Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Honda, in an effort to promote its national Honda Summer Clearance Event, took to the Internet to engage people and offer them some special deals.

I'm always looking for ways that brands can use social media applications to engage their customers and fans. Honda just set the bar high for anyone looking to use Vine as a means of communication and engagement.

The Honda #WantNewCar PromotionHonda, in an effort to promote its national Honda Summer Clearance Event, took to the Internet to engage people and offer them some special deals. Users were encouraged to tell Honda why it is they want a new car, and to do so by using the hashtag #WantNewCar. Now, this in itself would have been a good promotion. A huge name like Honda branding its own hashtag would have given them a ton of insight into their Twitter following and why their users want a new car. It's like free market research....

Khoa's colorful stop motion videos on Vine have boomed in popularity. Here's how he creates those six seconds of imagination....

If you stumble across across one of Khoa's reality-defying stop-motion vines, the first thing you'll ask is, "How in the world did he do that?"

Twitter launched Vine on Jan. 24. The next day, 23-year-old Khoa Phan created his first Vine, a simple five-shot video of a Keurig machine brewing a cup of coffee. This was the kind of thing most people were filming when Vine first launched — mundane videos of everyday occurrences. As is the case with Instagram, if users don't think creatively, posts quickly run humdrum.

Khoa, however, was not satisfied with the status quo of bland vines. It was his second vine that launched him into the spotlight. In it, he brings whimsical construction paper bubbles to life using stop motion, which gives the illusion that the bubbles are floating across the dark wood table. The bubbles pop to reveal a message: "Have a good day!" (a simple recurring message in his vines)....

Learn some best practices emerging around Twitter's Vine so you can figure out what works, and what doesn't, for marketing. Vine.

It’s the latest social media feature available on Twitter. Released on January 24, companies have already started to cozy up to the new, six second video feature as part of their social media content strategy. With it being so new, however, it may be difficult to tell what the best practices are. I mean, what's working? What's not? Any guidance here, people?!

Well, the good news is, a veritable Vine flop isn't going to do your brand a ton of harm -- unless you're like, incredibly offensive or something. But shooting videos can seriously stress marketers out sometimes (Who has the equipment? How do I turn this thing on? Should I write a script? Does it look blurry?). So, a little guidance is what we're here to give. Because while we love to encourage experimentation in your marketing, we hate to see you waste your time.

Here's what some brands have been doing that people seem to love, and some of the things that really are best to avoid when using Vine. Take a look, and share your own Vine learnings in the comments so we can all figure this thing out together....