VINE: Climb Your Way To Social Media Success
Wouldn’t it be great if you had a way to engage your audience with a social platform that is shared four times more often than other types of branded video? By using the social media platform Vine, you can achieve more exposure, impressions and so much more. If you know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, then you’ll quickly understand that the story of Jack and the Giant Slayer, which is a modern take on that same tale. In the story, a young farmhand named Jack uses magic beans to grow a large vine to climb up to kill a giant and save the princess. And in a similar fashion to the way Jack climbed the giant herbaceous plant to reach his goal, the social platform Vine will help your business climb its way to social media success.
Vine is a social media platform that allows you to capture or upload a video from your mobile phone that plays in short, looping videos. If you turn the Vine logo upside down, you will notice a “6”, which is the number of seconds a video can be played on Vine. The name is short for Vignette, which is defined as “a short impressionistic scene.” Vine is similar to Instagram, except it is only for videos. And while Instagram has the ability to play 15 second videos, it is mainly popular for still pictures that can be enhanced by using a variety of filters. On the other hand, Vine users are specifically looking to watch videos on its platform, or when it is shared on Twitter or Facebook. Vines can also be re-vined, or shared with other users, commented on and liked.
Vine was acquired by Twitter just prior to its launch in January 2013. In April of the same year, Vine was the most downloaded app from the Apple App Store in the United States. Today, over 100 million people watch vine videos each month, and every second, five Vine videos are retweeted. It’s no wonder that businesses started to take notice. Here are some effective ways brands are using Vine.
ENTERTAIN
If you have a brand that embraces creativity, Vine is an excellent way to show it off. Lego has done a great job taking a brand that has been around for over 60 years by keeping it fresh and relevant for today’s generation. In this example, Lego uses Vine to show how much fun it is to use your imagination.
INFORM
Often times the objective of marketing is to inform your consumers of your product or service. In this example, Dominos produced a Vine to show in a visual and creative way all the ingredients go into their Pizza Legend pie by having them pushed into the top of the box.
INSPIRE
Frequently, companies want users
to engage in not just one of their products, but to choose from multiple offerings. In the following Vine, the fashion company Reiss embraced this idea of showing a series of “date night looks” in quick succession. This allows its customers to be inspired by a variety of different styles of clothing they sell.
EDUCATE
Vine can also be effective in educating an audience on your product, social issue, or to influence them to make a healthy change in their lives. This Vine example shown below is able to effectively make a statement that is not only clear, but is impactful as it influences users to quit smoking.
INVOLVE
Allowing your audience to get involved demonstrates their devotion to your brand while creating content. Disney held a contest where “Viners” were asked to create a video and use the hashtag #DisneySideContest to be automatically entered into the sweepstakes. Selected videos appeared on their channel and the participate received a prize. Here is a user-generated entry.
By using Vine, brands have the advantage of engaging their audience like never before. So get creative with your looping Vine videos and to be sure to use relevant hashtags to gain maximum visibility and user engagement. Imagine, in just six seconds, you can entertain, inform, inspire, educate and involve your viewers.
While using Vine may not require magic beans, climbing a beanstalk, slaying a giant, or saving a princess, it can certainly help promote and grow your business . . . and that’s no fantasy!
What do you think? What are some other benefits of using Vine in business?
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Want to learn more about Vine? Check out the following resources, where I obtained some of the above information: 15 Facts About Vine Every Brand Should Know, By The Numbers: 25 Amazing Vine Statistics, How Brands Are Winning With Vine Videos: 10 Examples, Six seconds of creativity: February’s brands on Vine showcase, Twitter Vines Get Shared 4x More Than Online Video, and Disney Parks Launches Official Vine Account and ‘Vine Your Disney Side’ Contest.
If you haven’t guessed by now, this blog post is about Instagram. This social network, which has quickly gathered a following of over 300 million users per month, allows users to share images on its platform or on a variety of others sites including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. Every social network has their own niche and when Instagram was introduced, it was all about the photo. Instagram was also able to capitalize on this by allowing its users to enhance their photos through a variety of filters, which adjusts everything from color to contrast. This, along with the fact that the images are restricted to a square shape gives Instagam photos a vintage feel. Today, when people use their phone cameras to take pictures, they can use a preset filter called “1977” to capture an image that resembles one from a Polaroid camera in 1977.
other types of social media, you cannot add a hyperlink that is associated with the image. However, you can use up to 15 hashtags for greater visibility vs. the 2 hashtags that is common practice with other social media platforms. This further shows that Instagram is really all about sharing interesting visuals with your group of followers.
With the exception of Instagram and Vine, keep hashtags to no more than two per post. Research shows that when you use more than two, your engagement drops and hashtagging on every word is overkill. It also comes across as desperate because you are trying to reach #every #single #possible #group. This is considered spamming and it is an easy way to lose followers.
