Is it really time to give up on Snapchat?
As you can probably imagine, considering my field of work, there is often a lot of chatter about social media platforms and updates around the office. Most recently, over morning coffee chats, the topic of Snapchat came up. This Tweet by Kylie Jenner pretty much gives you all the context you need on how the conversation went…
Kylie’s tweet clearly resonated with a few people with over 80k comments and 375k likes. The general consensus in the office was similar — what’s the point of opening Snapchat when Instagram basically does it all?
Although they still have over 300 million monthly users, statistics hint that the app is on the decline. Snapchat admitted that their user amount in March was lower than previous months. They’ve also reported nearly $450 million in losses over the course of a year, and top Snapchat influencers are using the app 33% less in the past few months.
So what exactly is the deal with Snapchat? How did they end up with statistics and popular opinion working against them?
Well, we’ve got talk about the update. You know… That update. Snapchat completely resigned the User Interface (UI) in November last year, and combined all friend-related features including messages, photos and stories and live on one page to the left of the camera, and a ‘Discover’ page with publisher and brand content to the right of the camera. Although the change wasn’t huge, users felt like it was confusing and disruptive. In fact, over 1.2 million people signed a petition to encourage Snapchat to remove the update. Not a great description of a design that was intended to grow the app’s usage. On a positive note, they recently redesigned the redesign after all the backlash from users, so it will be interesting to see if this effects popularity again.
As an external factor, Snapchat really does have some heavy competition in Instagram. Instagram Stories have a wider reach, and it is quite difficult to find people on Snap. Instagram allows direct links within their stories which take users directly to the product being advertised. There is also the added bonuses of hashtag integration and the ability to tag other users. Instagram stories are higher quality than Snapchat, and they can provide more in-depth information to advertisers and marketers. These factors are probably the big contributors to influencers move to posting around 7.6 stories a day on Instagram, compared to 3.6 on Snapchat.
Instagram established their roots as a photo-sharing platform. The app isn’t limited to just stories — they have the regular and extremely popular feed for users to share photos and videos plus a direct message feature. You could almost call it an all-in-one, so why would people choose to go to a separate app when they could do it all on the same one?
People obviously still love Snapchat, but a few factors really aren’t working in their favour. It’s an interesting one to keep an eye on as they will need to put in some serious work to get ahead of competitors and win back their lost users.
You’re probably wondering what all of this means for your business… should you bother spending your precious time using Snapchat to promote your business, or should you put your time, money and effort into other platforms? Over at Start Social, our courses focus mainly on Facebook and Instagram. They’re reliable, the engagement is great (if you put the proper advertising in place) and I would say they are best for businesses. Snapchat advertising is pretty limited for smaller businesses which make it harder to crack. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t use Snapchat on a smaller scale — possibly some behind the scenes stories or special offers for Snapchat friends. Keep your options open, but keep educated so you’re not wasting your time.
If you’re not even sure how to create a Facebook page or Instagram account and how to use it for your brand to get more business, then jump online here or email us at team@startsocial.nz today and we’ll help you find the best course for you.
Have a fab week, everyone!
Wendy, CEO & Founder, Start Social
