Self-Destructing Social Media Marketing

Snapchat Tips: Self-Destructing Social Media Marketing

The mobile app, Snapchat, launched in September 2011, is a photo and video sharing service centered on one simple premise that is worlds apart from its rivals: all messages shared between friends via Snapchat will self-destruct, never to be seen again. In most cases, photo and video messages – Snaps – will disappear between one and ten seconds after being opened by a recipient (the time limit is specified by the sender), and if the Snap is not opened, it will automatically delete itself after 30 days.

The only exceptions to this rule are a “one-time repeat per day” option for any single snap and Snapchat Stories. Before sharing content with fellow contacts, Snapchat users have the option to add filters and annotate photos and videos with colorful text and markers.

Ask simple questions

As the ability to type long text replies is limited by time and space on Snapchat, the best kind of questions to ask are those that are easy to digest and demand a visual response, either by photo or video. For example, a shoe brand might ask their fans something as simple as “Show us your shoes!” or “Snap us a photo when you’re in the store!” The quicker and easier you make it for fans to respond, the better.

Have fun, be funny

Snapchat’s majority audience is teenagers and young adults, and the app is dominated by fun and humorous pieces of content. If your brand image allows, don’t be afraid to have a little fun – pull faces, doodle on top of your snaps, use Emoji to tell a story, or surprise your audience with something that might raise an eyebrow or two! If you can capture the imagination of fans in this way, the more likely they are to keep opening the snaps you send… which means the odd promotional one, too.

Show sneak previews

Snapchat media’s brevity makes it a great platform for showing a sneaky peek behind the curtain of your business, whether it’s news of a new product launch, an upcoming offer, or something else exclusive only to your friends on the app. If needs be, tease out the content over the course of several snaps to keep it digestible and to encourage people to look out for more. MTV UK used this marketing method several times to preview photo stills and video clips from the new season of its reality television show, Geordie Shore. The content was memorable and impactful, reminding people to watch the program and visit its website.

Hold a Snapchat contest

As you know, contests can be a highly effective way to boost engagement and awareness of your brand on social media, and it is no different on Snapchat.

Here are several methods you can use: Scavenger hunt: Share photo or video clues to a secret destination, either in the real world or online, and allow your followers to compete to be the first to find it. Word or picture quiz: Send out word or picture clues over a set period of time, building up to a way that followers can win a prize, e.g., visiting a special page on your site to enter a keyword revealed over the course of a week, or by sending back a specific snap.

Take advantage of Snapchat Stories

The Snapchat Stories mode allows you to join multiple snaps together to create a rolling 24-hour reel of content for all of your followers to enjoy again and again. When any snap added to your story ages over 24 hours, it disappears and must be replaced with new photos or videos if you want the story to remain active.

If no new content is added to your story, it will disappear once the newest piece of content expires, and a whole new story will need to be created. To add content to a story, just choose the ‘+’ icon after taking a photo or recording a video with the app.

Combine Snapchat with other social channels

Given Snapchat’s fluid and destructive form of messaging, it often helps to combine the app with other social networks as a way to switch up or more easily preserve the momentum of your strategy.

For example, you could launch a contest using a Snapchat story, but ask fans to submit their entries to you via Instagram or Twitter, using an @mention and a specific hashtag. Not only would this help you tell how effective your Snapchat marketing is, but also provide some extra exposure on other social networks.

Last words

If you’re feeling brave, you can create multiple welcome and offer messages to A/B test which ones work the best, and continue to tweak them until your initial snaps are optimized. I’ll be the first to put my hands up and say that this is not the most efficient or eloquent of solutions for measuring the success of Snapchat marketing, but it’s one of the simplest and effectively available to us so far.