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"Viddy, the social video-sharing platform known for its 15-second time cap, has a slogan on its website: Capture Life in the Moment. Countless brands are seizing this opportunity, capturing aspects of their day-to-day operations in order to drive engagement with fans and followers.\nDue to Viddy's success (in May, Viddy completed a $30 million Series B funding round, valuing the company at more than $300 million) and the success in brands extending their social reach, the video platform may be a good addition to any startup's media plan.\n\nSEE ALSO: Viddy\u2019s Plan to Win the Social Video War\nWe spoke to five popular brands to see how they use Viddy, and they shared some great tips for any startups looking to get into the game.\n1. Contests and Giveaways With Southwest Airlines\nSouthwest Airlines has been using Viddy since January, starting out with a contest in conjunction with the Sundance Film Festival. But before that, Brooks Thomas, emerging media coordinator at Southwest Airlines, played around with the social network on his own after meeting the Viddy team in the person.\n\"We actually met them at BlogWorld in Los Angeles late last year ... We were booth neighbors, actually, so we got to know [them] pretty well.\"\nThe Viddy team members told Thomas about their idea, and the Southwest digital team was really interested, seeing it as a mashup between Instagram and Twitter. When the time came for them to think of a video-related contest for Sundance, Viddy popped into their heads.\n\"We wanted to make sure it was the right venue for the contest and also make sure it was going to be easily sharable on our channel, and sure enough, it was,\" Thomas explains. \"It was a very robust platform, so today, it has only grown \u2014 by user base and by how technologically advanced it is and how integrated it is with other platforms, so it's really been beneficial for us to not only see the growth of Viddy, but also kind of grow with it.\"\nSouthwest tries to remain consistent in uploading content, but at the moment, its strategy is more project-based than time based. It started out with \"Guess The Airport\" videos and the use of the various filters Viddy offers, but Thomas says that was just the beginning.\n\"Now, this is actually becoming part of people's communications plans, and we're actually storyboarding videos,\" he says. \"The handshake contest \n\nthat we did [in late September, for which users sent videos of their coolest handshakes with the hashtag #SecretHandshake] ... was pretty well produced, and a lot of thought went into how we were going to do it and what the camera angles were going to be. Even with just a 15-second video, because even 15 seconds without words can be pretty powerful.\"\nSouthwest's content strategy essentially revolves around three things. First, there's the poignant visual aesthetic, with a beginning, middle and end of a story within 15 seconds. Then, there's the static visual aesthetic, showcasing something in progress but interesting to the viewer for only 15 seconds. Lastly is the call to action, which Thomas explains is \"somebody saying something or telling [the viewer] to do something \u2014 some sort of actionable item that usually involves a person talking.\"  \nTo that end, Southwest Airlines has partnered with Viddy for the last two months on its \"Viddy A Day,\" which, Thomas says, has given them access to a younger, more technologically savvy audience than the company may usually see. Through the campaign, Southwest has hosted several contests, and the team has received extremely creative, well-shot videos.\nAs for startups, Thomas advises, \"Think about what your audience wants, [but] don't overthink it. Be simple. In the beginning, it was just me taking a Viddy, posting it and then just seeing if anybody was listening, finding out they really were and kind of growing it from there. And now when we do them, whoever answers the correct answer first, we actually send them a little tchotchke just to thank them for following and sticking with us and being a part of our conversation on Viddy.\"\n2. Behind-the-Scenes Access With DVF\n\n\nFashion brand DVF, headed by designer Diane von Furstenberg, launched its Viddy profile (along with its Facebook Moments tab, which ties in videos) in February during New York Fashion Week. \"We had been looking for ways to share intimate glimpses into the world of DVF, and when we heard about Viddy and its short, 15-second snippets, we knew there was potential there,\" says Michelle Horowitz, executive vice president of marketing and communications at DVF.\nThe brand's strategy for the video platform is to tell a story in each video and show how a fashion house operates behind the scenes. \"For our launch in February, we shared prep, fittings and moments backstage, quick interviews with Diane and the DVF design team, and short Q&amp;As with our show guests, including Oscar de la Renta, Nina Garcia, Barbara Walters, Rachel Zoe, Anderson Cooper, Steven Kolb, Fern Mallis, Joe Zee and Brad Goreski, among others,\" Horowitz says.\nDVF has also documented moments at major events such as the DVF Awards, the photo shoot for the brand's fall advertising campaign and Fashion\u2019s Night Out. For the most recent Fashion Week in September, DVF focused its Viddys on the collection as a whole \u2014 \"how inspiration comes to life, from moodboard to runway,\" Horowitz says. Viddy also allowed DVF to highlight additional footage from its September collaboration with Google Glass.\nOn average, DVF's Viddy profile gains 1,500 followers per week, which is due in part to its videos' authentic, behind-the-scenes feel, allowing followers to engage with the brand in a more meaningful way. \"The organic, spur-of-the-moment Viddys that we have shared bring Diane\u2019s vision to life and showcase the inspiration behind the collections,\" Horowitz says.\nSpecifically for startups, Horowitz suggests putting quality content first and foremost. \"Capture moments that will elicit excitement and draw people in. Use engaging titles and descriptions, post frequently, answer questions from users and follow back to take it a step further,\" she says.\n3. Direct Interaction with the Phoenix Suns\nNBA team the Phoenix Suns just started using Viddy this past summer, but the team's digital department had been planning on joining for a few months, once they learned about the platform. \nAt the moment, the Suns have a strategy similar to DVF: behind-the-scenes glimpses of the team and its organization. For example, the Suns' social media specialist, Greg Esposito, posted daily clips of exercises and scrimmages during the team's San Diego training camp. Additionally, just this past week, the Suns' marketing department produced a TV commercial for the new season, and included \u201Cmaking of\u201D clips on its Viddy profile.\nHowever, Jeramie McPeek, vice president of digital for the Phoenix Suns, says that the organization plans to branch out on Viddy very soon.\n\"As we enter the new NBA season, we\u2019re going to incorporate Viddy even more by encouraging our fans to submit questions to our players through Viddy. We\u2019ll then take the best questions and get the players to answer them on camera, which we will edit together into a longer-form package for our website, Suns.com, as well as YouTube and Facebook [and] for our television broadcasts during our 'Suns Live' pre-game show,\" McPeek says.\nThe Suns currently have just under 1,000 followers on Viddy, and the digital team expects that number to grow dramatically once the season starts at the end of October. However, McPeek explains that another aspect of the Suns' Viddy strategy is to use the platform as a sort of extension of existing social media, rather than just another network.\n\"To be honest, we\u2019re not looking to create another large audience of followers on Viddy,\" he says. \"We\u2019re really using Viddy to create some fun, creative and dramatic clips that we can then push out to fans through our Suns Twitter channel.\"\nMcPeek advises startups not to be afraid to mess with Viddy's unique filters and music. \"[They] can take an otherwise ordinary video and make it unique and fun for your social audience,\" he says. \"Giving your followers those behind-the-scenes looks and making them interesting will make them more memorable.\"\n4. Specialization With Brides Magazine\n\n\nBrides is relatively new to Viddy \u2014 it first tried the platform last April \u2014 but recently used it to amplify its brand with Fashion Week. By focusing on this one event with the video platform, Brides is able to offer a specialized experience for interested readers.\n\"So far, we have only used [Viddy] to cover Fashion Week, which our brides love to see, but we have plans to do some behind-the-scenes content from photo shoots and other events we go to,\" says Lisa Gooder, digital content director at Brides. This is similar to the magazine's Instagram strategy, and Gooder explains that the team hopes to grow its Viddy audience quickly through promotion on the website and through other social channels. \nGooder has some great, specific advice for startups: \"Post your content in a horizontal format so that it can be featured as a most popular post!\" she says.\n5. Live Performances and Moments With Warner Bros. Records\nLike Southwest Airlines, Warner Bros. Records (WBR) started using Viddy in January of this year. The first WBR artists to use Viddy were Linkin Park and Meek Mill, which showed the digital team that the platform fit well with how the company's artists interact with their fans.\n\"Our focus has been to highlight compelling moments from our artists\u2019 spur of the moment activities,\" says Ayal Kleinman, vice president of digital marketing at Warner Bros. Records. \"Our most prominent application of ... the service is shooting short clips live at our music video shoots. This works very well since fans love the inside view from the video shoot as its happening. We have also post live Viddys from shows, photo shoots, artist showcases here at our Warner Headquarters in Burbank and more.\" \nKleinman says Viddy enables WBR to deliver an insider\u2019s view into what\u2019s happening with its artists at significant moments in their careers. \"It\u2019s natural that our most passionate fans would want to be the first to know when this type of content is being released, and their interest probably drives follower growth more than anything else,\" he says. \"It\u2019s a simple rule: The more we share, the more engagement we create.\"\nFor startups, Kleinman explains that it's important to share video content with purpose. \"The cardinal rule is making sure the content is great,\" he says. \"We don\u2019t share just to share. We try to capture great authentic moments that are compelling enough to hit our social feeds. Timing is also everything. With Viddy and tools like it, it is important to close the gap between when the content is created and when it is shared. Viddy enables that quite well with a very well-built app.\"\nDoes your company use Viddy, or does it plan to now? Tell us in the comments.\nMore Small Business Resources From OPEN Forum\n- How to Use Hashtags to Promote Your Small Business- 10 Things You Didn't Know About Yelp- How to Master Social Media Like a Famous Comedian\nThumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus\nImages courtesy of iStockphoto, Ary6; Flickr, Christopher Macsurak; iStockphoto, CostinT.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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