How to Grow Your Business Snapchat Audience

Looking at trends in Social Media now a days it’s becoming common knowledge that we really should all have business Snapchat accounts. Being popular among teens, millennials and slowly creeping up to older generations we can see that visual content obviously performs well.

Being discovered on Snapchat is more challenging than the typical Facebook, Instagram or Twitter which allow you to share content publicly without having to specifically add people. There’s no ability to use hashtags, no news feed or discover / trending page so we ask - how do you grow your audience when it comes to Snapchat?

Ready, Get Set, Grow!

Snaplytics is a system that provides account management and analytics for businesses that are using Snapchat. Recently it produced a report and from it we are able to gain some insights about how businesses are growing their Snapchat audiences, so here is some of what they gathered from the research.

In this report, Snaplytics analyzed over 500 brands, more than 24,000 Snapchat Stories, and 217,000 total snaps to determine how brands use Snapchat and what levels of engagement were achieved. This is how

Building Your Audience

Yes its hard, but it’s not impossible, and it IS worth the wait! Snaplytics reported that 64% of Snapchat followers found the businesses on Snapchat by searching for its username. This means that they either found the name through cross promotion which is quite popular, where different businesses team up and promote each other. Snaplytics actually claims that this is integral to growing a following on the platform and states discoverability will decline if this doesn’t happen consistently. 

They also claim that publishing external content along with brands Snapcodes / QR codes is highly effective. Snapcodes and QR codes are little short cuts, they allow Snapchat users to follow accounts by opening the app and scanning the code that appears as a photo with some dots or designs. As time goes on they're becoming more creative and more colourful, use your business colours! Snaplytics found Snapcodes counted for 25% of new Snapchat followers, so marketers should share and promote their brands’ Snapcodes to cross-promote Snapchat accounts on other modes of social media.

It was also discovered that once brands accumulate new followers on Snapchat, about 54.8% of them will watch you Snapchat Stories every one is posted showing that with Snapchat, it really is worth the wait with such a high rate of engagement. To keep a substantial inflow, you should continue cross-promotion not only with other bands but among all of your social media accounts, in blog posts, on your website, in your bios and more. Now that you know how to get the followers, you need to know how to keep them! 

How to Keep Your Followers

According to the data collected, there are several elements that you should keep an eye out for to optimise Snapchat Story you should consider:

1) Frequency of Snap Stories

Snapchat Stories, which are strings of photos and images shared on Snapchat accessiblefor 24 hours (just to clarify) should tell a story, as obvious as that might seem once stated it's not always done. After looking into the 500 brands, Snaplytics found that brands posted about 13 stories per month, about 2-3 per week. Also, on another note it was noted that most Stories were shared between Wednesdays and Saturdays so don't forget to keep that in mind!

2) Duration of Snapchat Story

The average Snapchat Story of the brands surveyed contained about 11 individual images or videos (or both) in total making up their story. Looking at different types of organisations surveyed it was the non-governmental organizations that had the highest amount of photos/ videos in their stories, and marketing organisations posted about six snaps at a time.

In terms of marketers, we can obviously infer that a Snapchat Story that's focused on a single product or item that can be easily told with less snaps, and this is likely why they have shorter stories. If you're doing something different such as interviewing people, or giving a behind-the-scenes tour you might have a larger story so viewers can follow along.

3) Type of Content

Similar to snap story duration, there was a noticeable variation in the content across industries. Industries showcasing products such as luxury goods, food & or Fashion & Lifestyle - static goods, obviously preferred photos over videos. However, NGOs, Broadcasting, Entertainment, or Beauty used videos to tell their stories -- featuring videos like makeup tutorials, or just general demonstrations, and so on.

One should consider how stories should be best told for engagement and interaction on the platform and in your specific field. Brands like Victoria's Secret have the fabulous idea to ask Snapchat followers to take a screenshot of a snap, to get customer feedback on their favourite design and so on.

Conclusion

If you haven't made a Snapchat account, you should probably go and make one now! Being so popular among almost all age groups you have an ocean of prospects to reach, get snapping!