Snapchat has been tipped to go cold before Instagram, even though it’s leading the charge in 2016. So…Is snapchat just a fad?
With social media expanding every day, people and businesses want to know what they should be engaging in and what is a waste of time. Let’s look at how each social media platform can benefit your business.
Introduced in 2010 Instagram was a platform for individuals to share photos they have taken or liked on their own personalised paged. Since then we have seen the arrival of many features including location tracking, hashtags, tagging friends, suggested posts and most recently “Your Story”. Coming to the end of 2016 Instagram can be used as a very effective marketing tool for retailers, personalities and lifestyle businesses. With the ability to ad quick links to your page and have social media acclaimed superstars promote your brand. You can essentially start a very progressive and productive following by using a pin board of posts dedicated to you and your brand.
Snapchat
Born soon after in 2011, Snapchat was the answer for individuals to escape from their photos being pinned up on a page to something a little more personal. That’s the beauty in it, you can send it to whomever you like and it can only be viewed for a maximum of 10 seconds before it’s erased. In addition to sending a personalised snap to one friend or many if you choose, you can post your photos and videos in your story! This is where your audience can develop more of a personal understanding of you and what you like to achieve on a regular basis within your business. It can be agreed that snapchat is not an ideal or beneficial for all businesses but it does play a very important role in the modern day social marketing world for some. Another example of snapchats effectiveness is when your consumers or customers can snap a video of themselves asking you questions about stock, meetings, Or other personal enquiries. And you can reply to them in a video of yourself! This creates a great relationship with your target demographic while using a very time efficient entity. Other attributes to snapchat as a marketing tool include but are not limited to no hate mail and an uncluttered profile. This is why today we see snapchat utilized by daily Vloggers worldwide.
So what’s the answer?
Which competing platform should you use? Both have their pros and cons but really it’s down to how you want to communicate with your customers and the type of business you run. Instagram is perfect for those inspirational & aspirational brands that want to build hype. Snapchat allows you to interact on a more personal level with your customers. In the end it all hinges on having a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your social media strategy and utilising the strengths of each medium.
