How Bloggers Can Use Twitter’s New Vine App

If you didn’t hear, Twitter launched a new app last week. Named Vine, this iOS app lets quickly create a 6-second looping mini-video that you can then share through the Vine social network (think Instagram for short videos), Twitter and Facebook, if Facebook changes its mind about playing nicely in the sandbox with Twitter.

Now you might be asking yourself: as a blogger, what use do I have for a 6-second mini-movie? And I’d say plenty! Here are some ways that I think bloggers might begin to use Vine as a new tool in the toolkit.

Demos and Tutorials

Vine is perfect for sharing super-quick tutorials and demos. When you create a video in Vine, it saves the video to your camera roll. So you can not only share the video on Twitter, but you can then embed it in your blog if you wish.

Here’s a quick (and bad) Vine video I did on how to eat a girl scout cookie. A beauty blogger could do a smoky eye demo. A craft blogger could show how to do a simple origami. A food blogger might demonstrate how to use a kitchen torch. The ideas are endless!

Sponsored Brand Campaigns

Vine will be great for use in sponsored brand campaigns. Let’s say I wanted to feature some of my favorite Method products in a tweet as part of their #cleanhappy campaign. I could use Vine to create a short clip like the one below and add the #cleanhappy hashtag when I shared it on Twitter.

PR Pitches

Maybe you want to pitch a brand or get them to notice you. Why not make your pitch with Vine, then tweet it to them with an @mention?

Funny Bits

Humor bloggers can utilize Vine to craft short humor bits that are too short to make up an entire blog post, but too long to fit into a 140-character tweet.

Conference Sneak Peeks

Share what’s happening at a blog conference by creating a Vine video clip of a few favorite moments, then tweeting it out with the conference hashtag.

Cause-Building

6 seconds is enough time to build a powerful case for whatever social or global cause is important to you. I envision folks incorporating a mix of photos, images and signs showing the URL of where to get more information or donate in a Vine clip.

Make A Regular Mini-Series

Healthy and fitness bloggers (who often do a lot of lifecasting) might do a Vine clip every day showing where they ran, how much they lifted in the gym or what they had for breakfast. Bloggers involved in gratitude challenges could create a Vine video highlighting what they’re grateful for several days in a row. The possibilities are endless.

Are there drawbacks to Vine? Sure! You can’t really edit your video. It’s a very linear process and while it’s easy to use, there’s not a lot of room for jazzing up a video, adding music, and so on. There’s also no way to directly upload the video to other social networks or YouTube – so if you want to embed a Vine clip in your blog, you need to manually upload it to YouTube from your camera roll.

Vine is a very simple and clean tool with limited use, but I’m looking forward to seeing how bloggers might creatively use this app to broaden their business or expand the audience for their writing.

Do you see a way that you might use Vine?

Tagged as: twitter