Twitter’s new Vine app gives you the opportunity to easily make six-second videos for your audience. But if your company’s message takes longer than six seconds to convey, what use is Vine to you?
Basically this is an opportunity to give bite-sized snippets of visual information, much in the same way that twitter allows you to share a single idea at a time. In other words, since you can’t fit a huge amount of video into the context of a Vine, don’t even try. Instead, embrace the brevity and stick with simple ideas.
Here are a few things to try:
1. Product demos. Can you show something cool your product does in six seconds? Remember, it doesn’t have to be six consecutive seconds, you can do stop-animation to show the different stages.
2. Quick greetings. Wish your customers a great weekend, acknowledge a holiday, or just pop in to say hello. A little face time is always a good thing.
3. Show off your office or retail location. Give a quick slideshow of the inside of your headquarters or store to show people where it is you usually tweet from.
4. Before and after. This could work in a variety of contexts, especially for companies where a transformation is part of what the business does.
5. Opinion polls. Get some community engagement going by asking your audience what they think. Do they like your new product better in blue, or green? Show both and let them decide.
6. Mini-portfolio. This works especially well if you have some sort of creations to show off, such as art, photos, or design objects.
7. Get people to come out and see you. Are you at an event or a location where you want people to show up? Show them how great it is so they have more incentive to get out of their chairs.
8. Off-topic creativity. Vine, even in a business context, doesn’t all have to be on-topic. The fun nature of it allows you to let go and do some other stuff. Show how well you can loop a video, sing a little song for everyone, or simply feature six seconds of the office cat cleaning her face. People eat that stuff up, and having fun videos will help attract more followers to your Vine account.
Have you used Vine yet to promote your business? What’s the best Vine clip you’ve seen so far?
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Peg McDermott is an award-winning marketing communications expert, Internet marketing specialist, and public speaker. Find her on Google Plus, Twitter, and LinkedIn
