3 Stupid Snapchat Custom Geofilter Mistakes
Not that I love telling the whole world what a dumb-dumb I am, but I am pretty sure if I am making stupid mistakes, other people are as well (I hope). If I don’t share my experience, even if it is not very flattering, I am just being a dick. So here we go:
- Know Your Time Zones: Geofilters are posted at PST (Pacific Standard Time). Pay attention to the timezone you are posting in!! I made this mistake for a posting I made in Maryland for an event Gary Vaynerchuk was speaking at (and the filter was directly to him), but I was three hours off! Was he even there to see it? I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything. So it either sucked and he ignored it, or he didn’t see it. I prefer to think he didn’t see it. It got used, it got shared, but not by him.
- Know Your Target Zone: I made a custom filter advertising my book for the Pepperdine University graduation this weekend. I had it all planned out. Along with filters for the Dodgers game that night, and SF Union Square that day, I was running free download on Amazon Kindle. It was perfect! So much exposure to people in the markets I want to be noticed in. What could go wrong? Well, if you put the “fence” around the wrong part of campus, no one can use your damn filter! $10.85 down the drain. I looked over every picture I could find, read all the descriptions of where the ceremony would be, and I totally whiffed. I don’t know if they moved it, if the map of the campus was off, or what, but I whiffed. I was all over Twitter and Instagram to “connect the dots” and instead I was just an idiot with a frowny face superimposed over photos of Pepperdine University (you can see them all over my Instagram and Twitter page). Stupid!
- Know Your Audience: I am on a mission to get certain people to notice me: Gary Vaynerchuk, James Altucher and Metallica. I bug GaryVee and Altucher on Instagram and Twitter (and at events with Snapchat when my dumbass puts the right time). I wanted to make something cool for Metallica. They are putting some final touches on their upcoming album and I thought a custom filter for their HQ would be rad, different, and get me noticed. Not in a, oh look at that idiot sort of way, but, oh, that’s cool, let’s call him and see if he wants to hang out with us sort of way (by the way, the answer is yes I do, for all three of you: GV, JA, and Metallica). So I built it out, launched it, and absolutely nothing happened. Zero. They didn’t even snap that day. I made something and had no idea if it would even get eyeballs on it. $5, down the drain. I did make one for their Record Store Day performance in Berkeley a few weeks later. It got used a ton, but still no call to hang out. *sigh
Those are my errors so far. Hopefully I will be writing more “how to’s” and not “how-not-to’s” in the coming months. I think this is a killer platform and I thought of a cool way for brick and mortar stores to use it in an awesome way. Hit me up on Twitter or Snapchat to find out!
Eh, f*** it, I will just tell you here: Pay people to come in to your store and snap their experience. Like a “man on the streets” sort of thing. I thought this up walking around Coscto today. I could have made a killer snap story about my trip. I mean, I would have made it WAY more interesting than it was in real life, but all the stuff in my head that I could have done were gems! Talking to people, checking out food, playing with crap, hanging out with the guys that give away freebies and demo blenders. It could have been awesome.
Take from this what you will.
Adios.
Joey
