SNAPCHAT IN ESPORTS: BUILDING A NEW EXPERIENCE
Originally published at esportsentrepreneur.com on January 7, 2016.
From a social media marketing perspective, Snapchat has blown up over the past few years, and has slowly converted over being utilized by businesses. I’m a big fan of utilizing every opportunity to tell a story to your followers, especially in an industry that has so many organic stories waiting to unfold. I’ve seen esports organizations set up Snapchat channels such as Team SoloMid, but when you look at their channel, you don’t see much consistent content unless they are at a tournament. As the topic of team loyalty, revenue sources, and marketing becomes relevant it will be even more important for strong marketing strategies to be in place.
Since Snapchat is new to the business world and best practices are still being developed, I want to give my take on how organizations, streaming personalities, and even players can utilize Snapchat in esports to generate revenue, and build brand loyalty through Snapchat.
WHAT IS SNAPCHAT
For those stuck in a hole (there are over 200 million Snapchat users globally with 65% active daily), Snapchat is a video messaging app that allows users to send video or images that disappear completely after 1 to 10 seconds unless it’s posted to their story wall which it will disappear after 24 hours. These are not the only features that Snapchat has to offer, but it’s the ones that have been utilized the most by businesses. If you need a breakdown of Snapchat, you can find that HERE
I’ve read a fair amount of articles on Snapchat and through my own observations, it’s been hard trying to determine how often one might post to Snapchat compared to Twitter or Facebook and acquiring users is also difficult. It isn’t as easy to see the analytics from Snapchat on how long or how many times one person viewed your Snapchat, you can, however, see who did view it which is cool! So according to Gary Vaynerchuk you should be posting upwards of 7 videos and 7 images a day. What is important about these videos and images is that they don’t need to be scripted, because of Snapchats nature, users expect authentic and organic content.
WHY SHOULD ESPORTS USE IT?
When you look back at the nature of esports with the development of Twitch, streaming, and players transparency into their lives as professional players, you see how Snapchat can be utilized to continually build off this. Since esports is seen as a field of entertainment utilizing skills and the competitive nature of the industry, it’s important to see how entertainment can be given from a new perspective that isn’t at tournaments or streams.
Tournaments are full of content ready to be leveraged for organizations which makes Snapchat a huge platform to share instantly! Looking at players, they share their experience of being a professional players to so many follower because it adds value to their content, they might not realize it, but giving this experience is wanted by so many people who believe of making gaming a career. Brands need to start utilizing Snapchat in coordination with their players to build a loyal fan base and connect with them on a new level. As teams build stronger relationships with followers, then they will be able to convert those into sales of merchandise, stream support, and other opportunities
Personality streamers aren’t directly coordinated with esports, but some are partnered with esports organizations which makes it relevant that I bring this up. Personalities have a unique situation at hand in which people watch them for the quality of entertainment they provide. This can then be aligned with marketing aspects on their social media pages and including a Snapchat story line! Those that have subscribed to a channel are committing themselves to supporting the work the streamer puts into their time. These streamers can share what happens off screen, when they will be going live, and provide real authentic experiences for their followers.
START YOUR SNAPCHAT STRATEGY TODAY!
As you can see, Snapchat has huge opportunities awaiting ahead, some esports businesses have figured it, but in time more will jump on board, but for those that build that experience now will not be apart of that bandwagon wave of oh shit what am I missing out on.
Follow Esports Entrepreneur on Snapchat @esportsentrepre
