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This kind of à la carte, short-form video content takes advantage of vertical's power. Successful videos on Snapchat turn the constraints of vertical into strengths. "Our viewers prefer vertical," Snapchat's head of content, Nick Bell, told USAToday last year. "We've seen a 9 times higher engagement rate with vertical rather than horizontal video."
The right mix garners video completions for National Geographic
With its rich, image-focused legacy, National Geographic might not be the first brand you'd expect to embrace vertical. Yet it already offers a mix of short-form video, articles and photo-driven stories about travel and adventure on Snapchat Discover. In fact, vertical can work even better for mountainscapes and animal close-ups—a short video of a baby sloth has been a major hit. As National Geographic social media vp Raj Mody told The Los Angeles Times: "From day one, we saw this as a great way to reach new young audiences and advance our mission. We definitely think it's showing promise."
Tal Chalozin, co-founder and CTO of video platform Innovid, finds Snapchat's video views and user engagement to be extremely high. He recommends publishers look at the completion rate to gauge impact, adding that many Snapchat videos are achieving 90 percent completion rates or above. "Snapchat is redefining the word premium," says Chalozin. "People are willing to give their time to watch, regardless of the production value. But that specific term—completion rate—can be a great gauge for quality."...
Back in 2011, Snapchat was synonymous with risqué teen behavior. News coverage repeatedly warned parents of the damaging effects the platform might have, and as a result, the success trajectory wasn't looking good.
Since then, Snapchat has evolved into something so much more. And while it's certainly not the cornerstone of every marketing strategy just yet, the channel has earned a reputation for fast growth and innovation.
Snapchat is now known as a platform for individuals and brands -- one that allows users to create quick, lighthearted, and even educational video content without using valuable production resources. For brands, this means a new opportunity to show off their culture, share knowledge, and connect with their audience in a new and exciting way.
After reporting more than 100 million daily active users, and over 8 billion video views a day, we decided to give it a go: The official HubSpot Snapchat account launched in March 2016. And while we're still getting our feet wet, we've already learned a lot about executing and iterating a successful Snapchat business strategy....
More than a third of Snapchat’s daily users create “Stories,” broadcasting photos and videos from their lives that last 24 hours, according to people familiar with the matter. Now users are watching 10 billion videos a day on the application, up from 8 billion in February. Snapchat on Thursday confirmed the number of video views.
Snapchat is sharing the new stories statistic with investors to help explain that its app is focused on serving people who create and broadcast content, not just consume it. The first screen of the app is a camera, prompting users to share what they’re seeing or doing. Users can decide whether to send their snap directly to friends, where it disappears after it’s watched, or post it to their Snapchat Story, where it can be viewed for 24 hours by a broader audience.
That design gives the company an edge in a market where Facebook Inc. is building a business quickly. The social networking leader, with 1.65 billion users, started making live video a priority this year, prompting people to create and share their experiences in the news feed. Facebook has also said it may be willing to pay for live content....
No communication channel is hotter these days than chat apps, but they are also among the hardest for marketers to tap. To help brands address this opportunity, London-based startup BetterBrand this week announced its initial product, a chat app marketing platform. At the moment, CEO Asaf Amir told me, the platform is available as a managed service, although it will be released as a self-service cloud platform within a couple of months. He added that it will be the first self-service marketing platform for multiple chat apps that is not tied to a specific industry or platform. Other chat services, he noted, include travel industry chat service Pana, enterprise-focused Kore and Imperson, which is designed for character-based bots on specific apps...
Every day, Snapchat gets 100 million visitors. That means more people will use the app today than the total populations of California, New York, and Texas combined. One hundred million users is the kind of number that can seduce any marketer. But jumping onto the platform without a strategy or some boundaries is a sure-fire way to lose the respect of both your audience and your marketing team. In order to connect with viewers, drive ROI, and—let’s be honest—have some fun, your first step should be to understand the platform’s best practices. Here are four examples of brands that have mastered Snapchat....
Snapchat has become one of the most popular and talked about platforms for 2016. Even during the Super Bowl, we saw brands such as Marriott, Amazon, and even Gatorade jump on board, with ads just on Snapchat. In addition, there areother brands that advertised during football’s biggest night that you may want to check out.
While Snapchat has been used for brands and other public relations campaigns, it can be used for collaborative and teamwork efforts as well. In fact, I used Snapchat for the first time this semester to not only showcase what I am doing in my classes, but also to document, share, and collaborate with my students and fellow PR professors on projects and assignments.
Here are some ideas to consider for how to use Snapchat for collaboration and teamwork feedback:...
I don’t understand how people don’t see the obvious, common trend of what happens to popular social networks like Snapchat.
They don’t see that these platforms start off young, start off consumer based, start in a niche, and then go mainstream. It baffles me that people don’t understand that when an app hits 100 million active users, it’s gone mainstream. And what does that mean? It means that the platform can start to mature and start getting deeper into the business world. That’s because once you have the attention of the 35 to 65 year old world, you now have the potential to cross over into the B2B world.
I always like to say “Behind every B is a C.” What that means is, behind every business there is a human that is making the decisions. If you’re selling a phone system or a SaaS product to a big corporation, a human being is still making that decision. If you’re able to make content on a platform around interests in your specific industry, you’ve put yourself in a position to do B2B business....
We're obsessed with Snapchat, so here are 50 bloggers with Snapchat Stories we can't stop replaying. Don't forget to follow these 50 awesome bloggers on Bloglovin', and be sure to follow Bloglovin' on Snapchat too
Snapchat exploded on to the social scene last year and is showing no signs of slowing down. If you’re a brand who targets 'Generation Z', then you will undoubtedly seen the incredible user rates of teens on the platform.
Begging the question for brands - is it time to go fishing where the fish are?...
The most popular TV show of fall 2014 was NBC's broadcast of "Sunday Night Football." It averaged 21 million viewers per week.
The strongest cable show was AMC's "The Walking Dead." Its midseason finale, in November, reached 14.8 million people.
Big numbers, right?
Try this one: 24.79 million.
That is the number of people who, on the evening of Jan. 26, 2015, and over the next 24 hours, watched a video broadcast on their phones depicting the sights and sounds of New York's "Snowpocalypse."
All too often, we learn of revolutions in police states of third world countries from citizens on social media. This week, the stories and images online looked like a world away but unfortunately it was close to home. The stories of Ferguson, MO became national stories as they were shared by media and citizens on social media.
As the evolution of journalism continues on social media, storytelling through real-time mobile video is the latest shift. On Thursday, filmmakerCasey Neistat traveled to Ferguson with Vice News to cover the story for 24 hours. If you are not familiar with Casey’s work, check out his acclaimedYouTube channel to view.
In recent months, he began using Snapchat to share video stories and later posts to his Snapchat Stories YouTube channel. Instead of putting words in his mouth, I’ll let him explain...
Most people wish all advertising would disappear in 10 seconds, but here are some of the standout Snapchat campaigns, with input from marketers on why they're including the platform in their social efforts.
There is no shortage of marketers rushing to meet consumers where they live online, to elbow their way in and find even a moment of relevance amidst the cacophony of tweets, Instagram posts, Facebook updates, and every other platform that defines the current age of casual communication.It's taken years for many brands to get a handle on just how to organize and create for Twitter and Facebook, then something like Snapchat comes along and marketers are faced with the challenge of engaging via an app in which the content disappears in seconds.
...there's the eternal challenge: the struggle between figuring out an application that makes strategic sense for a brand, and stands on its own creatively, and just getting the hell on there and getting that sweet, sweet millennial attention....
With smartphone use growing each day, companies that aren’t utilizing mobile marketing channels are missing a golden opportunity. The prized Millennial demographic is shifting from traditional marketing methods and causing major players—like McDonalds—to find new ways to reach them. Using the above examples, here are:5 ways companies can use Snapchat in marketing:In-store couponsNew product announcementsExclusive looks behind the scenesExclusive deals and promotionsBuild followers with giveaways...
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The status box is an icon of the Information Age, a period dominated by desktop computers and a company’s mission to organize all the world’s information. The icons of the Experience Age look much different, and are born from micro-computers, mobile sensors and high-speed connectivity.
The death of the status box is a small part of a larger shift away from information moving toward experience. What’s driving this shift? In short, the changing context of our online interactions, shaped by our connected devices.
You are not your profile
To illustrate how this is playing out, think of Facebook and Snapchat.
Facebook is an Information Age native. Along with other social networks of its generation, Facebook was built on a principle of the desktop era — accumulation.
Accumulation manifests in a digital profile where my identity is the sum of all the information I’ve saved — text, photos, videos, web pages. (Evan Spiegel explored this first in a 2015 YouTube video titled What is Snapchat?). In the Information Age we represented ourselves with this digital profile.
But mobile has changed how we view digital identity. With a connected camera televising our life in-the-moment, accumulated information takes a back seat to continual self-expression. The “virtual self” is becoming less evident. I may be the result of everything I’ve done, but I’m not the accumulation of it. Snapchat is native to this new reality.
You are not a profile. You are simply you. Many people think Snapchat is all about secrecy, but the real innovation of Snapchat’s ephemeral messages isn’t that they self-destruct. It’s that they force us to break the accumulation habit we brought over from desktop computing. The result is that the profile is no longer the center of the social universe. In the Experience Age you are not a profile. You are simply you....
Over the past few months I’ve seen a few trends coming together but I’m not sure I grasped the significance of what’s happening until I heard a recent comment from my 16-year-old nephew. Here is what I have seen occurring:
- WhatsApp has rapidly become the biggest messaging service in the world with more than 1 billion users.
- Snapchat is a juggernaut with the 18-24 age group, now earning more daily check-ins than Facebook. The company founder insists it is “not a social network.”
- Facebook is the social network for most of the world, yet their major investment is in the development of private Facebook Messenger, including bots that would help companies scale “human” interaction through the service. More than 900 million people use Messenger now.
- Other private messaging services like Viber and Kik have established footholds with certain demographic groups and have attracted millions of users.
- And here is the quote from my young nephew:
“Oh Facebook is dead. My friend posted on Facebook and we made fun of him. We only use Snapchat now because who wants to put everything in public all the time? This just connects me with my real friends.”...
“Fundamentally, Snapchat is a bit of a confusing platform to use,” says Paul, “Snapchat has lots of hidden tricks and tools; obviously, the platform is constantly evolving with the Lens[es] that seem to change every day, and the Discovery channels — to say nothing of the paid products that are constantly changing.” Paul says that for his team, Snapchat is about inventing completely new processes, new measurements and new benchmarks. Along with Thompson and Paul, we asked National Geographic’s VP of social media, Rajiv Mody, and Taco Bell’s social media lead, Ryan Rimsnider, how their brands are taking advantage of the platform — from what they’ve learned since joining to all the ways they are having fun with their Snapchat followers. Here’s what they had to say....
For the first time since Facebook unseated MySpace in the hearts and minds of teens, ladies and gentlemen, we have a new social media champion — Snapchat, at least if you’re a young American (cue David Bowie). While Facebook continues to dominate overall social media usage, in a new report from Edison Research, Snapchat has eclipsed Facebook with social media users aged 12-24. In fact, 72 percent of them now use Snapchat and 26 percent cited this as the channel they use most often, up from 15 percent just a year ago, a mind-blowing statistic. At the same time, Facebook dropped from 43 percent to 32 percent as the most-used network for that age group.This new report prompted a fascinating discussion with Tom Webster...
But while Snapchat was once solely the province of teens and early adopters, typically employed as a fun messaging tool, it has also uncovered a genuine opportunity for enterprise use in more recent years. Savvy companies are beginning to discover how messaging apps can be used as powerful marketing tools, and Snapchat has risen to the top of the heap, thanks to its unique features and sprawling reach across an audience of Millennials. Just like many other successful brands, you can put the distinctive features and benefits of Snapchat to use for your organization, allowing you to connect with a new segment of customers without having to spend an exorbitant amount on a new marketing campaign....
Snapchat could be used by over 1 billion daily active users in time and substantially accelerate how many videos and photos people share and consume. But there’s more to be done and questions to be answered.
Even Twitter’s massive growth excitement for years was characterized by the challenge of finding mass sustained appeal — “Why say what I had for lunch?” Now, Snapchat’s massive growth with millions of passionate users is characterized by some persistent user misunderstanding of Snapchat use cases — some ask, “Why show something I did if it gets deleted?” And there are unexplored adaptations to broaden the appeal of Snapchat Stories and strengthen chat....
Have you heard of Snapchat?
Want to use it to connect with your customers?
Snapchat is a mobile app that lets you send public or private snaps of images and video to people from your smartphone.
In this article, you’ll discover how to use Snapchat‘s features to connect with your customers....
If your aim is to reach a younger demographic, specifically 18-34 year olds, then Snapchat is the place to be. Not only is the app growing quickly, but the users are extremely engaged. In fact, 65% of Snapchat users upload Snaps.
The challenge with Snapchat marketing is figuring out how to use the app in a way that engages users and drives action without being overly promotional. Even though the app has been around since 2011, Snapchat marketing is still very new since the app didn’t take off until 2014 and 2015....
To learn how to use Snapchat for your business, I interview Gary Vaynerchuk and Shaun McBride. The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners…
Snapchat recently unveiled discover, a way for select publishers to share video content to users. From their blog post "Snapchat Discover" is a new way to explore Stories from different editorial teams. It's the result of collaboration with world-class leaders in media to build a storytelling format that puts the narrative first.
This is not social media! Snapchat, valued at $19B, has no problems getting new users. Their main focus right now is finding revenue streams. While it's still early, it looks like Discover is gonna be a big deal....
After Facebook and Instagram, 18-25 year-old consumers spend the most time on Snapchat - and social media marketers should take notice if they want to keep up with younger buyers.
It would be a mistake to dismiss social media channels like Snapchat as a fad or niche network. The platform is the third most popular social network among young adults, according to ComScore research. If social media marketing is all about reaching audiences where they’re active and delivering content there, it might be time for brands to lay off the skepticism, pick up a smartphone and snap some pictures.
Facebook is still at the top of the heap, with 75.6 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds counted as active users. In second place is Instagram, with 43.1 percent penetration. Snapchat isn’t far behind with 32.9 percent of the demographic, and it beats out Twitter (23.8 percent) and Pinterest (17.8 percent). In total, Snapchat has been used by over 50 percent of 18-24-year-olds, compared to only 20 percent of 25-34 year-olds and 8 percent of people over the age of 35....
Snapchat has cultivated a unique identity as a smartphone-only social network and messaging platform focused around images and videos. The app has emerged as an everyday communication tool for millions of teens and young adults, particularly in the U.S. and Western Europe.
Snapchat launched in September 2011, so it is not even three years old. But as BI Intelligence explained in a recent report, brands stand to gain a lasting advantage from adopting emerging social media early....
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Lots of lessons about vertical video from Snapchat.