How to Use Vine in Your Small Business Marketing

By Susan Tucker

The evolution of social media is fascinating to watch. I especially love the growing emphasis on visual content. Micro-videos? Heck yeah! Instagram (which is part of Facebook) and Vine (which is operated by Twitter), are two growing services that allow users to upload short video feeds and clips.

While this is a fun way for individuals to share information with their followers, it is also possible for small business owners to use it as a marketing tool. Now, not only do you have the 140 characters of a Twitter feed, but you also have six seconds of Vine video to share with your audience. The attention span for individuals online is incredibly short, so maintaining a customer’s attention for a full two or three minutes over the duration of a traditional online video is difficult, but the six seconds allows you to hit home a point, you just need to know how to use the Vine video. Of all the best social networks for business, the Vine video feed is an excellent opportunity for you.

Here are some examples of how you could use Vine in your small business marketing.

Show and Demonstrate

You might not think six seconds is a lot of time for you to demonstrate anything, but you might be surprised how much you can actually fit into six seconds. You have to cut out everything but what is essential, but ultimately you can demonstrate a good amount of information and techniques with this amount of time. From how to plant a flower to how to construct a piece of furniture, by using short clips cut together, you are able to showcase your products and demonstrate exactly how it works. It might take you a little bit of time to figure out what works best and what is going to fit into the time frame, but once you do, highlighting your different products is an excellent opportunity for your marketing, regardless of what you sell or the services you provide.

Here is a great example from the MLB.

Company Culture

For many, your company is just a foreign entity, or a faceless, mindless drone that is unable to do really anything or to stand out on its own. However, you are a small business and you need to highlight this. To do so, you can showcase how much fun you and your employees have around the office. A client wants to know they are associating with a cool, hip company, and there is no way better to do this than to show six seconds of what you are doing inside the office. From a crazy game of pool to everyone dressed up in costumes, you can have a good time, add in comedy and simply show the public you really are an interesting company to work with.

Here is a fun behind-the-scenes look at The Weather Channel.

Brand Awareness

When it comes to the best social networks for business, the Vine Twitter account is perfect. You can highlight your logo, brand name or anything else and hashtag it, in order to drive searches to your account and increase brand awareness.

This is an awesome example of logo fun from Lacoste.

Preview

The six seconds you receive for Vine makes it the perfect opportunity to highlight a new product or service you are bringing out. This easily makes it one of the best social networks for business around. You can show small bits of your product to build excitement among your customers, who then might share your video. It just takes one, hip, interesting or cool little feature and your customers are going to love the video you posted.

Nordstrom did a fun product review for fall boots.

Want more great examples of how brands are using Vine? Go to BrandsonVine.com.