9 tips on how to put short-term video to work for your business
Target audience: Marketing professionals, PR pros, brand managers, businesses, nonprofits, video producers, educators, Web publishers, journalists.
Vine is a powerful video platform based on the concept of Twitter and brought to you by the people who invented the term micro-blogging. Like Twitter, it isn’t just for entertainment, and marketers and advertisers quickly realized the power of the app that decided six seconds is all a good video really needs.
Follow this guide of do’s and don’ts to making sure your Vine video sings for your business, nonprofit or organization.
Do display your brand
1In the quest to tell a story in a seemingly impossible amount of time, it is so easy to forget that your brand logo or image should be visible somewhere in the Vine video for all six seconds (or most of them).
Do give it a few test runs
2Vine is a fairly new technology, and if you’re reading this, chances are you’re fairly new to it. Don’t confuse short duration with ease of creation. Making a point in short-form videos is a skill. Practice before you promote.
Do use all three acts
3Think of your Vine video as you would think of any other video – as having a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Six seconds is an incredibly short amount of time, but human expectations for storytelling hasn’t changed. Your film must retain all three components.
Do create tutorials
4How-tos, product displays, and tutorials about your service, sector or product are always hugely popular. That rule doesn’t change just because the length of the video is shortened.
Do engage your share buttons
5The point is for your Vine video to get shared. Don’t make it difficult for people to pass it on by neglecting to add share buttons.
Don’t neglect mobile
6If your video doesn’t play correctly across all platforms, releasing it will do more harm than good. Mobile is the future. If I can’t open your video on my phone, I’ll question if I should be buying anything from you at all. So check how it works on various mobile devices.
Don’t recycle
7Create fresh material. Never reuse, recycle, or take a brief version of a clip you used somewhere before in an email marketing video.
Don’t forget your purpose
8Because funny and wacky sells, many marketers rely on their sense of humor to publicize through Vine — and that’s great, as long as the original purpose of the video isn’t lost in the funny.
Don’t fail to be consistent
9Put out a new video every month — or every day or every week — but do it consistently. Get on a schedule and your readers and followers will be much more likely to watch every video you create.
Vine changed the way videos were made and consumed.
Vine can be a powerful tool for marketers. If a Vine video is done correctly, it can spread across the Internet like wildfire. But there is a skill to using it correctly. Follow the basic principles of any video project and modify to its newer, shorter cousin.
Bottom photo credit: Flickr user Danijel Pobi
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