As business leaders and marketers (and perhaps as human beings), we continually look for patterns. It may be to capitalize on business opportunities or it may be to save our lives. Nonetheless, recognizing and responding to patterns is critical to our way of functioning.

Recently, I’ve been spending a great deal of time in the online video market. Not surprisingly, I’ve been looking for patterns and asking, “What are the key things in online video and video marketing?” Are there patterns, either good or bad? One area keeps coming up: YouTube. But what does that mean? Are there truly YouTube patterns? In fact, there are at least a couple.

Before we look at the patterns, we know this: in general, businesses are having a tough time using YouTube effectively. It doesn’t mean they’re not using YouTube but that they don’t know how to leverage it to drive business. What do most businesses do? They establish a YouTube channel (or more), put on the branding veneer, and upload some videos. And then nothing really happens, forcing them to question both online video and YouTube. This is a rather bad yet very common pattern.

Better marketers have a different pattern, one that includes a defined online video marketing strategy, a community strategy, and an engagement strategy. These people and organizations are no more capable or creative than their peers, but they have a different pattern. They also know that video marketing and YouTube are not merely additional channels and tactics; they know it’s a more powerful strategy. The good news is that the good pattern is not much more work than the bad pattern. Why choose the latter?

Over the coming months we’ll be exploring the good pattern of how to make YouTube and online video marketing effective elements of your business strategy. Our approach is based on working with hundreds of companies, many of whom didn’t have a strategy. In fact, some had good patterns, others bad, and some had none. Please join me for a discussion on effective YouTube business strategy on December 7, 2011. Register for the live webinar here.

When I was nine years old, I took a computer class on an Apple IIe. I learned to program in Logo.

When I was 14, my father gave me a Macintosh SE.

When I was 19, I invested the money I earned at my high school job into shares of Apple.

When I was 26, I brought the folder from that first computer class to a meeting with the people who would become my co-founders of my first company.

When I was 34, I sold my Apple shares and founded Pixability. It is because of Steve Jobs that Pixability exists.

He was a visionary, and I owe my career in technology and my company to Steve Jobs. He will be missed. Stay hungry, stay foolish.