Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Snapchat (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Even though Snapchat is said to have over 150 million daily users, many are still at a loss for where the app fits into their marketing plan.

Think for a moment about some of your most embarrassing moments. Perhaps you fell off of a chair in the middle of a painfully hip, packed restaurant (me). Maybe you fell asleep in the middle of a meeting and got called out by your coworkers (me). Perchance you were at a professional development event at a colleague’s family cabin and broke the host’s hammock (spoiler alert: me). Whatever your most cringe-worthy moments, I bet you wish they could disappear forever after 10 seconds. This is what sets Snapchat apart.

While it can’t erase embarrassing memories from your life, Snapchat’s fleeting nature has been both a blessing and a curse for brands using the image-sharing platform. With the maximum lifespan of a Snap being 24 hours, businesses and brands have had to approach marketing differently on the platform. To help you navigate these uncharted waters, we asked our community for their top Snapchat questions and answered them below.

How do you get more trophies?

Trophies are a fun but not often discussed feature of Snapchat. Introduced in October 2015, trophies are unlocked when you complete various challenges or sets of specific actions through the app. For example, when you send 50 video Snaps you receive a trophy in the shape of a video camera. And when you send 1,000 Snaps using your front-facing camera you receive a trophy in the form of the Japanese Ogre emoji (not that I would know…). To make your life easier, The Huffington Post has provided a thorough guide to unlocking all trophies and the steps you need to take to do so.

And where is this magical Snapchat Trophy Case located? To access your Trophy Case:

1. Tap the ghost icon at the middle top of the Camera screen
2. Tap the trophy icon at the top of the Profile screen
3. Tap on a trophy to see how you earned it

As Snapchat explains: “Some trophies have multiple levels of achievement! Keep exploring Snapchat to earn them all.”

While mostly just a fun feature, you can use your Snapchat Trophy Case as an indicator of how well you are engaging with the platform. Trophies such as “Sent 10 Video Snaps” are great ways of tracking your activity. The list of Trophies you have yet to unlock can also provide great inspiration for future Snapchat ventures. If you haven’t yet sent or posted 100 Snaps using text or doodled on your Snaps with more than five pen colors, these could act as goals for your Snapchat strategy.

What is the best way to market a business on Snapchat?

While businesses are well-accustomed to producing lasting and static marketing content, the ephemeral nature of Snapchat is a whole different ball game. Although the Discover page offers opportunities for big brands to broadcast their content in a more traditional manner, this isn’t an option for all businesses. However, the Story page can be every brand’s best friend.

To showcase your brand, create Snapchat Stories that feature:

• Special events
• Behind the scenes content and employee interviews
• Q&As
• Sneak peeks of new products and services

Our post “Take the Plunge: Smart Ways to Use Snapchat for Business,” expands on these ideas, with the following ways you can use Snapchat to market your business:

• Build brand awareness with creative Snaps and influencer marketing—A Snapchat Story is the perfect medium for storytelling. The highly desirable demographic of 12 to 24-year-olds are here, so “if you want to build brand awareness, work on creating a series of Snaps that tell a story. Each Snap is like a piece of the puzzle, and people will have to keep coming back in order to get the whole picture.” Include influencers either as guests on your Story or with a Snapchat takeover (where they make a Story themselves from your brand’s account).
• Earn foot traffic to your store with incentives—Share coupons and discount codes on your Snap Story as an easy way to get more customers through your doors.
• Boost marketing campaigns with teasers—”The teaser is not a new approach to marketing, but on Snapchat, this access gains a personal feel, like you’re sharing it exclusively with that individual follower. This is a powerful tool for attracting new followers and keeping people interested in your account and marketing campaigns.”
• Showcase new products quickly—As each Snap is a maximum of 10 seconds, Snapchat forces you to highlight key aspects of your message in the simplest ways possible. What’s one thing that sets your product or service apart? Take that idea and make it a Story.

Are there any tools available for Snapchat?

The nature of Snapchat means that the introduction of third-party tools and apps has been slower than other social media networks, but there are definitely a couple of great ones out there to enhance your experience.

GhostCodes

If you don’t know who to follow on Snapchat, Ghostcodes is a great tool. You can browse influencers and relevant users to follow based on your interests, and search using real names.

Download on iTunes

Download on Google Play

ellie (by SnapMemories)

As a business, it’s a good idea to save all of the Snapchat content that you post. You can then add this content to your Instagram account, blog, and other social media and owned channels. However, photos and videos can take up a lot of memory on your mobile devices, and having to to save every Snap can be a time-consuming and stressful chore. Thankfully, Snap Memories exists. The app automatically saves all of your Snap Stories in one place so that you can rewatch them in all of their glory, share them on other platforms, and keep them as a record of your content creation.

Download on iTunes

What KPIs would you set for Snapchat?

Due to its unique nature, KPIs for Snapchat are not immediately obvious. How can you measure the impact of something so temporary? While not extensive, there are core components you need to pay attention to when measuring the success of your Snapchat strategy.

1. Views—How many people are viewing your Snaps? While Snapchat isn’t as much of a popularity contest as other platforms, it’s always good to know how many people are watching your content.
2. Screenshots—How many people are taking screenshots of your content? This number (and the corresponding content) will indicate the kind of messages your audience finds most engaging.
3. Story finishes—If you are using Snapchat to the best of its ability, you’re sharing narratives and a flow of information through a Story. As each piece of a Story is a maximum of 10 seconds long, pay attention to where audience members are dropping off. Knowing what Snaps are keeping their interest and which ones are causing your audience to stop watching will help you plan future content.
4. Incentive redemption—If you’re using Snapchat for sharing discounts and coupon codes, make sure they are unique to your Snapchat audience. This will make it easy to track how many customers are buying your product or service.
5. Geofilter views—If you’ve made a custom Geofilter (learn how here), you can track how many people have viewed your creation.
6. Geofilter use—To see how many people have Snapped your Geofilter, you can log into geofilters.snapchat.com, click your name in the upper right corner, and select ‘Insights’.

Through these measurable areas, you can gain insight into the effectiveness of your Snapchat efforts and make plans for the future.

What is the little number beside a Snapchat username?

Another way of measuring your Snapchat activity and progress is with your Snapchat score, the number associated with your username. According to Snapchat’s website, “your Snapchat score is a special equation combining the number of Snaps you’ve sent and received, Stories you’ve posted, and other factors.”

Can Snapchat clips be scheduled?

Unfortunately at this time, Snapchat clips cannot be scheduled.

Can we send Snapchat traffic to our website?

While there is no click-through capability directly from a Snap Story to a website, there are many ways to direct traffic from your Snaps to your website. Besides attracting unique visitors to your site through providing valuable content on your Snapchat account, you can try one of these approaches:

1. Showing behind the scenes content—By giving viewers a sneak peek at a new product your brand is working on, you entice them to visit your website to find out more.
2. Promoting new blog or website content on your Snapchat—Whether you’ve posted a new blog article or are launching a new feature on your website, you can share teaser images and videos through a Snap Story and tell people where they can go to find the full post or new feature. This allows Snapchat to act as a kind of mini “trailer” for your website to spark interest.

The possibilities of Snapchat are limited only by your brand’s own creativity, so get those brainstorms going and start snapping!

Click this link on mobile to go directly to Hootsuite’s profile or scan the Snapcode below to add Hootsuite as a Friend on Snapchat.

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