Snapchat as a Marketing Tool

The growing use of the internet has prompted a shift in the nature in which businesses seek to promote their products and services. The use of social media has also gone a long way in increasing internet participation amongst people across all divides. One of the many social media platforms called Snapchat is a multimedia mobile application focused on image messaging.

Internet users, especially social media users, have devised ingenious ways of drawing traffic to respected sites for a number of reasons. Today, social media is a vital tool for internet marketing. Businesses, both small and big, have switched to the internet as their primary platform for marketing their goods and services.

This report therefore provides an in-depth analysis of Snapchat as one of the many social media platforms and illuminates how this platform is currently used by internet marketers for the purpose of brand awareness.

Snapchat as A Social Media

One ought to note that Snapchat is principally used to create multimedia messages that are commonly referred to as snaps. On most occasions, snaps are images that can be manipulated to amalgamate various effects as preferred by the user. Nonetheless, snaps can also consist of short videos and drawings that are also editable to contain captions, effects and filters.

Over the years, Snapchat has evolved significantly to include new and interesting features that add to user experience. Today, this mobile application is not only used for socialization but also as a marketing tool for most businesses that seek to attain online awareness amongst its potential and existing customers. There are a number of feature incorporated in Snapchat that makes it ideal for use as not only a social media platform but also a marketing tools for businesses that seek awareness online.

For example, one of Snapchat’s features called the Geofilter was incorporated in the application in 2014. This feature is important for availing certain special graphic overlays when the user of the application is in a certain geographical place like a city or event. As such, users are able to identify with their locations when they take snaps of images of videos of their surroundings.

Another significant feature of Snapchat is the ‘Lens’ feature that was first introduced in 2015. This is a special feature that provides users with the opportunity of adding real-time effects in the snaps of images or videos that they take. One ought to note that this feature makes use of face detection technology that also forms a vital part of the Snapchat application.

When using the lens feature, Snapchat users activate the face detection technology by a long-press on a face that appears within the view-finder window or screen. These are just some of the features that together bring up the much-needed user experience and satisfaction.Unlike many social media platforms and applications, Snapchat is user-friendly and offers real-time guidance to users during use.

When it comes to synchronizing contacts, Snapchat offers one of the best and easy-to-use guides. Snapchat users are able to synchronize their contacts from other social media platforms that they already have. Additionally, Snapchat also suggests contacts to its users. As such, Snapchat users are able to link up with contacts that they might know or be interested in addition to the provisions of contacts, one ought to note that Snapchat also features notifications of snaps that can be customized according to user preferences.

One is able to customize his or her image or short video in a way that it can be viewed for a specified period before it becomes inaccessible to other users. On most occasions, a period between one and ten seconds is provided. Users are therefore able to make their snaps viewable to others for a specified time between one and ten seconds. Initially, users were required to hold down the screen as a way of being able to view a snap in the form of a short video or image.

However, this is no longer the case. This option was excluded from the Snapchat application in 2015. According to the brains behind Snapchat, the requirement to hold down the screen as an option that allows users to view snaps was aimed at frustrating the ability of users to take screenshots of images or short videos. It should be noted that Snapchat does not deter the taking of screenshots.

However, it is able to notify the original sender of a snap that a screenshot of his or her snap has been saved. Alongside being able to customize the period that a snap can be made available, it is also important to note that one snap can be replayed on a daily basis for free. Nonetheless, if users require more replays they have to purchase them with the help of micro-transactions that are provided in the user interface of Snapchat.

Just like any other social media platform, Snapchat has a provision of adding friends via phone contacts and usernames. This is called synchronization. The ability to add friends is made a lot easier through the ‘Add Nearby’ function or customizable snap-codes that allow users to link up with their contacts that are available on other social media platforms that they might already have.

Unlike numerous common social media platforms, the intention of Snapchat was to counteract the norm in which social media users were forced to deal with an idealized social media identity of themselves; which was described as having denied internet users the ability to enjoy their communications in social media. Another interesting feature of Snapchat application is the ‘Memories’ feature that was introduced in July 2016.

This feature was perhaps the one last component that was lacking in the application to make it absolutely perfect. Since the introduction of this feature, Snapchat users are now able to save story posts and snaps into private storage areas. As such, these images and short videos can be viewed remotely together with other snaps that are stored in the device.

In addition to that, these snaps can be edited and most importantly published again in order to be redisplayed in Snapchat. In addition to being able to save previous snaps using Snapchat, one is also able to search the saved content by their dates or with the help of an object recognition system.

Those snaps that are made accessible through ‘Memories’ can also be locked and a ‘My Eyes Only’ area. One ought to note that this option is made available for users who seek to save snaps but also keep them out of reach of other people that might have access to their devices.

When locked, these stored saps can only be accessed after keying in a PIN that is set by the original user of the application. According to the brains behind the Snapchat application stated that the idea of ‘Memories’ as a feature of Snapchat was inspired by the common practice of people having to physically scroll through their photos in their phones with a bid to show them to their friends.