Vine is an app that is owned by Twitter. The purpose of the app is to capture a short video that can be shared online. You get just six seconds to capture your visual creation before sharing it with the rest of the world on Twitter or embedding it on other networks or websites. Vine was once only available for people with iOS devices but now it can be used on android phones as well as Windows Phone, Windows 8 and HTML5. This is an app that took of tremendously quickly, with 110,000 vines shared within the first two days of being launched and now it’s not only used for fun, it’s used for marketing.

Tips for Using Vine as Part of Your Social Media Marketing

You need to begin with creating content that is going to engage your target audience. This is probably the most difficult bit, especially if you’re not particularly creative. Revisit your marketing brief and ensure your target audience are going to respond to Vines. Then begin considering your current campaigns and come up with fresh ways to expand on your marketing using a six second looping clip. Whatever the message you’re trying to get across is it needs to be delivered within six seconds so it’s not an easy task. Don’t rush the creation process though, take your time, just because the video is short that doesn’t mean you can just rush into it. Here are a few tips for you to consider:

• Time Lapse Videos – Time lapse give you the perfect method of delivering any message within the short time frame. You can focus on the highlights of your company and capture all the elements you want and deliver them in a neat package.
• Make it personal – You are reaching out to a social audience, they don’t want to be sold to, they want to feel like they can relate to you and your brand, and be part of your story. Therefore it’s essential to show off the personality behind your brand, me relatable and entertaining. This is your chance to show your unique selling point and how you relate to the target audience through visual media.
• Tease your audience by showing off your new material or product. It could be a sneak peak to the upcoming promotions or perhaps behind the sense of your development process or even in your storage department. You can even use vines to showcase a new article or blog post that is due to be launched on your website.
• Make full use of hashtags as they are used to reach your target audience. Think about the hashtags your audience is likely to be searching for and would like to share with their followers or friends. Your aim is to reach wider audiences and get people talking; hashtags are the perfect tool to use alongside your vines.

Once you have created the Vine and released it you must share and promote it as hard as possible. Get it up on all your social networks not just Twitter. You can share vines on Facebook, Pinterest even Tumblr and on your website by embedding the code. Include your Vine video in your next blog post and encourage others to share it on their websites and social networks by sharing the embed code.

You own the rights to the video and therefore it is in your right to distribute it however you please. One exciting and powerful method you can share your Vine with a huge audience and help it to spread over the world is by using a bittorrent file sharing software, Vuze as created by Azureus Software, Inc.

Vuze is a legal software application that allows users to share files efficiently. Vines are user created content and providing the content on the Vine doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s copyright if you have the right to use all elements it is, including background music. You do have to use this sharing method responsibly, ensuring your own the content and are not violating any copyrights or rights of privacy, trademark or to be free of defamation.

By allowing your visual marketing video to be shared using a software application like Vuze, you have an excellent way of reaching a much wider audience. The audience is able to download and view the file. It’s fast, easy to distribute and it doesn’t cost a penny.

Learn more about the use of Vine videos for your marketing by reading through their Terms of Service. Now it’s over to you to download the Vine app and begin using it in your marketing. Have fun!

John Russell is a marketing expert, with more than fifteen years’ experience in the industry. He encourages his readers to become early adopters, to make use of technology as it arrives.