How to Use Twitter's Vine to Promote Your Business
Vine is a new mobile video app created by Twitter. Launched in January of this year, Vine lets users record short, 6 second videos on your iPhone or iPad and post them to Vine, Twitter, and Facebook.
With the massive growth of mobile, vine is a handy app to have in your pocket, enabling businesses to capture quick video snippets and publish them on the go.
Just as Twitter transformed blogging and social media with its social micro-blogging platform, Twitter wants Vine to transform online video and integrate into social media marketing mainstream. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a video snippet potentially worth 10,000 words?
The value of Vine for businesses is the simplicity in creating and publishing quick videos to Facebook and Twitter that can inform, educate, inspire, and direct customers. It's another method of getting creatively in front of potential customers and making a connection that can ultimately lead to sales and customer loyalty.
After downloading the app from the iTunes store, there is a quick account setup process and then you're ready to record! The app integrates with your mobile or tablet video function and a user simply presses the screen and holds to record. The green bar shows the video recorded length within the 6 second maximum. Lifting your thumb stops recording. Pressing again starts recording again at that location. Once the 6 seconds is reached, a preview of the video is shown. Upon clicking "Next" the user can create a 140 character maximum length message and choose to post the video to Vine as well as a connected Twitter and/or Facebook account.
Users of Vine can follow other brands and users and view their activity in the corresponding "Activity Feed", and if your company publishes to Twitter, for instance, all of your Twitter followers could see the video.
Vine App tutorial vine.co/v/bpOg1PBiVp5
— Mike Gingerich (@mike_gingerich) March 18, 2013
Embed a Vine App video on your website. vine.co/v/bpOXlZhZFDK
— Mike Gingerich (@mike_gingerich) March 18, 2013
Use the Twitter Embed Code of a posted Vine video to embed the video in a WordPress Blog with ease! Make sure to post your Vine to Twitter. Then go to Twitter and select the "More" button beneath the tweet and get the embed code. Take the code provided to your WordPress manager, switch to "text mode" and paste the embed code. This will display a nice box containing the tweet message and the Vine video. Note: This will not work if you have disabled auto embeds on WordPress (by default auto embed feature is enabled in WordPress).
Embed Vine App Video in WordPress blog vine.co/v/bpOpbX3guhx
— Mike Gingerich (@mike_gingerich) March 18, 2013
As it only takes a few seconds to create a Vine video, companies can start using Vine right away to engage their Twitter followers and extend their reach to Facebook. Vine videos can also be embedded on websites and blogs. Here are ideas on how Vine could be used for business:
Show What You Do. Business can show their latest completed project, or a "before, during, and after" sequence to showcase your progress on a project.
Demo New Products. Companies can use the 6 seconds to quickly showcase a new product. A car dealer, for example, can capture the car exterior, interior, and describe a few features to encourage viewers to stop in and see it.
Outline a Special. Drive traffic to your store by recording your special and talking about it a bit. Getting ready for a spring sale at your Garden Center? Record a few clips in one video while describing the on-sale items and dates!
Businesses have an opportunity to use simple mobile apps like Vine to creatively offer an insider and fresh view of their company, products, and special offers. While a 6 second video is quite basic, it allows businesses the opportunity to stop and capture information that can capture new customers.
