Snapping Comps!

Who doesn't love an opportunity to win free stuff with minimal effort?!
Certainly not me.
One of the best marketing techniques over Snapchat I've seen so far are Snapchat competitions. There are many types of these that I've noticed some of which being:

1. 'Screenshot this coupon before it...'. Oh it's dissapeared.
2. 'Send in your best snap in the next 3 hours for a chance to win [insert cool prize here]!'
3. 'Treasure hunt! Follow the clues in the our Snapchat story and the first Snap of the answer wins!'
4. 'Screenshot this pic and share on Facebook for your chance to win!'

The opportunities are endless!

One Snapchat blogger I follow, Drew Binsky the travel blogger, runs these competitions flawlessly and often holds them with the prize being small but interesting (often a postcard from his current location).

Most recently he help one where he asked his followers to send in their craziest travel stories. The results must have been hilarious and the winner was a boy who was hitchhiking though Arizona when one of the people offering him a lift asked him if he wanted a paid job being in a porno with him and his mate. 

Drew's Competition snaps, announcing the winners and showing the prizes.

Now Drew doesn't gain any new followers from these competitions but he encourages his followers to interact with him which results in higher engagement and a higher likelihood of his blog spreading through word of mouth. This is smart marketing and Drew has certainly benefited from it with his thousands of followers on all Social Media Platforms.

Kylie Jenner's Lip Snappers

Kylie Jenner. One of the most famous people in the world, just released cosmetic line names Kylie's Lip Kit, a liquid matte lip stick and in he process broke the internet (well, Google Analytics which is still pretty impressive). But the most incredible thing about it is that Kylie used used no conventional advertising to hype up her products, only her personal Snapchat where she dubs herself as King Kylie and others refer to her as the Queen of Snapchat.
This was her Snapchat story when the lip kits sold out on 16 minutes:

Of course, this would not happened to this extent if it weren't for the fact that Kylie was already renowned snapchatter with a massive following. Regardless of this obvious head-start that she has on other Snapchat marketers, Kylie has still done an incredible thing by so fully adopting this reasonably new platform for her marketing.

Eurovision: The Greatest and Biggest TV competition on Snapchat

You  may or may not have noticed that last weekend there were a few things strange things happening, did you see anyone wearing a Guy Sebastian mask? Or perhaps a sudden prevalence of bearded ladies? Drag queens? Or maybe a few strangely patriotic/ interestingly dressed people?

If so, you probably saw a Eurovision Song Contest fan. I know I saw a fair few of them and at one point had a beard drawn on my face to resemble the winner of 2014, Conchita Wurst.

Conchita and I - We could be twins!

This year, Eurovision created a Snapachat account which they advertised on their website:

They captured backstage moments, live performances and interviews with cast and performers.

In addition to their personal Snapchat, they also had a Live circle dedicated to the song contest which contained live audience reactions to the contest, live performances and little fun facts about Eurovision's history.

Geofilters: Seriously, they're incredible.

Snapchat has done it again, as soon as we think they've come with all the good ideas possible- they make one better.
This being, geofilters. Now anyone, whoever you are, can make their own personalized geofilter for a limited amount of days over a limited area. This is their YouTube advertising campaign:

 Now Snapchat is aiming this advertising at normal, everyday users of Snapchat. However, when I had a look at it and how it works I discovered that in order to make a geofilter cover the size of my block of land at home for 24 hours, it would cost over US$1,000. I'm not sure about others, but this is well out of my price range for a birthday party- especially when there is limited phone coverage over the area. However, if I were holding an established, commercial event it would be a fantastic accompaniment to help with the marketing and advertising for it.
For example, an event covering Victoria Square in Adelaide over a weekend, would only cost US$500 which in my opinion, is a pretty good investment for the amount over Snapchat coverage you would receive. Especially if the event was aimed at young adults- the main users of Snapchat.
And it is surprisingly easy to create! All you need to do is create your graphic, select the area and time you want the geofilter to be available and viola. Instant (almost) and very cheap marketing!

It's Festival Time in the US!

'How do you know this?' You may ask.
The answer: Snapchat
Of course, if I were any other normal human being who doesn't live under a rock I would have also found this out by the plethora of magazines that stalk the celebrities and performers at the festivals, or the newpapers which follow the statistics of the huge nature of these mega festivals, or even the odd new bulletin story on TV (don't own one, soz).
But I'm not and the main way I keep up with world happenings is over Social Media and the first I heard about Coachella this year was through Snapchat 'Live'.
'What is Snapchat Live?' I hear you asking.
Ok, so open your app, go to the stories pace and under the line of discover journalism, but above your friends stories should be something that looks like this:

Basically, these are the best snaps from events as curated by Snapchat. So wherever you are in the world (say, Australia) and no matter how far away you are from Coachella (say, 13,309 km). You can experience it live! (Kind of).

This is an incredible form of marketing. You can get your brand/event out and be seen by the entire world by showing the best snaps and most interesting behind the scenes happenings, making people all over the world experience a little jealousy and wunderlust. Especially me. 

Screenshots from the Coachella Snapchat Live story

'Discover' Journalism on Snapchat

You may have noticed, over the past year there has been another page on Snapchat labelled 'Discover'.
If you don't know what this is, open Snapchat to the home page, swipe to the left onto the 'Stories' page where up the top there will be a line of circles under the title 'Discover'. You can swipe in the same direction to find the entire list of these 'Discover' circles.

Swipe left from the home page to the 'Stories Page' then swipe left again for the 'Discover Page'

From here you can pick any of these media platforms. Ranging from the young adult, pop culture  focused 'Buzzfeed' to the food revolved 'Tastemade' to the animal porn, 'National Geographic'. The above example was taken from news based 'The Daily Mail' circle.

And apparently, it's working crazily well in getting traffic and awareness about these journalism platforms. According to statistics, Cosmopolitan's Snapchat Discover Channel generated, on average 19 million veiws per month while cosmopolitian.com generates 20 million unique visitors per month. Also, Buzzfeed's CEO Jonah Peretti has said views from Snapchat make up 21% of his companies total traffic. These statistics are massive for a platform only one year old!

However you may wonder what these brands are getting in return for paying the suspected millions to be advertised on this page? The answer is, technically not much apart from traffic and awareness. But when your Snapchat views and your website views are almost neck-to-neck. It's pretty worth it, yeah? 

National Geographic- Tastemade- Cosmopolitan

Drew Binsky's Snapchat 101

Over the past few weeks I have been coming up with new ideas for this blog, and one of them was to potentially write an in depth how to of snapchat, putting your business on snapchat and how to make it work effectively for you. I thought about this idea for a while, began writing and realized what a massive job it really was. Then I came across Drew Binsky (If you think that name sounds familiar, it does, if not check out my previous blog post on travel blogging on Snapchat!) and his absolutely marvelous 'SNAPCHAT 101: MARKETING FOR BLOGGERS & BUSINESSES'.
SO instead of writing out my own, I contacted Drew to see if he would mind if I shared his post with you guys, the answer was affirmative and so here's Drew's opinion section on...

Why is Snap Chat so Effective? 
 In this section, I am going to lay out 10 reasons why Snapchat has blown up so quickly and why it’s so powerful:

1.  It works like a text message – Snaps immediately are sent to the recipients phone and they will receive a notification – Just like a text message, but much it’s more entertaining and fun. 
2.  You have extreme PRIVACY – Nobody else can see what you’re doing on Snapchat besides yourself. It’s personal. This is perhaps the most attractive feature of the app, because it sets it apart from the other major social media platforms.
3. You don’t need wifi to send snaps – This is crucial especially for us travelers who don’t always have access to strong wifi on the road. You can take as many snaps as you want, and save them on the app to resend when you do have access to wifi. I’ve been doing this in on my current trip in India and it’s been working magically.
4. It’s quick and to the point – There is no bullshit with Snapchat. You send a photo/video, and the recipient views it. No advertisements, no re-Snapping, no sharing. That’s it.
5. It’s fun –Snapchat is a more FUN way to communicate with your friends and followers than just standard texting. The same way that watching videos is more fun than reading blog posts.
6. It’s Customizable – After you take the photo or video, you are able to choose any color and draw freely on the screen with your finger. You also have the option to write up to 31 characters on the screen. Better yet, you can use emojis and put them anywhere on the screen and make them as big or small as you want. There are unlimited options to customize your snaps!
7. Users will Anticipation Your Snaps – If you are somewhat entertaining and creative with your snaps, then people will start looking forward to your next post. Just like Instagram.
8. Photo + Video Option – While photos are nice, videos are much more powerful. You are allowed up to 10 seconds of video to send.
9. It’s addicting – You know how Tinder can be addicting? Yeah, Snapchat has 100 million active monthly users. People who are on it can’t seem to stop (I’m guilty of it too). 
10. It’s behind the scenes – My favorite part about Snapchat is that you are essentially filming your life experiences behind the scenes! Nothing is planned or staged. People are seeing content exactly how you are seeing it in real life. It offers an incredibly your viewers a unique perspective, almost as if they are standing next to you. 
11. 100% user engagement – When someone is viewing a snapchat, their finger must be touching the screen at all times or the snap will disappear. Therefore, you can be 100% certain that you have the full attention of your viewers when they are opening your snaps. This is unlike Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, where users quickly scroll through their newsfeeds and hardly retain anything unless it pops out or catches their eye.

So there you have it guys, if I can't convince you to get on Snapchat, Drew certainly can! Check out the entire of his blog post at: http://thehungrypartier.com/snapchat-101-marketing-for-bloggers-businesses/ and follow him on Snapchat to see his travels by snapping this: