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Why Snapchat is Good for Business: Five Facts

Do you want to connect with a young audience? One of the most suitable platforms for this is Snapchat. Its advantages include popularity among the youth, interesting tools, and a low level of competition. Snapchat has been used for many different purposes. It has been used as a way to share memories with friends and family, as a way to promote brands, and as a way to share news stories.

Here’s how to promote your business on this social network.

Background Info About Snapchat

The service was started in 2011 as a messenger for the quick exchange of photos. Today, the service allows you to send photos and short videos, which are automatically deleted after 24 hours. Its increasing popularity stimulates many business owners to turn to professional advertising services, like those offered by https://www.aitarget.com/, to promote their goods on this platform. Here are five basic facts about Snapchat:

  1. The service has outrun Twitter and Pinterest: today the platform is used by 397 million people, 238 million of them are active every day;
  2. Most Snapchat users are under 25;
  3. The largest audience (over 101 million) is in the United States. There, Snapchat covers 90% of internet users aged from 13 to 24 — more than Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger combined;
  4. American teens say Snapchat is their number one social network;
  5. 61% of platform users are female, 38% are male.

Statistics show that Snapchat may not work for every business. Here are the cases when using this social network is a good idea:

  • Your main audience is youth. Snapchat is considered to be an effective marketing tool aimed at teens and millennials;
  • You are planning to attract the youngsters to your product. For example, Ralph Lauren has collaborated with Snapchat while allowing the use of branded kits in avatars; 
  • You prefer working in a less competitive environment. Due to the specifics of Snapchat, not so many brands are represented there as on other social networks like Facebook or Instagram.

How It Works: Basic Snapchat Tools

Snaps usually consist of photos or videos. They are used to compose stories that are available throughout the day. Snaps can only be sent to friends or made visible to all users. This service does not have the usual likes or comments, but there are other tools to create interesting content:

  1. Photos and videos are key features of the service. When you open the app, the camera turns on automatically. You can take a photo or video (max length is 10 seconds) or upload an existing image from the gallery of your phone.
  2. Personalization. Before making a post, you can add graphics, stickers, and text blocks to each snap.
  3. Filters are one of the most commonly used functions. There are two main types of them available on the service: Geofilters and Selfie Lenses. 
  4. Instant messaging. Users can reply to snaps: these replies are considered to work like personal messages.
  5. Screenshot. The user receives notifications about each such snapshot. This is a kind of like and the possibility to show that particular content is interesting for you.

Snapchat Brand Promotion Strategy

Show your subscribers your product and the personal side of the enterprise. Content should be exclusive: do not duplicate posts from other social networks. Arrange a content plan in advance. Here’s how to make it:

  1. Product. Share new goods, report sales, or create tutorial videos on how to use your product or service: what to wear with clothes, how to paint walls, or how to create decor;
  2. Behind the scenes. It is interesting for subscribers to know what is behind the front side of the company: show how the product is made, fragments of a regular working day in a company, or share a spoiler about the development of a new product;
  3. Values. To establish an emotional connection, it is necessary to share what you believe in and why you decided to do this particular business. You can enhance such content with the stories of you or employees of the company;
  4. Storytelling. Try to keep your snaps together into a single story, which is logically interrelated. For example, a story with an ad for a product might have several photos showing details and specific features and end with a video with a CTA. Similarly, you can create storytelling about your typical workday or brand building.

To be successful on Snapchat, regularity is essential. Ideally, you should publish content daily to prevent subscribers from forgetting about your existence.

Snapchat does not yet offer analytics tools available on other social media platforms. You can control the efficiency of promotion by indirect indicators: the number of views of stories and screenshots. These statistics will be available 24 hours after the moment the snaps are published. Another indicator of engagement is direct messages in response to stories. 

If you have any questions left, feel free to leave them in the comments.