5 Mobile Video Apps to Boost Online Engagement

By Meaghan Edelstein
Published April 17, 2013

Do you want to use videos to market your business?

Are you wondering if there are simple mobile apps to make this possible?

In this article I’ll review five mobile video apps and share how they can boost your online engagement.

Vine, Twitter’s mobile video app, has business and marketing professionals considering the numerous ways video apps can be used to increase engagement.

Ekaterina Walter, social innovator at Intel and author of Think Like Zuck, recently predicted that “2013 will be the year of visual marketing”. Walter based this prediction, in part, on the fact that “…visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise.”

This prediction has already proven true with a burst of new video apps and upgrades hitting the market. And some of these offer unique opportunities for savvy marketers.

Here’s five apps you should consider.

With only 140 characters to work with, it can be a challenge to create rich content on Twitter. To date, catchy headlines, creative hashtags, promoted tweets and images have been the best methods for grabbing attention on Twitter. But with the introduction of Vine, there’s a new way to generate and share highly engaging content.

Vine is a simple and fun way to create short, beautiful, looping videos for your friends and family to see.

Vine’s six-second looping videos are easily consumed and highly shareable. And as a result, these videos naturally boost engagement. Marketers can use them in a variety of ways. You can create mini-advertisements, behind-the-scenes tours, announcements, contests and much more.

Your followers can view and share your videos directly from within Twitter. And you can encourage followers to shoot and share their own six-second videos to further increase likelihood of engagement.

Now’s the time to jump into Vine because it’s easier to capture audiences’ attention. Early adopters almost always enjoy a higher level of exposure. With Vine, you now have an opportunity to stand out among the millions of tweets posted daily.

Happy valentines #valenvine vine.co/v/brMraJq2aW3

— London Lazerson (@londonlaz) February 14, 2013

According to Facebook, the use of images and video results in the largest visual impact on their platform.

Instagram increased the ease and popularity of photo posts.

However, the use of video has lagged. This can be attributed in part to the hesitation many feel when it comes to filming, editing and sharing video.

Facebook’s recent integration with iOS 6 makes the creation and sharing of video less daunting. If you are an iPhone user, you can record and post without ever leaving your Facebook app. This makes sharing video on Facebook instantly very easy, even for novices.

Video posts on Facebook encourage engagements in the form of views, shares, likes and comments.

The key with video on Facebook is creativity and consistency rather than fancy editing. With the iOS 6 upgrade, you can give fans exclusive inside access. Record major events and breaking news, then post immediately to your timeline.

To encourage community participation, create fun video challenges, ask for honest reviews and acknowledge those who take the time to post their videos to your Page.

One of the most enticing aspects of social media for business is its ability to expose a large number of people to your brand messages in a short period of time. However, as more and more businesses use social platforms, your messages are easily diluted.

Video offers a way to stand out from the masses, draw attention and leave a longer-lasting impression.

With the mobile app Socialcam, you can create videos with no length restrictions, use an assortment of filters and post to numerous social sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Socialcam allows mobile users to quickly and easily upload videos to social networks and share with others via SMS or email.

Lars Schmidt, senior director of talent acquisition and innovation at NPR, shared NPR’s strategy for exposing potential new hires to what it’s really like to be an employee at their organization.

“We used Socialcam to capture and share a more realistic perspective of what it’s like to be an NPR employee.” He went on to explain how, exactly, they did this: “We would record NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts using Socialcam, then push the videos out to our various social sites.” This visual element helped NPR “show the true experience, the energy and buzz of what it’s like to work at NPR.”

The Robert Cray Band jamming at NPR's Tiny Desk Concert.

The decision to create and grow a presence on social platforms should not be taken lightly. Platforms emerge constantly and it would be virtually impossible to build and cultivate communities on all of them.

However, there are key platforms every business should seriously consider: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and at least one video-based social network. Because video platform members feel comfortable engaging with and creating video, you’ll see an uptick in interest and views of your video content.

Viddy is a video app for both iPhone and Android that creates “a simple way for anyone to capture, beautify and share amazing videos with the world”.

A simple way to share well-produced, bite-sized videos with the world.

Viddy is also its own social network with major brands like Southwest Airlines and General Electric actively engaging through posting compelling video and running contests.

With a presence on Viddy, you can post your own 15-second videos, follow other members and be followed. There’s also plenty of opportunity for daily engagement in the form of comments and likes.

One of the most appealing reasons to utilize Viddy is that it’s integrated with Open Graph, allowing all actions on Viddy to be automatically published on people’s Facebook timeline.

This creates a unique environment and allows you to grow a community where it’s easy to encourage user-generated content.

People like, follow and subscribe to businesses because of a desire to connect on a deeper level.

Once someone has initiated an interest in connecting with your business, it then becomes your responsibility to build the relationship. This can be done through various activities and correspondences, video being one of the more successful avenues.

Videolicious is an extensive app with a variety of business-focused plans. You can edit videos and photos and turn them into film, use built-in video ideas and share across multiple platforms all at once.

Make and edit professional-quality video, automatically. Just choose your shots and Videolicious does the rest.

The app even provides extensive how-to’s for creating video thank-you notes, product reviews and news reports. And, if you want to boost views and engagement even more, there’s an option to promote your video content.

With a plethora of ways to engage via a video, Videolicious has the capability to drastically increase people’s affinity for your business.

As you can see, these tools offer a variety of ways to increase engagement on your social platforms. And as more marketers adopt these video apps, you’re sure to find other ways to improve your social media marketing with videos.

What do you think of the mobile app phenomena? Are there mobile apps you’re using that have helped move the engagement needle? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

About the Author, Meaghan Edelstein

Meaghan Edelstein is the Senior Social Strategist for Tilson PR and RingCentral. She is an event producer, journalist, attorney and owner of MobileDealin’. Follow her on Twitter @megse34. Other posts by Meaghan Edelstein »

http://www.jretechnology.com

How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Products

By Mitt Ray
Published April 22, 2013

Is your business on Pinterest?

Or are you still unsure how to use Pinterest to effectively promote your products or company?

In November, Pinterest launched business pages with their new terms of service. This update lets you use Pinterest commercially.

You can promote your products, generate sales and leads and use it for other commercial purposes without any worries.

But first, you may want to convert your personal profile into a business account (or if you don’t have a personal account, just start fresh with one for business).

Here are some tips on how you can take advantage of this update and use Pinterest commercially to promote your business.

A great way to drive sales is to create boards where you pin holiday products. This could be Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Mother’s Day or any other day that is of significance to your audience.

You can use Pinterest to show your audience that you’ve got what they need to celebrate.

The first thing you need to do is create a board based on that holiday and label it with a board name, description and category.

After that, you can begin pinning relevant products from your website to this board. You could also upload the images directly to Pinterest, but in this case make sure the image leads to a landing page on your website where people can make a purchase.

Write a good description to let readers know how they can use your product during this holiday. You can also add the price.

Rearrange your holiday-themed boards so that they’re at the top of your profile page during the appropriate season so they stand out (and don’t forget to add a good cover image).

You could also add a board widget to your website to help promote the board.

Like Argos, promote your products for festive occasions.

A good example of a holiday board is Christmas Gifts for Her, which can be found on Argos’ (a UK home and general goods retailer) Pinterest brand page.

On this board, you’ll find pins of products from their website for Christmas, along with detailed descriptions and labels, which all ultimately lead to a landing page to buy the item. This is a great way to market their products on Pinterest.

Check out the board to see how well it’s been done.

Another creative way of using your Pinterest brand page is to promote your products using a theme. This could be a theme around colors, designs, materials, ingredients, locations or anything else that’s interesting and can be categorized.

After you choose a theme, create several boards based on that theme.

For example, if you choose the color theme, create several boards where you plan to pin products of different colors. Label them accordingly, with different color names and arrange them side by side, so users know that the boards collectively form a theme.

Once you have set up the boards correctly, start pinning products of that color onto that board and add a good description (make sure you mention the color here too). This is a creative way to market your business, as people can easily find products of their favorite color.

This method is also good for search engine optimization (SEO), especially when you mention the keyword (color) in the board title, board description and pin description.

Displaying your products around a theme can increase engagement and drive sales.

A company that is promoting its products around a theme on Pinterest is Debenhams, a chain of stores in the UK.

On their Pinterest page, they have several boards labeled with names of designers like John Rocha, Betty Jackson and Jenny Packham. They also have each designer’s photo set as their board cover.

On this board they share clothes and accessories created by the designer. Fans can visit that board to check out the creations of that designer instead of visiting the website and browsing through hundreds of clothing items and accessories. This can help generate traffic and increase sales.

You can also promote your products in a similar way. Just make sure you choose a title under which you can group many of your products together. And don’t hesitate to experiment with different methods and themes. If something doesn’t work, you can always delete the boards and pins and create new ones.

People like popular products. When they know that a product is selling well and everyone else is buying it, they want to get a hold of it before they miss out. This is one of the reasons why there’s the Amazon bestseller list and the option to look at the most popular products on online stores.

Once your products reach that list and are easily visible to your website visitors, they are likely to sell even better.

You can take advantage of this same idea on Pinterest too and list your most popular products.

First, create a board with a title and description to tell readers this is where they can find your most popular products. After that, pin some images of your most popular products here and add descriptions. You could also add the rank of the product.

Make sure you write everything about the product—include the price, whether the product is a limited edition and add a call to action asking users to check out the product or buy it.

Also make sure you update the board regularly. Remove products no longer available and replace them with hot new items.

Create a bestsellers or a top-sellers board and pin your most popular products to it.

Top 40 Best Sellers is a board on Gourmet Display’s Pinterest brand page, where they pin 40 of their best-selling products for food and beverage displays. This is a great way to further increase the sales of these products.

The board has a good name and a well-written description, which instantly tell you what the board contains. The pins have both an attractive image and a good description and they lead to a page where the product can be purchased.

Another way to use your Pinterest page is to generate leads. First, create some quality content (such as ebooks, white papers, reports, case studies, etc.) that is gated with an opt-in form on a landing page.

Then add a short description about the content on the landing page along with an attractive image that is also the cover image of your file. After that, pin this image onto a board where you share your premium content. Write a brief description about it with a call to action that asks people to visit your website to sign up.

This will increase your landing page traffic and will help generate more leads, which can be used to increase website and blog traffic and drive sales later.

Using your brand page to generate leads can be easier than trying to push sales.

An example is the Free Marketing Resources board on Team MarketingProfs’ brand page, where you will find pins of their free marketing resources. Here, instead of directly marketing their services, MarketingProfs asks its followers to download their marketing materials for free. Many of these resources can only be accessed by providing an email address.

This is a great way to generate leads from potential customers who can be marketed to later. It’s a lot easier than trying to get them to buy your products or use your services right away.

The ultimate goal of your campaign is to generate leads and sales for your services and products. In fact, it would be nice to start generating sales as soon as you set up your brand page, but on Pinterest you want to take your time doing this.

You need to build an audience first. And after you gain followers, you can start promoting your products.

On Facebook and Twitter or other social networks where you share posts every day, you might be able to promote your products more than once daily. But on Pinterest, the best way to promote items is to create a dedicated board where you pin the products you want to sell.

Remember, you want to pin your products only once because if you do it over and over again, you’ll appear to be overpromoting yourself.

When you first pin one of your products, you want to get as many initial likes, repins and comments as possible. This will add social proof to your products, encourage users to check out the product and increase the likelihood of more direct shares in the future.

So focus on building an audience first by sharing content regularly and then pin your products to your page.

Focusing on building an audience first will make it easy for you to drive sales later.

On The Gracious Pantry’s Pinterest brand page, you will find a board called Gracious Pantry Cookbooks where Tiffany McCauley shares pins of her books. Many of these pins have been repinned several times. The number of times the book has been repinned and liked can be found right below the pin.

These numbers add social proof, encourage users to visit the site and repin the cookbook right away. And when she pins something new to this board, she will automatically get repins and likes because she has already built an audience. The board currently has more than 15,000 followers.

So focus on building an audience first and share your products after you have achieved this.

Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business

As you can see, there are several ways you can highlight your products on Pinterest. Have a look to see how other businesses are using their Pinterest accounts and figure out which your audience might like best. Choose the boards that will work best for you.

Have you been using Pinterest brand pages to promote your business? What’s worked for you? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

http://www.jretechnology.com