We find mapping things out is the only guaranteed way to arrive at the destination we want. And it’s the same with video content. If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, how can you stay on track? Before you start throwing ideas around, make sure you know what the point is. Know, too, that you need to create something good enough for people to actually want to watch it.

Three stages for a great Video:

1. Define your core video content strategy
   First up, it’s about finding the sweet spot where your viewers’ passions and your brand proposition meet. What do they want that you can give them? What unique content can you offer to earn their loyalty? Experience has taught us there are three main ways to make your audience care about your content: either inspire them with stories they can relate to; educate them with useful information; or entertain them with content that’s surprising, humorous or just plain brilliant.
2. Define your content creation strategy
   Decide how to generate your content and then how to structure it. For generating content you’ve got three main options. You can create it yourself, you can make it in collaboration, or you can curate and edit existing content.
   • Content is the hardworking content that’s there 365 days a year, pulling in new viewers by offering them relevant content around the terms they’re searching for.
   • Content is designed to entertain people and keep them coming back to you regularly. It should be updated periodically and encourage viewers to subscribe.
   • Content are made to drive mass awareness. It’s often centered around a product or event launch, and works by entertaining and inspiring viewers, usually using some form of storytelling.
3. Define your content distribution strategy
   Next you’ll need to think about how to distribute and market your content so it’s seen by as many of your target audience as possible. Again, this can be divided into three parts:
   • Store: It’s a good idea to have a bit of a content library – a central place to keep it stored and organized, where it’s always accessible to your audience.
   • Deliver: An editorial calendar will help you make sure you’re offering varied content all year round.
   • Market: To make sure your audience can find yours, you need a solid marketing strategy. The channels you’ll use will depend on your business and the type of content, but generally it’s about smart distribution among top influencers, blogs and social media; targeted advertising; and YouTube.

Client Benefits

A network assessment is essential in maintaining a healthy network environment. It provides the accurate information you need to make smart decisions about planned modifications or new technologies. It helps avoid surprises and helps provide early warning to so many hidden problems and issues lurking on the horizon. Most importantly, it provides you with a map and baseline from which to work. In addition, you can use the assessment report and consultation with our consultants to develop contingency plans for network weaknesses and vulnerabilities such as sudden bandwidth requirements. A network assessment should be performed on an annual basis or more frequently if events warrant it. The analysis is also helpful to spot trends, to plan and implement short-term preventive maintenance as well as long-term strategic action.

Typical Situations For An Assessment

• Network life event (merger/acquisition, relocation, migration, technology addition)
• Network expansion or modification
• Performance and reliability problems with applications, frame relay, routers or LAN/WAN
• E-business application implementation
• Bandwidth capacity planning for both applications and network transport
• Desire to decrease overall network cost
• Evaluating ASP, ISP or MSP options
• Need for independent validation of current infrastructure or future plans

Typical Scope of Assessment Services

• Interview IT and business managers and document business and user requirements
• Measure and document network performance and functionality
• Identify critical applications and vital data impacting the network
• Map network topology including protocols and logical drawing
• Analyze traffic pattern including utilization and throughput statistics
• Take inventory of network hardware, software, and skills
• Check routers and switch codes, logs, device errors, CPU and memory utilization

Deliverables
In our initial meeting we will work with you to co-develop the “Statement of Work” (SOW). The SOW articulates what the project deliverables are and also affirms that we have a clear understanding of what your expectations are.

Examples of deliverables are:

• Statement of Network Requirements documented to provide a road map for operational success
• Network discovery including: Topology map, local traffic pattern analysis, component level inventory, and router/switch assessment
• “State of Network Assessment Report” documenting our findings, identifying the gaps between actual design and user/business requirements and our recommendations
• Reports about network strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities
• Strategies to improve performance, reliability, availability and security
• An assessment of your overall networking capabilities which takes into consideration technology maturity, IT people skills, training, and IT processes
• Review of network design including topology, IP addressing, routing, security, physical/logical redundancy, and load balancing
• Identification of opportunities for network consolidation, simplification and cost reduction

Methodology
Network Assessment consists of four distinct phases:

Define – Definition of the business and user requirements for the network.
Discover – Discovery of devices on the network.  Engineers will gather high-level/global and protocol-specific statistics on the network.
Analyze – In the analysis phase a comparison of the network design to the business and user requirements is made. The result is a list of deltas.
Recommend – Working with the needs and problems identified in the analyze phase, our consultants focus on those that require prompt attention and have a significant impact on the network and the business. The recommendations are influenced by timeliness, ability to manage technology, cost, and future plans prior to Start of Session.

This process centric approach has meant that every project we undertake leverages on past experience to provide more value to our clients. Xtreme Network Consulting have identify the need for a process based development and testing approach. While well defined development processes existed for software development, the life cycle of a web site design project was largely a vague process at best. Below is a very brief description of our current web design process and project life cycle. The process undergoes a routine review and optimization in order to incorporate the company’s latest recommendations.

The stages consist of the following elements:

This stage is an information gathering and objective definition stage. It is vital that the goals are clearly defined both for the project and for the website in general. This stage will also involve decision making about vital element like what information and content is already available and what will need to be generated or procured. Also decision will be taken about the most optimal way of presenting the information within sections (also known as a sitemap). This stage will see a lot of consulting and advice from Xtreme Network Consulting in regards to what more can be done with a website, besides just putting up an online brochure. This stage would be complete once both parties sign off on the goals and objectives.

This stage consists of a brainstorming session to arrive at ideas to best achieve the objectives as defined in the Scope stage. The stage will produce several elements that will later form the basis of the web site. A few examples of these elements are:

• Wireframes – Architectural diagram representing a page
• Prototype – Visual sample of a page, either on paper or on screen with no interactivity
• Briefs – Documents the project, audience, goals, and objectives as well as describes how the design addresses these issues
• Comps- Mock-up pages showing how the Web site will look, offering several options (from color schemes to layout)
• Flow – Process diagram showing the how the Web pages connect to each other
• Sketches- Informal hand-drawn drawings to brainstorm the layout of a Web page. Sketches has been used to mean the same thing as prototype (if needed)

Also the timelines and deliverables thereof are defined and agreed upon in this stage for the entire project. Client tasks are allocated for procuring and providing assets like company logo graphic, internal photographs and voids are identified and alternative plans are made.

This stage involves producing sample sketches of the homepage for the perusal of the client. We will also decide on the hosting options best suited for the stated goals (as defined in Scope stage). We will work with the feedback proved by the client (in an iterative fashion) to further refine the sketches and arrive at a final layout. A skeleton (blank but clickable site) of the inner pages will be developed based on the main page design.
This stage will also consist of populating the site with relevant content. The content will be obtained in consultation with the client. However minor optimizations will be carried out on the content for use with the website. This stage will also involve coding of any online forms and setting up of email ids etc. The end result of this stage will be a near complete website.

This stage will see comprehensive testing by us to ensure that the website will appear correctly on all Operating system platforms like Linux, Windows and Mac. Testing will also be done to ensure compatibility with major browsers. Xtreme Network Consulting will also undertake optimization in this stage to ensure that the site is usable by search engines by including Keywords, descriptions and META tags; We have extensive experience in the area. Optimization will also be undertaken on images across the site to ensure quick download and presence on ALT tags (for image search engines like Google)

The site will be uploaded to the live server and final Quality assurance testing will be done. All links and formal scripts will undergo stress (in case of databases load testing will also be done) and regression testing. The site will be submitted to over 100 Search engines via an automated script (custom submissions can also be done if desired)

Other General Points

As a practice, Xtreme Network Consulting builds site that are extremely easy to maintain using the latest technologies in the world today like, CSS style sheets, XML internationalization and SSI (server side includes). This means that should our clients decide to make modifications in the future (usually websites undergo major changes every 6 months), the cost incurred would be minimal. Xtreme Network Consulting will handover of all the above site assets to the client. Additionally all passwords like mail admin and FTP will also be handed over to clients at the end of the project.