How to Get Your Business Started on Snapchat in 4 Steps

Transcript of Snapchat for Business

Hi there! My name is Daniel Russell and welcome to another tech talk. Today we’ll be talking about how you can get your business started on Snapchat.

Snapchat is the rising king of social media. True, Facebook may still be bigger. But if you want to get your brand in front of younger people, ages 18 to 24 and even 24 to 30, Snapchat is a great place to be for your business. But Snapchat is not like other social media platforms and sometimes it can be difficult knowing where to start. These four steps will help you get your business up and running on Snapchat and headed in the right direction.

Setup a public account

First and foremost, set up an account and make it public. Making your account public means that people can follow you and see the things that you post even if you haven’t followed them back. You can make your account public by going to your Snapchat account’s settings and scrolling down to the “Who Can…” section. In the “Who Can…” section, select who can “View My Story” and change the permissions from “My Friends” to “Everyone”. This is important for a couple of reasons. Of course, it boosts your reach and if people come across your snapchat account and add you, you don’t need to worry about adding them back and they can still see your content.

Promote your account on other social platforms

Number two is use any existing social media platforms that you already have set up for your business to promote your new Snapchat account. If you already have a lot of Twitter followers or have a lot of likes on your Facebook page, you can use these platforms to get your new Snapchat account out there in front of your current audience. Besides just putting up your Snapchat username or your Snapchat QR code on these social media platforms, you can also announce contests that are for Snapchat followers only to help drive people to that new platform.

Create a tracking system

Number three, create a tracking system that allows you to keep track of how effective your Snapchat marketing has been. For better or for worse, Snapchat does not have great analytics. Currently, there’s no way to track the number of views that your Snapchat account receives over time. There’s also no real way to track the number of people that have added you over time as well. So, we recommend setting up a spreadsheet or something similar so that you can enter in this data and keep track of it over time. We recommend tracking at least the following three things inside that system you’ve set up. First, is the number of views that your story and content receive. Second, is the number of story completions. Now stories are made up of multiple snaps and sometimes people will only watch your first snap, but maybe not your fifth or sixth snap. By tracking the number of people that view the different snaps in your story, you can get an idea of how effective your Snapchat story is on the whole. Finally you can track the number of screenshots that people take of your content. Because Snapchat doesn’t really have a built-in sharing feature, if people are screenshotting your content that probably means that it’s really good stuff. By tracking these three things in your system over time, you can optimize your Snapchat content for the time of day, for the day of the week, and even for the number of snaps and the length of the snaps inside your stories.

Play the long game

Finally number four, play the long game. Keep in mind that Snapchat is not a quick converting platform. By joining Snapchat, you won’t instantly see a boost in sales. Snapchat content is about creating brand awareness and brand loyalty over the long haul. By staying away from over promotion, keeping true to your brand, and letting people get to know your company on a personal level by going behind the scenes, showing them your employees and even current customers, you can provide subtle reminders about your brand so that when they’re ready to start looking for something to buy, they’ll come to you first.

Now there’s a lot more to Snapchat than just these four steps, and there’s certainly other things you’ll probably want to look into including advertising on Snapchat and deciding whether or not that’s the right track for your brand. But by following these four steps when you set up your Snapchat account, you’ll be in a great position to build that brand loyalty and brand awareness going forward. I hope this has been helpful! Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions about Snapchat. We love Snapchat and we’re always happy to talk about it. Thank you!