It’s a great opportunity for businesses to use a range of creative marketing techniques like Snapchat to engage new customers, build your brand and sell products.

2. Introduction
When it comes to business, every social
media platform is a potential new
marketing channel. The problem, however,
is that there are so many channels out
there that it is impossible to concentrate on
them all. That said, there are some you
shouldn’t ignore and one of these, that
continues to go from strength to strength, is
Snapchat.
Today, Snapchat has more active daily users
than Twitter with over 178 million people
viewing an incredible 10 billion posts each
day. And with a focus on visual media, it’s a
great opportunity for businesses to use a
range of creative marketing techniques to
engage new customers, build your brand
and sell products.

3. What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a quirky camera app that lets users send ‘Snaps’ to each other. A
Snap is an image or a video of 10 seconds or less. What’s quirky about
Snapchat is that anything you post only has a limited lifespan. Once all
recipients have seen it, it disappears permanently. Besides individual Snaps,
you can create a ‘Story’ comprised of individual Snaps but even these only last
for 24 hours. In addition, you can also send short-lived, real-time, text
messages to friends – these are called ‘Chats’.
?

4. What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a quirky camera app that lets users send ‘Snaps’ to each other. A
Snap is an image or a video of 10 seconds or less. What’s quirky about
Snapchat is that anything you post only has a limited lifespan. Once all
recipients have seen it, it disappears permanently. Besides individual Snaps,
you can create a ‘Story’ comprised of individual Snaps but even these only last
for 24 hours. In addition, you can also send short-lived, real-time, text
messages to friends – these are called ‘Chats’.
?

5. Snapchat facts
• In terms of users, Snapchat is more
popular than Twitter, LinkedIn or
Pinterest.
• It has high user engagement – over
60% of users post a Snap every day.
• Three-quarters of users make a
purchase through Snapchat every
month.
• It’s ideal for companies targeting
millennials. Over 70% of users are
under 35.
• It’s still an emerging channel. Despite
its popularity, 99% of companies have
yet to take advantage of Snapchat,
meaning there’s plenty of opportunity
for those who get in first.

6. Because of the short-lived nature of Snapchat posts, it’s not a platform
where businesses are going to spend thousands of pounds creating lots
of professional videos. Instead, it’s an ideal place for quick, entertaining
posts that offer an insight into the life of your brand. It’s for showing
what happens behind the scenes or taking snaps of people, places and
events and highlighting your values.
Snapchat can also be used for posting Snaps about new products or
services, for promoting events and even for offering discounts or running
competitions. If you send out a discount voucher, for example, users can
save it to their phone for later use.
Realistic Branding Opportunities

7. Setting up Snapchat
Setting up Snapchat is easy. Just download the app
from your app store (Google or Apple, etc.) and sign
up for a new Snapchat account. To keep things
consistent, have the same username as you do on
your other social media accounts. This will help
followers find you when they search across different
platforms.
Once you have registered your account, the first thing
you need to do is to make sure the ‘Stories’ feature,
which keeps your posts live for 24 hours, is set to
public so that all your followers can see them. To do
this, tap the ghost icon to navigate to Settings, select
View My Story and set to ‘Everyone’.

8. Adding friends
You can only share your Snaps and Stories with your
friends, so it is important that you begin to add friends
as soon as possible. If you already have other social
media accounts, use these to get the message out that
you are now posting on Snapchat. What you’ll find is
that those who prefer using Snapchat will be the ones
to add you.
You can add friends by searching for their username,
from your address book, by posting your Snapcode
(like a QR code) or your username to other social
media platforms, or by inviting contacts who are non-
Snapchat users to sign up and make friends.
One great feature of Snapchat is its ‘Add Nearby Users’
feature which lets you invite anyone in your immediate
vicinity. This is ideal for organisations that have bricks
and mortar stores or which run events. If you have a
shop, for example, you can send an invite to every
Snapchat user that enters your store.

9. Creating and sharing content
Creating content on Snapchat is very easy. When
you open the app, you open your camera. All you
have to do is take a picture or a short video.
Once you’ve finished, you’ll then be taken to the
editing screen where you’ll be given a range of
editing options to embellish your Snap.
Once you’ve finished editing and are happy with
your Snap, you can decide which contacts you’d
like to send it to. This is very helpful if you are
marketing to different groups of Snapchat users
as you can send out different Snaps to different
people. To post your Snap, simply click the blue
arrow icon at the bottom of your screen.
Following this, the app then changes to the feed
screen.

10. Analytics
User engagement data is important for any business looking at the impact of
their social media strategy. Luckily, Snapchat has this built in. If you tap on the
dots to the right of your Story, you’ll be shown your Story analytics. These
show you which users have viewed your Story and who has saved your Snaps
to their phones. There is also a host of third-party applications you can use to
give even greater insight into your user engagement.

11. Conclusion
As you can see, Snapchat is one of the easiest social media platforms to set
up and get running. It’s perfect for marketing to young, millennial audiences
who love this kind of highly visual, fast-paced interaction and it’s a fun and
exciting way to promote your brand, products and events. Hopefully, this
guide will have shown you all the basic things you need to get your Snapchat
account off the ground and to start posting.