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Views on Snapchat can be extremely beneficial to your brand. Snapchat has 186 million users on average per day, and these users create 3 billion snaps per day. To put it another way, this social network channel has a larger audience than Twitter, which has 126 million daily users.
Another reason Snapchat is worth some of your marketing dollars is that it is so popular among young people. While other media channels are finding it increasingly difficult to reach Millennials and the younger generation, Snapchat is almost entirely used by the young. Snapchat is used by 78 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds, according to a Pew Research survey.
So you understand why you need to cultivate and reach out to your Snapchat audience, but how do you do it? This guide will teach you how to get more views and followers on Snapchat, whether you are a Snapchat newbie or an experienced digital marketer looking for advanced tips.
Share Your Snapchat Link on Other Social Media Platforms
Unfortunately, the Snapchat app isn’t designed for discovery. Snapchat allows users to follow people they consider close friends as well as brands that are important to them. As a result, gaining followers solely through the app is difficult.
You do, however, have other social media channels you can use to promote your Snapchat as part of your overall digital media strategy. Share your Snapchat code frequently on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms where you have a following.
Read Also: 5 Small Business Digital Marketing Trends.
Other marketing materials can also be used to promote your Snapchat account.
Consider sharing your Snapchat with your business’s:
- Blog
- During events
- Business cards
- Email newsletter
- Other advertisements
Remember that many people are suffering from social-media burnout. People have an average of 5.54 social media accounts. They don’t want to see the same thing on all of them. Snapchat’s format almost forces you to create original content for it that you may not be sharing elsewhere. Send teasers about exclusive content or offers that are only available through your snaps to your other social media followers to promote your Snapchat.
Simple Snapchat Suggestions
Is your company just starting out on Snapchat? Here are some quick Snapchat basics to get you started. Advanced users may disregard the following guidelines:
Post frequently: Users are shown the most recently updated story first, and the higher up your story is on your followers’ feed, the more likely they are to look at it. The average app user checks it 20 times per day.
- Music: To make your snaps more entertaining, add music to them.
- Captions: Adding captions is useful not only for accessibility, but also for guiding users who check their snaps with the sound turned down or muted while in public.
- Polls and quizzes: Using polls and quizzes to engage your followers is a wise move. Everyone enjoys providing feedback on issues that are important to them.
- Follow your followers: If you want your brand to connect with real people, you must follow them back, at least the first few hundred.
- Change your profile picture: People enjoy novelty, and changing your profile picture is a great way to pique the interest of a follower who doesn’t open your snaps.
Read Also: 7 Tips for Improving Online-to-Offline Marketing
Provide Value
While our previous suggestions focused on Snapchat and how it works, it’s time to turn your attention to your audience and what they want. The simple truth is that if your audience values your snaps, they will watch. They will catch up on your story much less frequently if your snaps aren’t valuable.
What are Snapchat users interested in? To find out, you must first have a solid understanding of your audience, or the audience you want to have. However, you can get a lot of ideas from popular brands’ Snapchats.
Taco Bell, for example, was an early adopter of the Snapchat story medium and hasn’t stopped taking chances with the platform. They use snaps to announce new products and remind their followers about current promotions. It stands to reason that Taco Bell fans would be interested in learning about their company’s products.
Mashable uses Snapchat to share live reporting, whereas Amazon uses it to promote and offer exclusives. Everlane uses the app to conduct live factory tours, demonstrating to customers that their manufacturing is as transparent as they claim. Using Snapchat as a “backstage pass” can be extremely beneficial.
Remember the power of education when developing your own Snapchat value propositions. The UK Department of Transport ran a successful campaign to educate young people about the dangers of driving while intoxicated. Surely, your brand can teach something.
Provide Varieties
Snapchat thrives on change. The nature of the short content clips could be a trap for brands that aren’t willing to take chances. Make no mistake: if you share the same photos over and over, your audience will tune out.
It can be difficult to provide variety while maintaining a relatively consistent brand story and look. The best way to figure out how to balance these needs is to look to brands that offer constant change on their Snapchats for inspiration.
Sour Patch Kids is a great example. As a playful candy brand, they can afford to take big risks, such as a series of public pranks with their mascot that they had YouTube star Logan Paul perform.
Read Also: 4 Proven Strategies to Drive Massive Traffic To Your Website
Do you want to work with a more serious brand? Your efforts to provide variety do not have to be amateurish. Consider Cisco, a major technology firm. To increase recruitment and spread the brand message, the Cisco marketing department handed over their Snapchat account to non-marketing staff once a day for a year. The #WeAreCisco campaign produced a diverse range of content and aided the brand in meeting its engagement objectives.
Smaller businesses can still diversify their Snapchat team. You can even do it if your digital marketing team is just one person.
Start a Conversation
Though many popular brands use Snapchat as a one-way conversation tool, the platform can also be used as a real conversation tool. This can help you increase your views and make the most of your Snapchat followers.
Birchbox is one company that excels at this. They made use of Snapchat’s video call feature to have one-on-one conversations with their customers. This is not only a valuable way to connect with customers and answer their questions, but you can also use what you learn from these discussions to improve your Snapchat strategy.
Take Chances with Snapchat
Brands may see Snapchat as a riskier platform to engage their customers on, but the rewards for taking the risk can be enormous. Not only does Snapchat allow you to capture the attention of a young audience, but its flexible and brief format forces you to be creative with your marketing in ways you can never imagine.
You can spend a lot of your marketing budget on Snapchat if you want, but some of the most popular accounts are very low-budget. Snapchat is also an excellent entry point for new brands.