Why Vine could be the next big thing for brands

For CMOs, new social technologies present an opportunity to gain unique strategic advantages in their market. As a master’s student in the Northwestern Medill IMC program, we study new social media and have found Twitter’s short form video application, Vine, to have interesting marketing capabilities. In spite of the app’s January porn snafu, Vine became the #1 free app on the U.S. App Store within three months of its launch. With Twitter’s advertising capabilities gaining credibility and Vine developing momentum, Vine is positioned to become a valuable branding tool.

Across the web, mobile video and content marketing are on the rise, and AllTwitter’s Shea Bennett argues that these trends bode well for the future of Vine marketing. Bennett notes that mobile video is expected to represent 66% of global mobile traffic by 2017, up from 51% in 2012. For marketers, this growth category presents a great opportunity. In fact, 87% of advertisers already use video for content marketing.

Infographic Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/vine-marketing_b39141

VP of Marketing at Skyword, Patricia Travaline, makes the case for content marketing, noting that consumers today are exposed to around 3,000 brand impressions each day and their average attention span is 8 seconds. Travaline’s “Three S Model” for content marketing dictates that marketers need to create searchable, snackable, and shareable branded content if they want to actually impact consumers. In other words, successful content marketing must speak to relevant trends, make an impression quickly, and compel consumers to spread the content.

With mobile video and content marketing on the rise, six-second videos may be the ideal vehicle for attention grabbing, entertaining brand messaging. Some fearless brands have already made good use of the platform and are developing ‘best practices’ for future Vine marketers (see the "Tweaser" and the “#ComedyFest”). From my examination of these articles and my studies at Northwestern, there are three action items you should implement if you venture into Vine branding. They are:

1) Tell a relevant story - If your Vine doesn’t have an arc, then it’s simply a moving Instagram. If your arc doesn’t matter to your target consumer, then you’re wasting your efforts.

2) Engage in a conversation - Use a Vine hashtag. Allow users to upload their own Vines. Create branded Vines to respond to your followers.

3) Share and Track - Don’t expect all of your fans to find your post on Vine. It is still very new. Vine’s can be embedded onto any website, so share it elsewhere to increase viewership, and track across all platforms to determine what content sticks.

Melissa Channick is a recent Northwestern graduate and current master’s student in Northwestern’s Medill School studying Integrated Marketing Communications. She is passionate about discovering consumer insights and is looking forward to starting a career in digital marketing strategy upon graduation in August 2013. Follow her @Mchannick

5 Tips to Enhance Your Social Media Presence

After analyzing the presence of social media in more than 50 cooperate and non-profit organizations for my job at Northwestern Alumni Office, I feel a strong impulse to share my learning and give some advice. I know most people, no matter how much they are into the social media business, would not like to read almost each single post from 50 Facebook pages. My wild guess is…if you are not the person who writes every Facebook post or Twitter tweet of your company, you probably have never read all of these posts of your own business. OK. You can’t wait, can you? Here you go:

Post beautiful pictures about your products, animals who need to be adopted or your campus! Your posts are for humans, and humans are visual animals! (Don’t ask why Pinterest is getting popular anymore…) If you want your followers to know that your company has a new CSR initiative of helping children in the inner cities, please don’t post the first paragraph of your press release on your social media pages! Give your readers a picture of a smiling kid with an introduction of less than 140 characters (The Twitter rule applies to every social media platform). Trust me, the child’s smile would work much better than a bunch of rhetorical words.

Be personal. Again, Facebook is not somewhere to release your press release. It’s true that you represent an organization; it is also true that social media began with interpersonal communication. If you, as an organization, want to leverage social media magnetism, follow the rule and talk like a PERSON. If you are a fashion brand, “talk” like a young lady who tries to make herself beautiful everyday. If you are a college, “talk” about what college students care about: finals, commencement, or a new coffee shop where they would like to spend their afternoons.You’d better never talk like you are “offering” something great and your followers should pay for it with both money and gratitude. It’s you who should show gratitude for all the attention and followers you get. So, make your audience’s lives happier,prettier and easier with your posts.

Be consistent over your different social media platforms. I’ve seen organizations act like two totally different people on Facebook and Twitter: one is charming and intelligent, the other one is like a loser who has lost all  interest in life. Brands should always act like a woman in love, who tries to show the best side of her to her crush. So dress up for every occasion because you never know when your customers will be viewing your page. Don’t go out, or open your account on a new social media platform, if you are not ready to show your best side.

No more than 10 posts or tweets a day. Even if you are an attractive and sexy 20 something, do not walk around your secret crush’s window more than 10 times a day. It will lead to beauty fatigue and it only takes his one click on “unlike” or “unfollow”, and you are gone forever.  Less than 5 Facebook posts and 10 tweets is a good limit. After all, you don’t have so much information to share, do you? Too many posts or tweets are as annoying as spam emails.

Be a listener. There is a lot of advice telling you how to “talk” on social media platforms, but not how to “listen”.  If you go to some top brands’ Facebook or Twitter pages, you will find that they spent a lot of time answering questions or replying to posts from their followers. In a word, they listen. There was a famous case about how Chipotle avoided a PR disaster by quickly responding to a tweet about its failure to inform consumers about some of its ingredients. Don’t just re-tweet or “like” posts that mention you, please. When your followers bother to type your name in their posts, they don’t expect you to make them “famous” by retweeting their post; they did that to start a conversation with you, and you should feel grateful for their interest and efforts. If you are popular, like Starbucks, it may take you a long time to reply to every mention. So missing one or two may not matter too much for you. But it matters to that particular customer. 

     Some of my advice may not seem new to you; but this insight is generated from comprehensive research. As a Master’s student, who concentrates on Internet Marketing and Market Research, conclusion from data analysis is vital for me. I cannot accept people who just walk into the conference room and exclaim, “You know what? I am gonna trust my gut to initiate a new social media strategy and spend the 100,000 dollars!” Thanks to MedillIMC, who did a good job shape me from  a “free spirited” person to a data-driven, consumer centered marketing professional.

Katie Li is a current graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program, with 5 year work experience for Microsoft and Ogilvy in China. Katie decided to move to the U.S., when the death of her lifetime icon Michael Jackson revived her long-time dream of living in the U.S. Katie aims to find a job in the Internet Marketing and Global Marketing industries after graduation. She shares her learning, interest and passion towards her profession and life through @iamkatieli on Twitter and http://www.linkedin.com/in/katiewenli on LinkedIn.