[SOCIAL MEDIA]: How The Food Network Utilizes Snapchat

Snapchat was launched in September 2011 and over the past few years, it has become a popular social media platform in which people can communicate with friends and family through short clips of pictures and videos. As of June 2016, the social media phenomenon has 150 million daily users. With so many people spending their time on this app, businesses had to join in.

The app has evolved into a space that businesses can share information to users on Snapchat Discover. According to Snapchat Support, Discover is a space that users can find “channels from top publishers who curate content daily, watch Live Stories from an event, or check out local Campus Stories.”

Snapchat Discover is easy to navigate because users are able to tap, swipe, and scroll through their favorite brands and the content they have to offer. It can be a good source of news and entertainment through pictures, short reads, or videos. It is also convenient because people can tap through it at their own pace.

One major company that has taken advantage of Discover is The Food Network. Visually pleasing recipes, articles, lists, and videos are all found on their channel. Each section within the channel has a cover page and then a word at the bottom that says either “read” or “watch.” These simple verbs encourage the audience to participate with the brand. The content gets to the point quickly and allows users to easily decide what they want to spend time viewing and what they would rather skip over.

Their recipes provide step-by-step instructions, each with a picture. People would rather skim the text and look at an image because time is like gold. The faster the audience can read over content, the faster they can move on to their next activity. The pictures allow for people to easily follow along.

Articles are straightforward and have many pictures. Readers can make better connections when there is both text and image.

Videos are three to four minutes long and have guest stars featured. If the viewer is interested, they are able to swipe down to watch.

As discussed in Grant Leboff’s Stickier Marketing, the many-to-many funnel allows customers to decide what has value and what they want to spend their time looking at. Snapchat and The Food Network do a great job of allowing users to tap through what they do not want to read/watch quickly. Also, people can make the choice of subscribing to the channel; they are not forced into it.

So, how successful is The Food Network on Snapchat? Digiday says that “it is still not a profitable venture” and the network is “looking to build an audience but experiment with content formats.” It is imperative for businesses like The Food Network to create new ways to reach their audience. With Snapchat being such a popular form of social media, it is a smart move for the network to utilize the platform.