What I’ve learned in 3 months using Snapchat

For about 3 months I’ve been playing with Snapchat (Jimmy Coleman) and thought it was a good time to share some of my learnings. As a Gen Xer and a digital marketer, I was keen to discover more about the platform that had captivated the attention of the millennials. The excitement surrounding Snapchat reminds me of the buzz Facebook and Twitter was receiving 8 years ago when I was living in New York. 

A quick summary, Snapchat is a mobile App that allows images and videos (Snaps) to be sent. The Snaps last between 3 and 10 seconds. Points are earned for every Snap sent and received. To enhance Snaps, you can add lenses (facial recognition that overlays a mask onto a user’s face), filters (geo-targeted), and text to images and videos. The lenses are one of the reasons why the platform is so addictive with new ones added every couple of days. I got hooked using the lenses, and shared photos and videos with my wife’s friends, who in turn shared content with their friends. Before long the whole group was using it. 

Snapchat figures are impressive for a platform that has been going for about 4 years. Snapchat has 200+ million users, 100 million are active daily users with Australia having 2 million active users. More than 60% of US 13 to 34 year olds Smartphone owners are Snapchatters. Users spend on average 30 minutes a day on it. Snapchat is dominating video with 10 billion videos watched daily. To put it in perspective, Facebook has the same number of video views, but are 10x times larger!

Why do people love the platform? Snapchat gives people a platform to creatively express themselves to the world. We can share our own curated content with friends and people located anywhere in the world. Snapchat is the perfect platform to be continually sharing Snaps (capturing moments), which is a reflection of how we're feeling in the moment. And the last reason why people love Snapchat is because the snaps disappear after 24 hours!

Interesting to note, all content on Snapchat is viewed vertically, which means it gets maximum eyeball attention. Studies have found that mobile users were not turning their phones when viewing content, resulting in landscape content being underutilised. This is probably one of the reasons why Facebook has recently launched Canvas ads, to take advantage of the full vertical space.

So how do the brands get involved in the platform? Like with everything, there’s the organic way and the paid option.

The organic way is to create stories on a brand’s profile. This does not mean replicating Facebook and Instagram content onto Snapchat. Snapchatters are expecting the content to be unique and rawer without the high creative production of other platforms. In saying that, Snapchat is a story-telling platform and requires content planning, otherwise a brand’s feed will be full of random images and videos. Important to note, it can be quite labour intensive to build an active community due to the content disappearing after 24 hours.

Snapchat’s paid options allow brands to get involved without having to invest as much manpower, but there are still considerable costs to advertising on the platform. The ‘Discover’ brand channel is a dedicated channel (undivided attention) for brands to publish curated content. This option is open to Snapchat’s main media/ publishing partners (about 20 brands) who have deep pockets.

Another option for brands to participate in is the ‘Live Story’ section, which occupies prime realestate just below the Discover section. It’s a combination of user generated, branded and Snapchat curated content from live events from around the world, it’s a bit like a modern day documentary. A lot of the content is from behind the scenes at fashion shows, music and film awards and sport (the NBA has been using it a lot during the finals).

The ‘Discover’ and ‘Live Story’ sections have been called a TV replacement and for good reason.  America’s ABC recently broadcasted the American Music Awards, it got 3 million TV viewers aged 13-34, while a Snapchat Live Story about the event drew 11.5 million. Advertisers will be climbing over themselves to be featured next year.

Snapchat also features Live Stories from cities around the world, recently Reykjavik was featured. Snapchat’s team based in LA and NYC sift through thousands of Snaps (Geo-filtered tagged photos) to curate the content and mix in their own content (from people on the ground), and add in ads (brand stories). To create ‘brand stories’, prices start from a very reasonable $20 for every 1,000 views (up to 10 second videos). Recently I saw a 5 second Hungry Jacks ad video.

Quickly becoming a popular option for brands is sponsored ‘on demand’ Geo-filters. Snapchatters can add branded graphics to photos and videos based on Geo-locations. McDonalds was one of the first to use the filter on a national scale. At a recent workshop in the office we created a filter for our event, we geo-fenced it to our building for about an hour, and it costed about $5USD (very reasonable). Thoughts of hijacking events spring to mind, so it will be interesting to see how Snapchat manages this going forward.

The last 3 months have certainly been fun using and discovering more about Snapchat. There is definitely lots of opportunities for brands to get involved in the platform. It’s important to understand where Snapchat fits within your digital landscape. Each of your social media platforms play an important role with Snapchat being more of the ‘joker’. It’s a place for brands to have some fun and be more real.