Vine! The New Favorite Social Network Among Brands
If Twitter had been created as a video platform, it would surely be very similar to Vine, the new favorite social network among brands, young people and celebrities.
Vine, a social network created with a major focus of attention in the mobile market, lets you share videos of up to 6 seconds taken with the phone to a group of followers. Just like “Twitter“, Vine lets you follow interesting people and be followed back as well, and one can find all the content created by other users in a feed that is continuously updated just like in Twitter.
It’s probably due to the similarity between the two social networks that in September of 2012, just 3 months after its launch, Twitter acquired Vine for $30 million, incorporating its founders to its staff and by giving the App even more of their own features such as the #hashtags, i.e. labels that allow you to identify the theme of a video, or the “retweets” which here, on Vine, are called “Revines”.
An Allied For Brands
The rapid growth of this micro video blogging social network, which on April 9, 2013, became the most-downloaded free app within the iOS App Store and increased its user base from less than a million in March 2013 to an estimated 4 million in May of the same year has made many brands to look at this new channel as an opportunity to generate original content for their followers and to show-off their products differently and with creativity. At the same time, brands are looking for new ways to interact with their consumers and the opportunity to reinforce their message and positioning.
Despite the large influence of big and well known brands on other social media networks such as “Facebook” & “Twitter”, only a few have fully understood Vine’s codes and have become very successful among its users.
One of the most interesting cases is, without a doubt, General Electric. This brand, well known for manufacturing from small appliances such as microwave ovens and even aircraft turbines and trains, found in Vine the opportunity to be seen as a brand associated to the science. In their profile, which today has more than 80K followers, “GE” publishes short videos explaining experiments such as turning on a lamp using potatoes and coins or asking the users to generate their own content for special dates such as the GravityDay day which was held on September 8.
In this way, the brand positions itself as an expert in science, and transforms its Vine channel in a space where both curious and amateurs alike can share all kinds of interesting science experiments.
Another brand that, although it has been less successful in terms of followers, also realized the codes of Vine and has an interesting and active profile for consumers is Oreo. The popular cookies brand has an account with 7,000 active followers and publishes between two and three times per week different videos showing different uses that can be given to their products like making ice cream with their delicious and worldwide known cookies. In addition, the brand uses their Vine profile to upload videos of different actions carried out in the public road by their consumers.
This has earned Oreo a large amount of revines, with has made the brand to go viral on Vine as well as on Twitter.
Samsung Mobile US, on their side, found at Vine a channel to display their products in a creative manner, through short videos that combine animations, stop-motion and real images of their phones and computers published with an average frequency of two days. In this way, the Korean brand managed to accumulate more than 11K followers and hundreds of likes and revines causing their account to go viral and making their videos to even arrive to the followers of their followers.
These are just some examples of what some of the most well known brands are doing at Vine, and it clearly shows you that social networks, no matter how different they can be from one another they always can be used to communicate ideas or products. On one hand you count with the commercial approach, but at the same time your brand is close to the people. All you need is creativity and a sincere message with which they can relate to.