Use vine to connect with your salon's clients

As of now, Twitter means more than just 140 characters to tweet to the world - it also means fun and creative bite-sized films without the hassle of grabbing fancy footage, editing it or uploading, yet with all the potential to go viral, says Valorie Reavis, founder of The Shout Lounge.

Big brands have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. Urban Outfitters, Comedy Central, even the White House are posting Vines. Think of what you can promote in six seconds: a tour of your gorgeous salon; a before and after with your favourite client, ­­

a watchable how-to, or even your team doing the Harlem Shake.

At six seconds, Vines must to be short and sweet, but with all those 'followers' you have an audience all ripe and ready to share your film making.

Twitter Vine lets you record a series of short video clips to create a simple six second video. There's no going back to rearrange or reshoot one of the clips, so it's imperative to plan your sequence right from the beginning. Figure out what shots you need to get your message across with plenty of visual impact and in as little time as possible.

So, if you want your clients to know about your new £15-off-colour offer, you could sequence:

1 Before colour video of a client

2 After colour video

3 A sign reading £15 off

4 A client making a surprised facial expression.

No matter the intent, keeping it simple and coming up with a way to display your message as a story or series of shots creates the best Vines.

Hit 'record'

This is, surprisingly, the easy part. Once logged in, click the image of the camera in the upper right-hand corner. Just point your phone at whatever you want to record and hold down your finger. The green progress bar at the top will begin to fill so don't spend too long on one shot. Once you've captured that shot, lift up your finger, move on to the next, and hold down your finger again to pick up where you left off. Continue doing this until you've captured all your shots and the green bar is full.

Remember, you can't retake a shot, so if you mess up, you'll have to start over. However, one of  Vine's charms is the realness of the videos, so think about leaving that mistake in there; it might just be the aspect that makes your video special.

Once you're finished recording, add a caption to your video. Vine works like Twitter and Instagram, so you'll want to add any relevant hashtags like #hair or #salon to make it easy for people to find your videos. Also think about adding a short link or call to action, like 'visit our website' or 'book online' to your video. In the colour promotion example pictured, a great caption would be - #haircolour #specialoffers. Book online today to get £15 off: followed by a short link.