Why Snapchat cannot be ignored anymore?

Before we jump into why Snapchat, we need to understand why any social network deserves a second look from a branding and marketing perspective.

When Facebook was asked "Why Facebook?"

Back in 2010, Facebook faced similar questions, but they passed the test with flying colors. Facebook was important because your friends were on Facebook. It gave a community feel to the people. The viral factor through which content was distributed made it more attractive. Brands were given platform to create content and connect with a set of audience. Facebook created Ad products which gave a boost to distribution. All the use cases matched for growth in content consumption and engagement. A strong base of analytics, which helped measure performance on Facebook vis a vis other social networks.  These factors along with higher number of people made Facebook the most preferred social network to jump on.

Youth Power

India is youth country (As per stats). With a huge chunk of youth under 25, Snapchat has great chance to grow. Already there are various reports which say that Snapchat is millennial’s favorite social network in the US. In India, most of the millennial (I would refer them as Youngsters) have jumped on Twitter or Snapchat because of the privacy factor. For e.g., now that our fathers, mother aunties uncles have arrived on Facebook, privacy becomes huge issue.

Although Snapchat is infamous for its data leaks. Indians don’t take them seriously or rather choose to ignore them. Privacy rights and laws are yet to be understood by the Indian youth. This ignorance paves the way for Snapchat to spread its wings.

Tendency to share and connected.

The want to be liked, adored, appreciated by someone is really high in today`s youth. Snapchat gives the youth to express themselves on the move. Got something interesting or even something which is remotely interesting, let’s share it on Snapchat. Snaps has become a buzz word. Hyper-Sharers almost share more than 10 snaps per day. 

The features..

Sharing pictures with a set of friends (only) and a one to one communication was a road block for content distribution.

 Snapchat understood this and introduced a feature called “Stories”.

Snapchat stories is the most popular feature in Snapchat. It helps people to send a broadcast of their stories which last for 24 hours. It is further divided into “My story” and “Our Story”. Our stories is like UGC content created around an event.

Till Jan 27 2015, Brands and peo
ple had same accounts and same use cases. With introduction of the Discover feature, it changes the way content being produced and consumed. It is a hybrid way for videos, photos and text.  This blurs the line of Image only or video only content and extremely light. As of now, Snapchat has joined hands with the content marketers like MTV, Vice, Nat Geo to develop such content.  To have a complete rollout of this feature would take some time.

As per functionality is concerned, it crosses the roads with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The story feature helps people to broadcast photo to all friends. This is something which crosses Twitter and Facebook functionality. Sharing pictures with filters, text edits and doodle features crosses with Instagram plus the extra features.  

Snapchat cannot replaced Twitter, Facebook or Instagram but it will have its place in the mix.