Is Snapchat Right For Your Business?

One of the biggest trends in social media right now is Snapchat. Everyone is talking about it. A lot of people are using it. You may even have an account or be using it for personal use. But how do you know if Snapchat is right for your business?

Well, in this blog post, I’ve got you covered! I’ve scoured my sources for the best details and information to both help you determine if Snapchat is right for you and also how to use it effectively if you decide to use it for your business.

Now, I should add a disclaimer her that I am NOT an active Snapchat user. I don’t even have a Snapchat account. And that’s for a variety of reasons. I may get an account in the future. I don’t know. But, I do know how social media works and I know how to find the best info to get you on the right path. So, here are links, information, and details to help you decide for yourself.

Now, of course, a lot of other people are using Snapchat. While the platform’s founder says he isn’t counting the number of monthly active users, he’s counting daily active users and puts that number at 100 million – a day! And he claims 65% of those users are posting photos or videos to their accounts. Those users are posting an average of 9000 posts per second!! That is a lot of content, and a lot of engagement.

So, who are all these people using Snapchat? Studies have shown that 73% of millennials (those aged 18-34) are using this platform. Yes, the demographic is heavily canted towards those 25 and younger. But, of course, as popularity grows, so do the demographics. You can expect to see a shift to more “adults” using the platform in the coming months and years.

One of the biggest distinguishing features about Snapchat is that the content is designed to self-destruct. Whether after viewing or after a certain time period, the post will no longer be available to view. Of course, the marketer in you is probably wondering how on Earth this is a viable marketing tool since we want all our content to last forever  But we’ll get to that in just a minute…

As Snapchat has advanced, however (and recently released version 2.0), the disappearing content is no longer the big deal that distinguishes it from all other platforms. Instead, it’s becoming a platform that allows for all types of communication – from messages of any length, to audio, to video, to photos, to live chat, and more.

If you’re ready to jump on the Snapchat bandwagon, here is what you need to know to get started.

Setting Up Your Snapchat Account

If you are new to Snapchat and want to set up an account and get started, you can check out Snapchat’s own site for the best starting point. Choose the topic of choice from the left side menu to walk you through everything from setting up a new account to the intricacies of the platform.

In all my research, I found some really good articles that help give you insights into how to use the platform. I recommend you check these out if you’re new to Snapchat or want to figure out more about the platform:

• Snapchat 101: what it is and how to use it
• How to Use Snapchat on iPhone and Android
• Snapchat for Business: A Guide for Marketers

I totally recommend you read those articles. But, for a quick synopsis of some key things to consider about setting up your account, here are my thoughts:

You cannot change your username after you set it. And if you delete your account, your username will not be available again. So make sure you pick the right username! If you’re going to use your account for business, don’t set up Snapchat with your personal name or some other weird username. Think strategically here!

It’s easy to add friends with multiple ways to connect with users. Of course, you’ve probably seen the yellow ghost cutout avatar all over social media. These are each user’s unique snapcode. When you’re in Snapchat, you can quickly scan someone’s snapcode and add them to your contacts – easy peasy! But a recommendation on this – be careful when uploading this snapcode to other platforms as your profile photo. If the platform crops your avatar to a circle (ie. Instagram), then it may (most likely will) cut off part of your snapcode, rendering it useless to you.

That being said, it’s not as easy to grow your audience on Snapchat as it is on other platforms. Due to the nature of the platform and the search functionality, people likely won’t find you unless they know about you. So make sure you capitalize on your existing audiences on other social media platforms, your email list, and other communities and let them know you’re now on Snapchat.

You can have individual snaps (photos or videos) or you can create stories (a series of snaps stitched together). You can add filters or text to your posts for a whole level of personalization you won’t find anywhere else. But this also makes it much more casual.

People on Snapchat are not there to linger. They’re easily bored and need constant activity. Don’t let your photos sit for more than a couple seconds and keep videos (cut off at 10 seconds) to something punchy and active. When stitching stories together, keep it quick and moving purposely.

Because the platform is so “hurried”, there is less of an expectation for perfect photos or well-formatted videos. It’s expected to be raw, real, and authentic. That being said, you still want to put your best foot forward. Try to get the best lighting, make sure your camera lens is clean, pick attractive backgrounds, and think about what else is in the frame. And, keep in mind, Instagram users used to be all about the “real” and now it’s all edited and leaning towards perfection, so chances are Snapchat will get to that point sometime too.

Yes, Snapchat is different from any other platform. Some people find it very difficult to grasp or understand or use conveniently. But, for those who do like it, they love it, and the features and use become natural to them. But because this platform is so different, this will also affect how you use it for business. So, I’ve rounded up my best advice for using this platform for your business.

Using Snapchat for Business

Now that you know what the platform is about, and how it works, the question is, how can you use it for your business? And should you?

Of course, you know I’m not about to tell you here and now if you should or shouldn’t use it. That’s not something I can determine without working with you directly. But here is some guidance…

Your audience may (or may not) be on Snapchat. The platform is growing and depending on your target audience, they may already be here. If they’re not, they may be soon. Much like we’ve seen with the growth on Instagram, just because they aren’t here now, doesn’t mean they won’t be in a few months or year. And getting in now, establishing a presence, and getting comfortable with the platform will make it much easier when your audience does get more active on this platform. There’s no time like the present!

And, because the platform is new and marketers haven’t “figured it out” yet (ie. how to game it to splash their message all over the place), if you can get on there, and use it appropriately to build your community, you will have a serious leg up on your competition.

Yes, at some point, we can all assume that this platform will go the way of every other platform, and introduce broadly accessible ad placement and revenue generating tactics (right now, the minimum ad budget on the platform is $100,000). So, having the audience and presence in place now will provide you with advantages when that time comes.

Of course, it’s hard for me to say you “have” to be here, even if your target audience is millennials. I don’t say you “have” to be anywhere (except maybe Facebook, but that’s another conversation). But if your target audience is active on Snapchat, it might be worth investigating.

Because of the unique engagement on this platform and the variety of communication methods, this can be a hard platform to navigate as a business. It’s not marketing as you are accustomed to and it’s unlike anything you will experience on other platforms. So you’ll have to think differently – and think about community building, not marketing.

You need to consider the atmosphere on Snapchat. People are having FUN. Goofing around, doing silly faces, making fun of themselves (have you seen some of these filters?!). So going on there all stiff, uber professional, or depressing or serious, is NOT going to connect with this audience. Take into account the platform and the best messages you can share in this context.

You also need to be prepared for engagement. Yes, people will respond and chat with you after you post. So be ready for them! Anticipate responses, questions, and reactions. And be available! Do NOT post and disappear.

Of course, as I always preach, you need a strategy! Do not go jumping on Snapchat, uploading a bunch of content, and wonder what might happen. No. Take the time to research the platform. Then determine how you will use it. How will it enhance your business? How often will you post? What will you post? Why are you posting? What are your expectations? All that good stuff and more needs to be determined BEFORE you start throwing stuff out there.

You should consider adding branded elements to your content. Think about color schemes, product placement, keywords in your videos, and other ways to make your brand stand out. Build all of this into your strategy so that there is cohesion no matter what you post.

Speaking of what to post, here are some ways you can use Snapchat in your business:

• Answer frequently asked questions
• Ask questions of your audience
• Offer a regular series to answer popular questions or address a current issue
• Go behind-the-scenes of your business
• Share insights into a live event
• Create tutorials or tips
• Share how-to content
• Build anticipation for a new product or launch
• Showcase your employees and/or their personalities
• Share your thoughts and feedback on any topic related to your business
• Host a contest
• Exclusive discounts or promotions
• Flash sales

You can (and should) branch into offering discounts or promotions, but understand that this platform isn’t all that easy to use this tactic. Whether requiring your audience to take a screenshot or remembering a code, you can get them to interact with a promotion but it requires more work on their end. So make the campaign worth it to see best results.

Think about your call-to-action. Like anywhere else, giving people a clear, direct message on what you want them to do is paramount to building the success of your business through Snapchat.

There aren’t any great metrics for you to measure the “success” of your campaigns or activity. You can see how many people viewed your stories, and how many took a screenshot, so you have those basic metrics. You can also measure the fall off rates in your stories (from one snap to the next) so you can see what’s working and/or where you’re losing people. This can help you to create better content and stories in the future, improving your interactions with your audience.

But you can’t see how many are following you, or compare following counts and vanity metrics like we see on every other platform. Is this good or bad? You can decide! But when you aren’t focusing on the vanity metric of followers, you can focus on creating the best content for your brand.

 As you can see, there is a lot to understand and a lot to adapt to if you plan to use Snapchat. Can it work? Sure! Plenty of businesses are using it successfully. But you will need to establish what “success” looks like to your business and have a healthy understanding of how you want to build your community through this platform. Explaining this concept to board members, owners, or clients may not be the easiest thing. Give it time and build it at a pace that works for everyone.

Are you using Snapchat? How are you measuring success and do you feel it’s working for your business? Join in the conversation in the comments below!

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How to Gather Fan Feedback on Social Media

When was the last time you phoned up a company to leave them feedback, or even just sent them an email? Can’t remember?1

Well, you’re not alone. Customers today are turning towards social media instead to let companies know exactly what they thought of their experience. According to a recent study carried out by Conversocial, 43% of customers expect social channels to be integrated with other customer service channels.

That means for online businesses today, it has never been more important to pay attention to what customers say on social media2 and to acknowledge their feedback. (highlight to tweet) Here’s how your business can gather that feedback using social media, and how you can use it to boost productivity, customer loyalty, and even sales.

Get Customer Feedback on Social Media

Before we dive into exactly how your business can gather customer feedback on social media, it’s important to understand why. One of the main reasons your business can benefit from gathering feedback using social media is because, quite simply, your customers are already talking about you.

As an online business, it’s your responsibility to ensure you find out exactly where these conversations are happening, so you can join in to either provide support or praise your most loyal fans. But not all of your customers will tweet or even message your brand directly when an issue arises.

This is why your business must develop a listening strategy to find out exactly the type of feedback your customers are leaving online and what they are saying when mentioning your company, so you can take the appropriate action.

Here are six ways your business can create an effective social media listening strategy in order to gather customer feedback.

1. Update Your Status

While this may sound obvious, posing a question to fans via a status update is one of the easiest and quickest ways your business can gather instant feedback on social media. Your fans are already following your business online, as they trust you and feel as if they are getting value from the content you post and share.

By asking them questions directly on social media, your business will be able to gather instant feedback from your community and discover exactly what they thought about your product, service, or even an event. Here’s how the casino Mohegan Sun used this approach to find out what fans thought about one of its recent events:

2. Create Feedback Forms and Surveys

Not all fans following your company on social media will be open to leaving public and detailed feedback via comments or replies. Some prefer to keep their opinions either low key or completely anonymous. That’s why creating a survey is your perfect solution for gathering customer feedback without spotlighting any customers in the process.

There are many free websites out there to choose from, but one of the easiest isSurvey Monkey, which offers a free version to get you started. Once you have created the survey, you can then share the unique link in any of these possible spots:

• Via a status update
• In the bio section on your social profiles
• In your responses to customers, along with a request for direct feedback

3. Monitor Comments

Your business does not always have to approach customers directly when asking for feedback. Sometimes your best resource to find out what your customers are saying about you is to simply monitor their engagement on your social channels. This means keeping an eye on three core factors when scanning your comments:

• Customer sentiment (Was their response positive, negative, or neutral?)
• Tone of voice (How have they portrayed their thoughts or personality?)
• Key issues (Were there any recurring themes that fans kept highlighting?)

Once you have gone over the comments using these three core guidelines, you will begin to notice the key areas in which your business is performing well, as well as areas where it could improve. It’s your job to then check these comments on a daily basis—especially during key campaigns—to gather a better understanding on how your marketing or messaging has been received.

Here’s a great example from the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, who listened to what was being said about LinkedIn by a user, dove in to respond, and alerted his product managers to take action.

4. Utilize Social Media Listening Tools

In a recent study carried out by We Are Social, it’s estimated that close to 1.7 billion people have active social media accounts. For an online business, this can seem pretty daunting when trying to keep up with the never-ending stream of conversations online. That’s why your business needs to utilize social media listening tools to help track the conversations that really matter.

Mention, as its name suggests, allows you to track where your company has been mentioned online. You can choose what items you would like the tool to track, be it a keyword, campaign hashtag, or even your company name. The tool will then alert you when those key terms have been used on social media or via blogs and websites.

This presents your business with the perfect opportunity to view exactly what others are saying about your business, and more importantly, to join in on the conversation. You can then monitor this feedback and respond to urgent matters without having to spent needless hours searching online. The free version of the tool offers 250 mentions a month, with paid plans offering additional features.

Another tool is Hootsuite, which allows your company to track key words, hashtags, and mentions. It also has the added benefit of being able to respond in real time and schedule content directly within the tool itself.

Sprout Social also provides powerful social listening, presented in a single feed. Its sleek dashboard offers content scheduling, keyword monitoring for Twitter, free reports for all account tiers, workflow management features, and even a “Discovery” feature that provides follow/unfollow suggestions.

These tools are perfect for ensuring your business provides great customer serviceas well as enabling you to keep up with customers who mention your company online. Remember: Make sure you continuously update the keywords you are searching for in line with recent campaigns or launches. Not all customers will include your brand name in their updates, so having keywords helps identify any missed conversations.

5. Use Social Analytics

Using analytics on social media is another great way for your business to get feedback on your fans’ key patterns of behavior. All social networks have this analytics feature built in, allowing your business to get a snapshot of its performance and deeper insights into what type of customer engages. Key metrics to track include:

• Engagement: How many interactions do your posts receive? What kinds of content do your fans engage with most frequently?
• Exposure: How many people are talking about your business? How many are reaching out directly?
• Influence: Where is your brand being talked about, and by whom? How can you capitalize on that influence?

By analyzing this data on a regular basis, your business can determine the top pieces of content your community engages with, as well as what topics and discussions spark the most conversation.

It’s important you review your social analytics on a weekly basis, at minimum, to help determine any key patterns of behavior and adjust what is and what isn’t working. This will ensure that all content and conversations created by your company are in line with customer expectations, and will therefore have a higher impact.

Lastly, when reviewing this data on a weekly basis, you want to keep in mind that no single strategy will work long term. Change the way you create and construct your content on a regular basis to see how this affects engagement and feedback.

6. Engage One-on-One

While it’s important to appreciate your social media community as a whole, you will always find those fans who show that extra passion and commitment towards your business. These are also known as your brand ambassadors—the fans that can’t wait to engage with your content and tell others about what a great job your company does.

It’s important to identify these brand ambassadors in your business because they are the ones who are going to give you the most detailed feedback to help improve your overall customer experience, as you have already built up a high level of trust with them.

Through your social channels, your company can engage with its brand ambassadors by sending a simple Direct Message, or DM. This takes the conversation out of the public domain. It allows you get specific and have a conversation with the fan on what they think about your business and overall experience.

To really help boost loyalty amongst your brand ambassadors, you can choose to reward them for this feedback via discounts, promotions, or even by spotlighting them on your social channels. This level of recognition will show your ambassadors that you value their input.

Here’s how I have used this technique to get direct feedback on a training series I put together:

When gathering feedback from your fans, it’s important to filter through the comments and data. Not all activity and comments from your fans will translate into new changes your business needs to take.

That’s why, when looking at social media insights and comments, you must identify the key trends in both behavior and conversations to help determine what your social media community really wants. Implementing these changes will then ensure your business has created an experience in line with customer demand and behavior.

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Using Competitors to Guide Your Social Media Strategy

Shakespeare stole ideas from Christopher Marlowe and Lenny Kravitz stole from Bob Dylan who stole from Len Chandler. Coaches steal plays from each other and comedians rip-off each other’s jokes.

Your turn, business owner.

Particularly if you’re just getting started using social media or if you’ve had profiles on a few channels but haven’t really devoted time and energy there, consider examining your competitors’ social media strategies as you shape your own. Competitors’ successes and failures provide shortcuts that will save you enormous time and effort. Not only can you copy the subjects of their most successful posts, you can learn from their mistakes. Imagine the brainwork and time you’ll save!

Take the following steps to create and implement a powerful social media strategy that leverages competitor information for fast and furious results.

FIRST: Clarify Your Own Goals for Your Social Media Efforts

Scanning competitors’ channels isn’t going to make your social media strategy gel right before your eyes. Only when you understand the elements behind social media strategy, will everything you see on competitors social media channels make sense. Pick competitors who seem to be posting regularly and getting frequent likes, comments and shares. They have probably been using social media for longer than those who don’t have these signals. This means, for Facebook and Instagram, they should be posting every day. For Twitter, the sign of a competitor experienced with social media is multiple tweets per day.  

As you browse, you’ll probably notice that these competitors widen their subject area. With millions for their marketing team, Red Bull is now known as an extreme sports publisher that sells energy drinks on the side. Similarly, Van Winkle’s is a sleep health publisher that will get you the mattress of your dreams. By the amount and variety of content coming through on social media, it seems they exist only to make their audience’s lives amazing.

Don’t be fooled.

Every business’s goal for ANY marketing effort is generating revenue. Red Bull and Van Winkles realize it takes many steps and much effort to see those dollars piling up on the bottom line. They’re only doing what researchers tell them works: consumers need quite a bit of warming up before they slap the credit card on the counter.

This warming up includes increasing:

• reach (more fans and shares),
• conversions (more white paper downloads, email addresses and fans),
• credibility (with impressive blog posts that lead to shares, comments, likes),
• retention (with email sign ups and more fans),
• strategic partners that lead to referrals and sales (building relationships on social media)
• media connections (reporters find brands easily through their social media channels)

Therefore, social media goals should include increasing number of:  

• fans and followers
• Interactions with social media influencers
• white paper, infographic and ebook downloads
• email subscribers
• blog post, video, photo and other content shares
• comments and business responses to those comments
• fans who are complementary to the businesses

There you have it! Concrete, measurable metrics to gauge your strategy by. The next step is to take baseline measurements of all of these components. Measuring again after your strategy has been put in place for three months or more lets you know how effective your efforts were.

We Got Ahead of Ourselves for a Reason . . .

We wanted to share just why sophisticated marketers use the metrics they do. The competitors whose social channels you strive to emulate use these metrics and you should, too. With the educational part over, we want to move onto the active steps you’ll take to see the hits and misses of those you’re about to overtake and out-earn.

Step #1 Review Which Social Media Channels Your Competitors Use

Marketing research is telling us that the worldwide social media audience seems to be dividing itself by demographics and interests across the different channels.

Facebook:    B2C companies, and everyone except the Millennials

Instagram:     B2C, retail, Millennials, and teens (shoppers)

Twitter:      B2B, sports, and news fans

Google +:      B2B, marketers, and tech fans

LinkedIn:    B2B, career seekers, corporations, other professionals

Pinterest:      B2C, women (72% women; 28% men), and shoppers (Pinterest is acting as an online shopping list for many.)

Which ones your competitors use could indicate where your audience resides . . . or not. It could also indicate that your competitors don’t yet realize that Instagram has been winning 40 times more engagement than Facebook and Twitter. Still, get started by reviewing which channel seems to be a competitor favorite.

Consider, too, that perhaps your competitor has only had time for one or two channels. Consumers today expect companies to have several channels. They want to be able to reach their favorite brands easily and social media provides those platforms. If a competitor hasn’t quite gotten around to Instagram yet, it may be smart to go after that audience first. The more empty channels give your content more of a chance of being seen.

Step #2 Create a Quick Spreadsheet to Compare

Getting real insights requires sweat equity. This part may take a few hours, BUT it will save you headaches, time and money when you discover the social posts that resonate with your audience and those that fall flat.  

Go to your three main competitor’s websites and find their social media icons in the sites’ headers or footers. Create a spreadsheet with the competitor and their channel along the vertical y-axis. For example, Stonyfield Organic Yogurt may consider its biggest competitors to be Oikos and Chobani. Down the y axis, Stonyfield would write:

Chobani

  Facebook

  Pinterest

  Instagram

  Reddit

Oikos

  Facebook

  Instagram

  Google Plus

  YouTube

. . . and so on.
 

At the top of the X or horizontal axis, create columns for:  

• number of followers
• posts per week,
• type of post: tally the types: how many memes, non-native article shares, blog post announcement, p.r., photo of the business, announcement, etc.
• style of post: tally the number of educational, entertaining, informational, promotional and contest posts
• hashtags used
• post with most likes (single post)
• post with most shares (single post)
• post with most comments (single post)
• average engagement for meme post
• avg engagement for blog post announcement
• avg engagement for photos
• avg engagement for video
• avg engagement for non-native article share
• average engagement for educational post
• avg engagement for entertaining post
• avg engagement for informational post
• avg engagement for promotional post
• avg engagement for contest post
• notes

We encourage you (or an employee) to do look through one entire month of your competitors’ posts and then write down what you find. One month will avoid data overload. Just scrolling through to “get an idea” of what a competitor is doing may work for today, but you won’t have the data to return to month after month, nor will you be able to back up your social media strategy ideas to a boss, a business partner or even your employees.  

Step #3 Consider Using Free and Paid Analytics Tools to Explore Competitors

If our idea of creating your own spreadsheet above gives you the willies, you can use some free tools and Facebook and Twitter’s competitor analytics to get some numbers behind your competitors’ actions. You WON’T, however, get to see every post, a step we think is indispensable.

For Facebook, use the “Pages to Watch” section of your admin panel and add your competitor's Facebook pages. A similar tool exists on Twitter. Twitter Counter displays competitors’ follower growth for three months.
Free trials provide great insights as well. Typically, SaaS companies will give you two weeks to explore their tools, lots of time to get as much as you need on competitors, IF you dedicate time to this task.

Social media analytic company Simply Measured’s Facebook Competitive Analysis Report lets you measure the success of each of your competitors’ posts. Displaying the likes, comments and shares of 10 competing Facebook pages starts to give you an idea of what type and style of content competitors’ audiences respond to most. Simply Measured also throws in an overview of which brands have the best overall engagement. They create similar tools to analyze competitors’ efforts on Instagram, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Vine. While these save you the time it takes scrolling through competitors’ pages, you will need to spend time figuring out their tool and interpreting the data as well.  

Other social media analytics tools with free trials include FanPage Karma and Rival IQ. An agency will use more sophisticated tools, of course.

These free tools will help to guide you in creating your fledgling social media strategy. After you’ve finished developing your strategy and put it in place is not the end of your journey – be sure to revisit your strategy and its successes and failures, and be sure to learn from both. Continue to study competitors and compare their results to your own. What can you tweak to become more competitive? Staying informed is one of the best tools to have an up to date and competitive social media strategy for your company.

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