5 Ways to Promote Your On-Campus Event on Snapchat

On any given day, Snapchat reaches nearly half of 18- to 34-year-olds in the United States. In 2016 alone, Snapchat released new video-recording sunglasses called Spectacles, announced original programming from Disney, and surpassed Twitter in the number of daily users.

For these reasons, Snapchat is a wonderful platform for celebrating an event and communicating with students and young alumni—which is why my colleagues and I embraced Snapchat (add us here!) to promote the fifth Columbia Giving Day on October 26, 2016.

Columbia Giving Day is a 24-hour online fundraising event supporting the schools, programs, and causes at Columbia University. Snapchat outreach—combined with other on-campus initiatives—led to a 30% increase in student giving from Giving Day 2015 to Giving Day 2016.

Based on our experience, here are five tips for promoting an on-campus event with Snapchat.

1. Design and submit geofilters. Geofilters are location-based overlays in Snapchat that users can apply to their snaps and are specific to a neighborhood or special event. There are two types of geofilters: on-demand (which cost money) and community (which are free), and anyone can design and submit them for approval. Remember that statistic about nearly half of 18- to 34-year-olds checking Snapchat every day? Geofilters can serve as billboards to promote your event. Keep in mind that only on-demand geofilters contain metrics (i.e. views and uses); but community geofilters are perfectly fine if you’re on a budget.

2. Share a variety of content. This includes sharing photos and videos; snaps with people and without people; snaps with stickers, emojis and geofilters; etc. In 2016, Snapchat also revealed a new feature that allows you to publish old photos on your account—this is a great opportunity to add #tbt posts featuring your events from years past.

3. Embrace student takeovers. Student takeovers on Snapchat are nothing new, but they’re great for a few reasons: students share new perspectives on campus, and their contributions are incredibly helpful when you’re (inevitably) so busy preparing for your event that updating your Snapchat account is low on your to-do list. Five trusted students updated our Snapchat account for five consecutive days leading up to Columbia Giving Day, and they all told us they had a blast.

4. Solicit snaps. Schools, programs, and causes had the opportunity to win challenge money generously provided by Columbia University Trustees throughout Giving Day by entering hourly challenges. For one hour on Giving Day 2016, we held a Snapchat hourly challenge and collected snaps from the Columbia community. We received so many submissions that we were busy opening and viewing snaps for the full hour. Take screenshots, too! It’s a fun way to capture how people are celebrating your event all over campus (and in some cases, the world).

5. Cross-promote. You are probably promoting your event on other channels, too—Facebook, Twitter, etc.—so get the word out about your Snapchat account on those platforms as well. If your followers love your content elsewhere, they won’t mind hitting “Follow” on one more channel.