7 Tips For Mastering the Vine App

The hottest app in social media, arguably, is the Vine.  Brands, celebrities and individuals are all experimenting with this new image-based messaging tool. Just last week, director James Mangold released a six second teaser for The Wolverine movie via Vine—an audacious move that testifies to the power of the app’s communication possibilities. Not everyone is churning out award winning Vine content. We are all learning as we launch Caliber’s Vine account and we’ve pulled together some of our favorite tips to share with you.

You’ve downloaded the app, now how do you create an effective message in just six seconds?

Will the Hashtag Enhance Facebook Marketing?

Facebook users should be accustomed to change and they can expect to see some big ones coming to the social networking site in the near future.  Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Graph Search; a new way for users to search for photos, people, interests and places within the social networking site’s database. But wait, there’s more!

5 ways PR Professionals can (and should) use Twitter’s Vine App

We’ve all watched social media become an integral part of PR in recent years and now we are seeing image and video messaging become an integral part of social media.

A lot of the social media conversations this month revolve around Twitter’s new Vine app. If you search #vine or #vineapp on Twitter you are not only going to find personal tweets from users utilizing the app to showcase how they crafted a flawless, vegan, gluten-free sandwich. Quite the opposite in fact, you’ll find that over 1/3 of the first 15 tweets are about how Vine can be used for a myriad of marketing communications strategies.

With the recent explosion of Vine onto the social media scene, many have related its practical uses to creating brand awareness and marketing communications, but it has yet to be spelled out as to how public relations professionals can use the app to benefit their clients or agency. Here are 5 suggestions for those wishing to make the most of the app that is quite literally, growing more popular by the day.

Increase Your Chances of Media Exposure Success

Successfully pitching a story to the media and achieving the coverage you hoped for is tough. Even the seasoned public relations pro know there’s no guarantee their pitch will make it to print or television. Reporters are bombarded with story ideas and, along with their editors; they must sift through the story suggestions (not to mention cover the stories that are banging at their doors) and find the ones newsworthy enough to follow.

The truth is there’s no magic formula and there’s no guarantee. At Caliber, we never make a promise that’s out of our hands to deliver, but we pride ourselves on taking the right steps to guarantee the best possible outcomes for our clients.  Several important elements make up the earned media equation. Knowing how to write a good release, strategically planned timing, targeting the right media and creating the right messages are all factors that must be carefully executed.

The Evolution of Social Advertising

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, achieved 1 billion users in September 2012.  Why then, would anyone opt out of advertising with a company that has captured the attention of such a large percentage of the world’s population?

That decision was made by General Motors (the third largest advertiser in the U.S.) this past May, when the company pulled its ad campaigns from Facebook (Washington Post).  GM found that in the end, their $40 million spent on advertising with Facebook was ineffective. (Wall Street Journal).

In response to GM’s move, Ford affirmed their beliefs in Facebook advertising by tweeting, “It’s all about execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content & innovation.” (Business Insider)

User engagement is the name of the game and it is why Facebook is implementing a new style of advertising called “social advertising” which has the potential to make Facebook ads more effective.