD, AWD or 4×4)
3. What shots are needed (Close, High-Speed, Wide, Epic Landscape)
4. Don’t hit other vehicles or your chase vehicle (Makes people hurt inside)
5. Plan, plan, plan and plan more (These situations are prime for a small mistake to result in huge injury)
6. Don’t drive near hunters (There angry, there old and they all look like Dick Cheney aiming for you)

Yes, don’t get near hunters, today we were filming some of our principal photography which consists of nice wide shots driving through the mountains and a little off-roading using the 4×4 abilities. While filming there was a small group of local hunters out and about shooting quail or some other small bird. (Isn’t quail illegal to shoot in California?) Well, they saw us driving around on what was apparently their property (there was confusion as we thought we had the rights) and they started shooting towards us. This isn’t the first time, which makes me wonder “Where the hell do I live that we get shot at when filming?” So, to say the least, we got off their land rather quickly and sat on the public road filming them, hoping they would shoot again at us causing Michael (who was filming) to get grazed on the shoulder providing great YouTube video. It’s not that we’re gusty, I guess it is because after filming for some time in these type of situations you become accustom to it and embrace it. The situation, not the bullets hopefully.

All this to say, when filming indie style, like we all do nowadays, it is important to watch your surroundings and be alert as to any crazy, orange-touting, garb wearing, face shooting (Cheney) hicks who think you’re a better target than their most precious illegal to shoot (I think) quail.

Be safe!

This time writer Robert Elisberg writes a little bit more about GIMP in the Huffington Post, enjoy.

Robert J. Elisberg made mention of GIMP.tv in his article published in the Huffington Post. Please go read and comment.

I like CES, it is a place for geeks of all kinds to gather, awe, buy, sell, be surprised and/or be utterly disappointed. We (GIMP) booth at CES because it helps our business, as many times as I’ve been told that boothing at CES is not only a waste of time but a waste of money, I can’t help but think they are wrong. We get the majority of our business contacts, deals and empty promises from CES. It is one of the longest weeks we have amongst the tradeshow circuit we hit. We arrive on Sunday and leave on Thursday night or Friday morning. When we get home I don’t know how many people want to know how it went and what new deals we came back with. After talking non-stop for a week straight, telling I don’t know how many thousands of people what we did, giving that damn pitch so many times it makes you loath it by the end of the week.

I spoke with many people saying that they are going to opt out of CES for 2009 and focus more on MacWorld as they feel more innovation is coming out of the Apple arena than any other industry. I have to say that I slightly disagree with that, most people love Apple because it’s pretty and sleek. Apple fully accomplishes that with every product/software release, they excitingly astonish everyone every time. There is innovation at CES but other companies do not market effectively or show off how amazing their product really is.

One word of advice to those speaking with exhibitors, don’t argue with them on why they chose the spot they did, or why podcasting is dead or why new media isn’t podcasting or how you can only think of some weird sexual character in a Tarantino flick when you see our company name. We don’t care why you think whether our spot is good or bad, what you think about podcasting vs. new media or how GIMP only reminds you of Pulp Fiction. This isn’t to say we don’t care about what you think but at a show where we are talking continuously for five days please don’t make me talk to you hurting my throat on a useless conversation.

When we booth at any tradeshow we feel it is only necessary to go talk to your neighbors and see how they are doing and if there is anyway we can help them. It always helps your cause when lost people always find your booth from a neighboring exhibitor because they knowledgeable about what you do. We also make sure to return that favor as well. It is important to truly listen and help people. Business will come to you if you are helpful and a resource. We had some tradeshow newbies by us and they were always coming over asking questions. It was of no bother and we were glad to help them out. Many times large shows like that can be confusing because the amount of paperwork you receive every morning, badge issues and worst of all shipping issues. One of the newbies shipped something to arrive on Monday, it did not arrive until 3 hours before closing Thursday. It was a hard lesson to learn, they became bitter and angry and began to resent coming to CES saying they got nothing by exhibiting.

I feel often it is important that you are able to make your connections/deals without the use of literature, presentations, products, etc. It is YOU that sells anyone on what you do, not your tri-fold!

Overall, I feel CES worked very well for us, however, that being said we may choose a different section to be in as the Podcasting TechZone only had 2 other companies representing besides us. 2008 will really be the test to see how well CES 2008 worked for us.

What do you think about tradeshows? What makes them successful for exhibitors? How do you measure success?