All Hallows Eve is the time of the year dedicated to remembering the dead. It seems fitting that on Halloween we reflect on the personal brand lessons from the news last week that Twitter will be closing down their 6-second video app Vine. It may have come as a surprise to many of you, however, the ‘Vine Personal Brand Stars’ that it helped to create have already been moving on to other platforms.
Last year I had the opportunity to hear one such Vine personal brand, Canadian Stewart Reynolds, speak at Tweetstock. At the time he had 450,000 followers and his videos had looped (been viewed) over 170 million times! He had managed to land several lucrative corporate sponsorships from the likes of Disney. Vine was really getting traction, one digital expert even predicted that it was the new TV advertisement.
But as we know the world of digital and social media changes fast. Snapchat took off and Instagram launched a video tool and all of a sudden advertising spend was heading there and Vine (and Twitter) were losing money.
Some important lessons to learn from Vine’s demise;
- Don’t build your personal brand exclusively on others property.
It is not practical for you to develop your own platforms or tools obviously, but online experts often caution against relying on others technology to build your personal brand. Social media giants like Facebook or LinkedIn cannot be ignored if that is where the people you are trying to influence hang out. The key is doing enough to engage them on their platform of choice and then steering them to a location (usually your own website) that you have control over.
- Stay ahead of digital developments
Leading social media and marketing experts continue to push the importance of video. It’s not surprising when you understand that video has 1200% more effectiveness than links and text combined.
Two such social media video successes are Gary Vaynerchuk, with his Ask Gary Vee Show and other video musings and Casey Neistat who is a prodigious creator of video with his daily video vlog.
They will both be speaking at the much anticipated Haste & Hustle Conference in Niagara next February, along with several other leading digital and personal brand experts including myself. If you want to stay ahead of the pack and gather latest thoughts and insights into the whole digital space I strongly advise you to check out the conference – the early bird rate closes this Friday, November 4th http://hasteandhustle.com/agenda/
- Leave them wanting more.
Our attention spans have now shrunk to less than that of a goldfish but we still have the capacity to watch something that captures our attention. You need to ensure that your videos are;
Relatable & Entertaining – Casey Neistat does this really well, many of his videos are of everyday events in his life. One such video, where he is upgraded to a $21,000 business class seat on a flight leaves us all hoping for the same to happen to us!
Trends – If a topic is trending it can be quickly copied, featured or parodied. Obviously, you have to double check that what is trending is compatible with what you plan to shoot and that the topic and message is on brand for you.
Experience – The emotion captured in videos can often leave you feeling that you want more. They tell stories. It makes enough of a connection with you that you want more of the experience. The success of those that get traction is that they actually cause a physical response. There is probably some brain science behind this too.
Communication of your online personal brand is becoming more and more critical. It is the new letter, advertisement, even resume. We all have the ability to become the owner of our own media company to manage our personal brands.
What step will you take this week to take more control of that message?