Twitter announced in January its new video capture and publishing tool that allows you to take videos straight from its app and publish to your Twitter feed in mere seconds. Surprisingly it doesn’t seem too many people are using the native video publishing tool yet, but that might be because Instagram and Vine have the market locked down on instant video publishing at this point.
Nevertheless, for business owners who favor Twitter for their online marketing efforts, the new tool gives them the ability to take quick in-house videos of new products or company news updates and publish directly to their Twitter feeds, reaching their followers instantly.
You can take 30-second videos, 15 seconds longer than Instagram’s video tool, and much longer than the limited 6 seconds for Vine videos. Instagram offers its famous color filtering options for videos, and you can also share links to videos captured with the app to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. But other than those two advantages, using Twitter video is not much different from Instagram. (There is debate over whether Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, reaches more users than Twitter. You can read about that issue on Slate.com.) One plus in using Twitter video is you can embed the video tweets on your blog or Website.
Regardless of which app you decide to use, video is an appealing format that grabs instant attention on social media. You can convey a great deal in 30 seconds, and personally engage with users.
Here’s my video Tweet embedded
Feel free to tweet to your followers directly from this screen!
Twitters’s new #video capture and publishing tool lets you share instant video updates to your Twitter feed. pic.twitter.com/YnMyn9jMDw
— Laura Tate (@CJScribe) March 6, 2015
Taking Videos with Twitter
To use the Twitter video tool, click the feather icon in your Twitter app just as you would to write a regular tweet, and choose the camera option.
Click on the red video icon at the bottom of the screen, and when you’re ready to shoot, press and hold the icon to film. You can do several takes, and choose the best clips, and even rearrange them by clicking and dragging the clips to the left or right. Drag up to delete clips. When you’re finished, let go of the icon, press done at the top right of the screen.
Add text and hashtags to go with your video for more context if you wish. If you want to trim your video, click the video icon, and the editing screen will pop up.
Click and drag the blue editing bar at the bottom of your screen with your finger to trim your video. When finished, click Trim at the top right of your screen to set your edits. The screen (see above) will return for you ready to Tweet your video!
To embed a Twitter video, click on the ellipsis link at the bottom of a video tweet, and copy the code that pops up on your screen. Paste the code into any page of a blog or Website.
In Summary
Twitter’s new video capture and publishing tool is an easy and fast way to reach your followers with fun and engaging 30-second or less videos. Broadcast news updates immediately, or simply say hello from the office.