Rise of Short Video & Nascent Social Media’s Value to Your Brand

Short video is the latest social media on offer, but the lessons learned with Vine and Instagram Video could have a bigger impact for brands willing to risk early adoption.

In a coffee shop two girls a table over are having a conversation with something approaching valley-girl “like” punctuation. What grabs my attention is, “Did you like see this Vine?” It is my first time I’ve heard the social media mentioned in non-tech circles outside the bay area. It’s also an indicator of why brands* should be hopping onto new social media offerings sooner rather than later.

The most obvious reason is that it’s much easier to be a big fish in the small pond, and I mean this in two contexts. First, established social media are a maelstrom of screams - a deep pool of participants (not users) means everyone is fighting to be heard over each other. Simply put it’s easier to be heard on new and more intimate social media. Second, a shallower pool of participants allows you a better overall quality of conversational interaction, and therefore improved influence.

There are important implications to that improved interaction. Right off, you’ve improved your brands chances of being an influencer within the new social media. As important, you are establishing a connection with that social media’s early adopters, who are most likely on the path to becoming influencers themselves. This means even if in the long run the quality of your interactions decreases as a function of the number of your followers, you’ve established meaningful relationships with those who will have the most sway in propagating your message or conversation. While the two girls talking about sexy Mr. X’s vine a table over might not be the early adopters you were expecting, they still have influence, and may represent a nascent social media’s developing participant base.

That is the exciting part of short video like Vine and now Instagram Video, they are nascent forms and aren’t boxed in by expectation yet. Developed social media, all have particular skews or demographics to their usage. If I’m (for some unknown reason) feeling happy homemaker, I head to Pinterest. If I want to connect to other writers and editors (yet, so seldom publishers), I head to Twitter. Friends and family in the most extended sense of those two nouns, well it’s Facebook. Instagram, 20-something car guys, an audience pertinent to my gay auto-review site - well, 20-somethings in general, and a lot of food pics. My geek peeps, G+. And, so on.

Vine and other new social media are open country though. A place where you, or your organization, can not only establish influence, but potentially guide the formation of audience and the form of the media. Taking short form video as an example, those early to the party are going to have a serious advantage over brands or individuals joining later in the game. Mainly because you’ll have put in the practice time to effectively use the form, before others even join. If you had predicted the success of Twitter, would you have joined earlier? Perfected the form of conveying your message and perpetuating a conversation in 140 character installments? Hell yes.

Short video then represents the latest social media frontier, but it’s one that smart brands will be hopping on. It’s a chance to establish oneself as an influencer early in the game, and master a new and growing media form.

*I’m using brands in a sense that includes personal brands such as writers, journalists, artists, influencers…