Snapchat is huge with Millennials, so it’s important to learn how to use snapchat for business. A recent survey by statistics portal Statista, shows that over 60% of Snapchat users are in the coveted 18-34 age bracket, with fewer than 15% over the age of 35. It’s a tremendous social media network to tap into if you’re looking for ways to market your business to this younger audience, and more and more companies have been doing just that.
However, Snapchat plays right into the ever-shortening attention span of young adults; if you want to reach them with your marketing efforts, your message needs to be captivating, engaging, and entertaining to be truly effective. One way to catch the eye of your millennial audience is by using Snapchat’s Story feature, which allows for multiple images and videos to play in a short clip. Plus, unlike ordinary Snapchat images, which vanish after just a few seconds, Snapchat Stories stick around for 24 hours. That characteristic not only gives businesses a longer period of time to share something with their audience, but it gives users the opportunity to rewatch stories that they find particularly interesting.
How can you best use Snapchat Stories to promote your brand and your business? Here are seven tips.
- Plan, plan, plan. Snapchat is intended to look like it’s all done spontaneously, but as with all of your marketing efforts, some planning is necessary to do it well. Consider planning the content of your Stories several days, weeks, or even months ahead to promote events, products, and what’s happening with your company. You may also come up with times when you can use Live Stories for in the moment happenings, ways to share sneak peeks or behind the scenes looks on Stories, and even a Story series to keep followers checking back for updates.
- Represent your business well first and foremost. This means that you’ll want to carefully look at everything you put out in a Snapchat Story through your company’s user account. Check photos or videos for any content that may be considered controversial and negative; this includes anything happening in the background. If you’re using videos in your Stories, listen as well as look. Additionally, create captions and doodles carefully so that they are free of grammatical errors and typos.
- Go way beyond single frames. Mixing up photos and short video clips in a Story can help keep your fickle audience watching for the entire duration. They’ll want to see what comes next, and using many images and clips may also encourage repeat viewings to catch what they missed the first time around.
- Vary the look of your shots. To keep your Story as visually compelling as possible, use a combination of wide shots that capture the whole environment as well as cool close ups. Similarly, using images of people, places, and things (instead of just things, for example) can make a story more visually interesting.
- Use stickers, filters, and doodles — but don’t overuse them! Snapchats should look like Snapchats, and that includes making use of the stickers, filters, and doodles in the app. However, use them sparingly and judiciously. There’s definitely such a thing as too many emojis!
- Save your work. Even though Snapchat content is intended to be ephemeral, you can save your Stories to your Memories. This is a new feature launched this summer that allows you to retain a copy for your records and give you the option of sharing your Story again in the future.
- Make sure your Stories can be seen. It’s a good idea to check your sharing settings to ensure that your Stories are set for public viewing (rather than private or friends only). To do this, tap the Snapchat ghost icon at the top of your screen, then tap the settings gear icon, and look at the line that indicates who can see your stories. It should be everyone.
Tell Your Tale
Snapchat Stories are a great way to get in touch with your 18-34 year old audience. Creating effective Stories may require some stretching of your marketing abilities, but it can also help grow your business, especially among a younger demographic. Spend some time planning and crafting them, and use them regularly; you’ll find that your Snapchat skills improve, and hopefully, your bottom line will improve as well.