How Snapchat’s Story Feature is Reminding Brands About Storytelling

First, let’s start with an obvious question: What is Snapchat?

Put simply, Snapchat is a social media platform for people to share real time stories with their friends and virtual following using pictures and videos that disappear after they’re viewed.

But it has become a much bigger beast.

Snapchat launched their Discover feature in early 2015, which allows select brands to publish content that will be publicly viewable — and most importantly will appear at the top of the Snapchat Stories page. With this feature, a collection of curated brands (who have paid to use the feature) can be a Discover option for the day. It might be news stories from Vice or fashion tips from Cosmopolitan. No matter the message, it’s a good way to keep the brand in the forefront of a user’s experience.

These stories are also told in order when played by the user, so you see it as it’s unfolding. That makes it more important to thematically link one picture with the next. Without this link, the story begins to disappear. Upon Discover’s launch, Snapchat said:

“Discover is different because it has been built for creatives. All too often, artists are forced to accommodate new technologies in order to distribute their work. This time we built the technology to serve the art: each edition includes full screen photos and videos, awesome long form layouts, and gorgeous advertising.”

So, what makes this feature work? Snapchat understands businesses are trying to tell their stories, and some are willing to put in the extra work to make these stories compelling.

Why Your Brand Needs Snapchat?

Sure, no business needs Snapchat to succeed, but getting on board with one of the fastest growing forms of social media isn’t a bad idea either. Stories, Snapchat’s storytelling option, has been around for a few years in the form of My Story and Our Story. My Story is the story of you, the individual, and what you choose to let the world see throughout the course of your daily life. Our Story is for what is going on in a specific area.

What this means for brands is that you have two options: organically grow your Snapchat by making the most of your stories, or pay for the potential to be in the Discovery section.

These are some reasons why you need to pick one or the other:

Create Awareness: The more places you promote your brand, the more chances you have for people to learn that you exist.

Build Your Brand: Once people know about your company, this is your chance to tell them why they should care about you. Explain the story of your brand and your mission.

Expand Engagement: Several brands have nailed this part of the Snapchat game. Give coupon codes in your snaps or show fans a behind-the-scenes look at what you can offer them.

Beat the Competition: If your competition isn’t leveraging Snapchat and you are, then that’s an easy win for you. Do what they’re doing on social media, but do it better.

Humanize Your Company: While building your brand gives people a look into your mission as a company, humanizing it goes one level deeper, giving people a deeper reason they can relate with you.

As Snapchat evolves, so do the ways people interact with it. That means, there’s no easy answer or strategy for putting these concepts. Each case will depend on how you want your company’s story to be told, and the type of interaction you hope to get.

5 Tips on How Your Brand Can Win at Snapchat

Now that you understand the need for Snapchat with regard to your business, it’s time for the hard part: how do you build an effective campaign? There is no magic formula to make Snapchat work for you, but there are some things you can do that have shown positive results for other brands.

1. Be Consistent

As with everything else in life, consistency is key. Once you commit to creating a Snapchat strategy for your brand, you need to stick with it. Post photos and videos daily to keep your audience engaged and to constantly give them a stream of content when they check their stories throughout the day. They’ve done studies on how many posts is the optimal amount, but that will depend on your brand, your storytelling tactics and your overall goals.

2. Be Creative

Coming into work one day and deciding to start a Snapchat channel for your company isn’t good enough. You need to create a story around what you’re doing and why people should watch the content. It’s called “Stories” after all. Brainstorm some ideas that will be interesting to your established following, and entice other people to jump on the bandwagon. If you have an interesting event your company is hosting, lightly chronicle the fun parts of that process (no one wants to see budget sheets)…

3. Be Authentic

Millennials are the main demographic that uses Snapchat, and if there’s anything we’ve learned aboutMillennials, it’s that they like authenticity from brands. If you can show that you’re genuine, you’ve already got one foot in the door in terms of winning their loyalty. Show your audience behind-the-scenes looks at your operation. Whatever your company mission is, ensure that your Snapchat feed reflects.

4. Be Urgent

At the risk of sounding like a Foreigner song, your Snapchat needs to be urgent. Unlike a casual snap sent between friends, your story will exist online for 24 hours. To create something worth watching, you’ll need to put time and effort into it, so create a sense of urgency for your following. You can slip in a discount code in the middle of your story (but do so in a fun way) like food delivery services have done in the past.

5. Be Smart

This sounds obvious, but at the end of the day, you need to be smart about your brand. If you have a big Instagram following, consider cross-promoting your Snapchat content there first. If you’ve told a story that you want to last forever — not just 24 hours — download as you publish, edit it together into a longer video, and post it to your company’s YouTube channel.

The possibilities for how to build your brand with Snapchat are only limited by how creative you can get with the resources available to you. Set up a strategy, execute it and learn from your daily findings. Make note of what’s helping you hit your KPIs and what isn’t working. At the end, you’ll have a Snapchat channel your followers engage with and that helps your brand grow.

(This article originally appeared on studioD’s blog)