While Instagram is its own social media tool (that I’ll focus on by itself later on in its own post once I experiment a little bit more), I wanted to focus in this post on how you can use the video functions of both Vine and Instagram. Although I prefer Instagram, since it has two functions in one: photos and video, both can be good platforms for short video content. Which you choose depends on numerous factors.
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Why Use Instagram Video or Vine?
When my job first approached me and asked if I could use Vine to document one of their events, I was super hesitant. I’m not really much of a video content person, I’m much more of a photos and written story journalist. But after we did some practicing, I was pretty sold on the idea.
Video in short form (6 seconds for Vine, 10 seconds for Instagram) can be a perfect way to promote your website or business, especially if you run a travel website, cover a lot of events, concerts, shows, etc. It’s a great way to give your readers a quick glimpse into what you’ll be covering in the future on a blog post (or on your website) and you can get it published while the event is still happening.
You can also use both platforms to conduct short interviews. These can be used as quick teasers to longer interviews posted up on your site (which is now easier to do with Instagram as it allows you to upload videos from your camera roll) or they can exist on their own as quick interviews done at an event, show, or something similar.
Picking Instagram or Vine
If you already have a decent following on Instagram, then that may be the best platform for you to use. Although neither service will allow clickable links with the video’s description (which can be frustrating when trying to direct your readers towards content) many bloggers have come up with a makeshift solution of changing their link in their profile to be what the want to direct followers to follow for more information. I’m hoping Instagram can improve this in the future, although I certainly understand they’re reasoning behind doing it to prevent link spam. At least Instagram gives you this option, as Vine has no clickable links.
Instagram also allows you to delete segments of your video immediately after you record that segment (but not after you record a new segment of the video after it). Vine doesn’t offer this feature.
In addition, I’ve found there are a lot of available tools to integrate your Instagram feed into your WordPress site or other website, something that doesn’t seem as functional with Vine, since it is only video, not photos and video.
Instagram also has those snazzy filters if that fits with your blog/business.
So why might you go with Vine? If you plan on posting a lot of videos, you may choose Vine so that you don’t spam your Instagram followers with constant videos (Vine, to me at least, seems the more appropriate platform to do this on). Vine also allows you to easily log in with your Twitter account (as long as the Twitter account is connected to your phone), making switching between accounts easy without having to remember more passwords– which is great if you’ve got multiple accounts for business and personal. Switching between Instagram accounts requires a bit more of a hassle to log out and log back in each time with your password.
It wouldn’t hurt to experiment with both to determine what works best for your blog/company. You might also want to do a little research into whether you might find more of an audience on either platform by seeing if there are more similar accounts or accounts that may follow you on Instagram versus Vine.
Practice Makes Perfect (Or Not So Perfect)
As I mentioned before, I was super nervous about doing some video work via Vine for my company for one of our events (this was before Instagram came out with its video function). So we practiced doing shots of a tour of our office. The great thing about these videos is that they don’t have to be absolutely perfect (since they are meant to exist as quick snapshots)so you’ll just need to experiment a little with taking the multiple shots by holding down the screen (on Vine) or the record button (on Instagram) that make up the cuts of the video.
Doing interviews? Definitely take some practice before attempting to do some at an event by recording or colleagues–it can be tough to fit it all in in 6 or 10 seconds! Plus, you’ll need to work on ways to cue interviewees without recording your verbal cue accidentally. In this way Instagram is nicer–when you mess up one segment of your video, you can easily delete it and retry.
Overall, I definitely prefer Instagram over Vine for what I use it for and the different functions I use.
Have you ever considered using Instagram or Vine for your business?
About Carson Derrow
