Denis is an expert in graphic design & social media marketing and is the founder and creative director of Portsmouth-based digital design agency, Wolfden Creative. One area that Denis is especially interested in is Snapchat, he has written a number of articles about the platform which can be found on his blog.
Denis Brzozwski
Snapchat in business has not been a common thing for too long, but we are starting to see a lot of content that is beneficial and primarily meant for commercial use, rather than the cliché duck faces and selfies from teens. Snapchat gives us the ability to interact with other individuals and brands.
Big woop, right? So does every other social media platform. But Snapchat is different. It allows for face-to-face interaction between two individuals whether they are only individuals or represent a brand/company. This is where this particular network stands out. Speaking to a representative of a brand directly on Snapchat is much different to receiving a tweet reply signed with a randomer’s initials.
So how far can we actually push Snapchat in terms of professional communications? Most brands and professional individuals have already mastered Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I think there is great potential for Snapchat to be the next hub for professional interaction. Okay, so there are aspects of a brand’s communications that Snapchat simply wouldn’t be able to cover such as customer services.
The way in which Snapchat can be utilised, however, is interaction with potential and existing customers, on a personal level. Most of the content that brands create is cross-transferable between different social media whether it be images or text, you can schedule automatic posts to several networks at once.
Snapchat needs a little more attention than that, as the best content needs to be created with Snapchat, especially mind. This also means it takes up a little more time, which is also why fewer people do it. At the moment, content for the mainstream platforms is easy to distribute, with auto schedulers, content analysis tools, auto-reply bots etc. Do you see how any attribute of ‘personal communication’ is automatically lost with this concept?
This is where Snapchat comes in. Adding personality to professional communication adds value, and adding value adds trust. When you see a strong brand, you see a promise. What does this mean? When you see a brand giving the extra hustle to create valuable content for Snapchat, which we have already established takes more effort than other media outlets, you automatically feel a personal relationship with it, even though you may not actually have one. It is an indicator of ‘going the extra mile.
With Snapchat, B2B (business-to-business) communications or even B2C (business-to-consumer) communications automatically feel like C2C. When your content is seen by another business, it is associated with a behind-the-scenes personal feel, a face, a name, an office etc. Formality is taken out of the equation, and more often than not, that’s a good thing in the world of social media.
This allows businesses to interact with personnel DIRECTLY as opposed to brands INDIRECTLY. It allows for connections between individuals and brands and opens up many more doors when personality is added, and formality has taken away.
Snapchat will be big for business; it just needs to figure out how to do it. We’ve seen it happen before with Facebook, which was once a platform for university kids, is not one of the world’s leading social media advertising hubs. Instagram was originally full of photographers, and now everybody is one. The same story with Snapchat, which one day was a hub for teenagers to send inappropriate images, will soon be the #1 platform for personal experiences between brands, companies, SMEs and individuals.
The biggest problem that Snapchat currently has, is the inability to discover other users. I will be releasing an article about this on my blog very soon, which you can access HERE.
I’d like to thank Matrix Internet for having me on as a guest blogger bringing this article to you, feel free to get in touch with me and connect on social.
www.denisbrz.com
Instagram & Twitter: @_denisbrz
Snapchat: denisbrzbiz
www.wolfdencreative.com
Instagram & Twitter: @wolfdencreative
Want to know more about using snapchat for business? Our expert social media team are more than happy to help!!
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