Why Your Business REALLY Should be on Snapchat (or Instagram Stories)

Snapchat has been a difficult platform to market a brand. Content on the app, while reaching over 150 million active users, is shortly available and producing the content seems prohibitively difficult for all but the most "innovative" brands.

Many companies abstained from engaging early on - due to misinformation, ignorance, or difficulty - but with Instagram launching "Stories", companies cannot longer restrain from producing 'snappy video vertically' (whether it's on Snapchat or Instagram).

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But what’s the appeal? Less pressure to be perfect when content is more permanent. It’s a simple way to share simple things: Stories offer a stress-free way to say whatever you want. Here are five reasons your business should utilize the app:

1. People use it, and they’re going to keep using it. Snapchat first caught on among high schoolers, but now has 150 million active users per day (!) add 500 million others on Instagram and you know that it's here to stay, if you like it or not.

2. Prove you’re a “cool” company. If you hadn’t heard of Snapchat before Facebook’s stunning $3 billion offer, you’re not alone. The Snapchat frontier is still wide open for adaptive marketers who are ready to start exploring. Those who hit the ground running will have the biggest impact, plus the chance to define the ways marketers will use an emerging genre. Can anyone say, “Innovator Award”?

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3. Incentivize your audience to join you on Snapchat and you’ll not only gain an instant audience on an emerging platform, you’ll find a whole new way to interest them. Offer mobile coupons, the chance to take a sneak peek behind the scenes, and the promise to deliver hot brand news to Snapchatters before anyone else, and fans will follow. With Instagram Stories, you don't even need to drive them away from channel A to channel B (extra win!).

4. Embrace a new wavelength of messaging. Remember when YouTube grew in popularity and politicians began to realize the simpler, less professionally-staged videos were ranking better with audiences than prefectly polished ones? Savvy marketers are realizing the same is true for Instagram and Snapchat. The app is supposed to be less-than-perfect, and that’s why people love it. The bonus for businesses is that you have the chance to kick your shoes off at the edge of the dance floor and have a little fun.

5. This is the new world of advertising. It has always been the marketer's dream to own a branded TV-channel and now they have it - yet they don't use it. Snapchat (and Instagram Stories) introduces a groundbreaking forum where people are interested in what your brand has to say and offer.

It may still be new, but it represents the new age of advertising. Like Darwin taught us: not the strongest survives - it's the one who adapts.

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