YouTube has become synonymous with online video but it isn’t the only site that delivers online video content. With more than 40 million users, Vine should be a marketer’s dream. However, as marketers continue to under-utilized the platform, they do so at their own peril.
Marketing teams might have ignored or discounted Vine because the challenge was too great to effectively convey their message in just six seconds. Duration, it turns out, is not the biggest hurdle for marketers trying to leverage Vine. What is the primary constraint in using Vine are the production limitations. The only way marketers can create, edit and upload videos is in real-time, utilizing the Vine smart phone app. This limitation has made it impossible for marketers to post professionally produced content on Vine, limiting their ability to share their message to both Vine and Twitter users. While some marketers were able to creatively deliver their message within those constraints, marketers that were more familiar with traditional video production continued to put the platform aside.
Vine has recently made some very exciting changes to Vine, making it friendlier to marketers and advertisers. Vine now allows users to import existing video in specific formats. Users can now shoot video with whatever application or method they please. Uploading a video to Vine is as simple as hitting the “record” button, and then tapping the “import” button. From there, users will be able to use the editing suite in the Vine app to trim their imported video into Vine’s six-second format.
When marketers have more control of the production of their video on Vine, they can more effectively tailor their message. This allows them to reach more effectively millions of Vine and Twitter users. The ability to import video to Vine will allow marketers to develop high-quality, professionally produced, targeted video content to users who love to blog, like, share, and discuss items that catch their interest.