Snapchat + Journalists = A match made in heaven!
A short and sweet reminder that Snapchat is a little more than the home of selfies, it’s the perfect platform to tell stories and distribute news through text, imagery, and video, here’s why.
In a world packed with a multitude of social networking sites, it takes time to familiarise yourself with each of them individually. Fortunately, Snapchat doesn’t take much time to get used to, its simple purpose, to allow people to chat to their friends through snaps, means as long as you can take a photo, you’re good to go.
Launching in 2011, the globally popular app created by Evan Spiegel has come a long way in a short amount of time, what was created as a mobile network with an unclear intention, is now utilised and heavily depended on by numerous digital companies and brands worldwide.
The informality of the app is what makes it such a success. It’s primarily millennial users revel in its simplicity, it requires no effort on their part and therefore leaves a fun platform to be utilised at all times of the day. Perhaps why an astounding 60% of Snapchat daily users contribute content, completely blowing the 1% rule of internet usage out of the park.
So what does it do?
Snapchat in a nut shell uses imagery for conversation. Pictures and videos are taken, edited with filters & text and sent to friends, only to be disposed of in a maximum time of 10 seconds. There is also the ability to accumulate numerous pictures & videos to create ‘stories’ which sit on your profile for a limit of 24 hours. These stories are presented in chronological order allowing your audience to see events fold out in the order they happened.
Here’s an enlightening video by Spiegel himself, to give you a better understanding of the app.
Snapchat stories
Let’s talk about this a little more. With 150 million daily active users and 10 billion daily video views, it goes without question that the potential for reach on this network is astronomical. Companies around the world have picked this up and are using it to their advantage producing journalistic content for audiences to read on the go.
With more and more people online, it is important for journalists to adapt with their audience and create a presence wherever they are. Regardless of its informal reputation, all news types have a platform on Snapchat.
Whilst Buzzfeed and The Daily Mail dominate Snapchat Discover to feed millennials with the newest trends, and top tips of how to get a booty like Kim Kardashian, the people behind Snapchat have in fact been hard at work creating a space for hard, breaking news. Back in October they even ran a 24 hour live story of curated content from the front line in Iraq, and included additional content relating to the events in the war zone.
With such a vast number of people visiting the site, there is an audience for everything.
Calling all Journalists
Whatever you’ve got to share, share it on Snapchat! Whilst the app itself may be informal, the news that sits on it doesn’t have to be. The misconception that Snapchat is solely for generation x to send multiple selfies of themselves with a dog filter (seriously, what’s up with that?) is totally inaccurate.
Snapchat is so much more today than it was when it started out. Do I think it has room to grow even more?
Definitely!
Place your trust in Snapchat and put yourself on the platform.
*Top Tip*- Embedding your Snapchat name on your twitter, Facebook and blog posts is a great way to boost activity with the site.
