Vine is the newest and hottest social media application available for the iPhone. It was launched late last week to deliver 6-second videos.
I tell people it's sort of like Twitter for video. And since it was released by Twitter, the integration with Twitter is seamless.
I used Vine to show some covers of the 25 different languages that my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR has been translated into.
Like any social network, early adopters like me are trying to figure it out. I've seen my friends Chris Brogan and Steve Garfield playing around with it (check their Twitter feeds for examples) and it's getting a bunch of buzz.
It's really simple to use, you just hold down the iPhone screen to record and lift up to stop. Then you can alter the scene and do it again. This means you can easily do short segments of any length as long as they add up to 6 seconds total. At the end of the video, it repeats into an endless loop and you add a caption and release it to your Twitter feed.
It's very early days, but people seem to be gravitating to using it for demonstrations of something or to capture the feeling in a location. There also seems to be a bunch of people using Vine for porn, but I'm not going to elaborate on that… (Google it).
I'm excited to use Vine to share short snippets of rock shows and I'll try to shoot one at The Vaccines show in Boston tomorrow night. [UPDATE: Here is that one.]
With just 6 seconds, the challenge for marketing and PR use is to tell a story. In a weird way, I found the 6-second constraint to be very liberating, much like the 140 character limit of a tweet.
To get your creative mind working, here are just a few ideas for how you might use Vine for marketing and public relations purposes. If you have any more, please add as a comment to this post:
- A brief product demonstration.
- A short statement by the CEO.
- Highlights of an art exhibition.
- A speaker shows their view of the audience (I'll be doing that!).
- Speakers' bureaus, modeling agencies, and actors' reps show clients in action.
- Restaurants make visual online menus.
- A bartender shows her signature drink being made.
- Any kind of "before and after" such as redecorating a room or washing a car.
- Walk through of a hotel suite.
Here's a six second "behind the scenes tour" from the MSNBC television network.
Let us know how you are using Vine.
David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a business growth strategist, advisor to clever entrepreneurs who are building emerging companies, and the international bestselling author of a dozen books published in 30 languages. David’s high-energy keynote presentations, masterclasses, and virtual events educate, energize, and inspire.
