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

The Wonders of Geofilters

For those who don't know what a 'geofilter' on Snapchat is. This is a geofilter.

See that thing down the bottom saying 'Flinders University 50 Years'? It can only be accessed whilst on Flinders University grounds!

Personally I think it's pretty cool. Where ever you are in the world, if someone has made a geofilter for that area, you can have not just a pretty little graphic on your snap but also a really important marketing tool.

For example, anyone who I send this snap to now knows that Flinders University is celebrating it's 50 birthday. A fact that probably none of my friends in the other states of Australia know.

It's also fantastic for the tourism industry, if a friend sends you a snap of a really pretty mountain range that you had never been to and if seen on other social media platforms, it would have probably remained unknown to you. However on Snapchat with a geofilter, the area in which the photo is taken is immediately displayed in an aesthetically pleasing way on your Snap. Effectively advertising, and even better recommending, wherever the Snap was taken!

Now I feel as if I had better explain how to actually use the geofilters because while I was asking friends to send me a snap with their areas geofilter on, the most common reply I got was 'What's a geofilter?' and then followed by 'How do I get it on there?'. So...

How to put a geofilter on your snap:

1. Take a photo on Snapchat
2. Swipe to the left
3. Continue swiping to the left until a geofilter comes up

N.b. Some areas may not have a geofilter.

All photos used with permission

Travel blogging on Snapchat

As Snapchat has evolved, many people have started using it as a method of communicating with their friends and family whilst overseas.And as free wifi is now readily available in all major tourist destinations; Snapchat travel blogging has bloomed. Along with your everyday relative or friend sending you 10 second videos or pictures of what they got up to that day, people are creating full blown, profitable businesses out of travel blogging.
 Take for example, the now pretty famous Drew Binsky who makes his living by both travel blogging on his page The Hungry Partier and through Snapchat (@drewbinsky) where he has over 42,000 followers and over 8,000 people viewing his daily travel snap stories. When I last caught up with his snap stories he was having a ball in Indonesia and giving me serious travel envy as I procrastinated from doing my uni study.  He provides travel advice to those who ask for it and allows people to experience other countries whilst never leaving the comfort of their own home.

Drew Binsky is also an avid used of the Snapchat geofilter (as pictured above) which in my opinion is one of Snapchats best tourism marketing ideas and is what my next blog will star!

For a list of the best travel blogs to follow on Snapchat; visit Getting Stamped, another snapchatting travel blog with an entire post dedicated to this.