Vine, Twitter’s 6-second visual supplement to their 140-character formula has exploded over the past year, and now Facebook’s Instagram wants a piece of the user-generated video market. People are clamoring to share snip-its of their lives in a way that is more personal than text. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words and the success of Vine has proved that a 6 second video is well worth 140 characters. Since its introduction, brands have experimented with the social media platform in the hopes of determining whether or not it has a place in social media marketing. Now with Vine’s recent release on android devices and Facebook’s Instagram video announcement, there is a pressing need to determine its place amongst social branding tools.
The introduction of Vine casts a spotlight on the question that many brands prefer to put off: how much social media is too much social media? No brand wants to be viewed as “behind-the-times” by consumers, and as a result, there is significant pressure to keep up in the realm of social media by creating accounts on every mainstream platform. By marketing standards, social media is still in its infancy and with this incredible potential comes the daunting task of harnessing the platforms in order to accurately measure their ROI.
The graphic included above is Vine user, Dan Rollman’s Vine of an Instagram of a Tumblr of a Facebook of a Tweet and demonstrates how quickly social posts can transform from meaningful content to clutter.
While great measurement strides have been taken, brands understand that there is still room to grow. As a result of this missing link, it’s difficult to distinguish the valuable and the not-so valuable platforms. Here are some considerations to make before deciding if Vine is a novelty or worth your brand’s time.
Identify marketing initiatives: Anyone can use any platform, but you need to be strategic. Vine forces real-time participation; you cannot save vines for further editing or approval, they have to be published to Twitter on the spot. As a result, it’s necessary to pinpoint intent and expectations prior to posting. Ask yourself how you want your followers to react and if you want them to engage with responses? Developing a clear and concise platform outline offsets your lack of production control. Additionally, Vine is completely reliant on Twitter, it’s crucial to think of it as a supplementary platform to your Twitter account. Vine’s engaging structure can drive more users back to your Twitter account, and hopefully, back to your site for conversions. There are still not many ways to measure success on the application; however, Vine can be utilized to directly uptick twitter followers and traffic. While Instagram is a stand-alone platform, it also allows accounts to link to other social networks, increasing the opportunity to incite traffic.
Content comes first: Content should be the driving force of social posts. It’s easy to piece together six seconds of video, but creating six seconds of purposeful video is what will be the defining presence for your brand on the application. Developing content before implementing a new platform into your overall initiative focuses each post. Understanding your audience is the first step to implementing a new facet of a social strategy. Vine, and instant videos may be industry hot topics right now but that does not necessarily translate to ROI success for your business. Story boarding and tracking past Twitter and Instagram trend success can be beneficial practices for identifying the messages that you want to convey through the application.
Test before you invest: Experimenting with a personal account is the best way to understand the applications quirks and qualities before introducing the platform to your brand’s Twitter feed. Although I previously mentioned that production controls are limited, that are different types of real-time videos, including loops, stop animation and short films (6 second films to be exact). After experimenting with different ideas and types of videos you may get a feel for the type of structure that fits with your brand’s identity, or decide that Vine isn’t that answer for your brand. Brands who have seen the most success with the application are traditionally highly visual retailers including Gap, Home Depot and Bacardi. However, if your brand’s story does not demand visual engagement to this extent, it’s smart to leave Vine and Instagram Video out of your social media playbook.
Lacking a defined content and marketing strategy leads to social video efforts that are just background noise to your brand’s narrative- they probably won’t hurt, but they’re also not adding value. Vine reached over 13 million viewers prior to its android launch. That kind of rapid growth is a direct indication that mobile users are reveling in the ability to engage with videos on a real-time basis. However, Vine’s lasting impact on brand engagement and ROI still remains to be seen
Check out our latest Pinterest board to see more brands generating social content effectively with Vine.