How do you find a conversation you cleared out of Snapchat
snapchat
How to Hide Who You are Talking to on Snapchat
How to Hide Your Snapchat Convos – Change Display Names
Snapchat is the newest of the major social media channels. It is known for its popularity with teens. However, major brands have found it to be an effective way to reach out to users and the audience on the platform is increasing in age. Initially, messages, called Snaps, disappeared from after they were seen by the recipient. This accounted for the popularity with younger audiences – they could hide conversations from their parents. But to grow and compete with other social media channel such as Instagram, Snapchat had to add other features to make it more palatable for brands. Snapchatters can now save messages from other users but when you do save a message, the other user knows it. The channel added other features as well, such as subscriptions to brand stories, filters, and the ability to save messages.
Snapchat by the Numbers
In the third quarter of 2018, Snapchat boasted over 186 million daily active users. [1] This is actually a slight decrease from the 188 million reported in the second quarter of the same year. Snapchat’s user base has increased in age. Severity-eight percent of internet users between the ages of 18 and 24 use Snapchat. As the platform evolves, the average user age has increased. Usage is inversely proportional to age. Sixty percent of internet users between the ages of 25 and 34 use Snapchat. There is still strong usage for those in the 35-44-year-old range with 45% using the social media channel. The numbers drop off sharply after that with only 25% between the ages of 45 and 54 using Snapchat. It decreases with each bracket.
How to use Snapchat remains a mystery to many older users. Twitter is simple yet challenging for some to learn to communicate in short chunks of text. Snapchat presents other learning curves as the disappearing Snap idea which is something foreign to older social media users. Snapchat is good at protecting the privacy of the message and shielding the user’s identities. A feature which worries many parents.
Like other major social channels, Snapchat added the ability to communicate directly with other users. People can send messages with text and images to one another. When notifications are turned on, the sender’s name pops up on the recipient’s smartphone’s screen with each message. This may present privacy and security concerns for some. Fortunately, there is an easy way to hide who you are conversing with on Snapchat.
We cannot change our account name on Snapchat. You’d have to delete your account and create a new one to acquire a new username. Your username and Display Name are two separate names associated with the account. Your Display Name is optional, your username is not. Adding a Display Name on Snapchat is a great way to help friends recognize you. Users are free to change their own Display Names as often as they wish. They can also change the Display Name of their friends and followers.
You can change your Display Name at any time. When you change it, new friends will see the updated name. existing friends will not see the change. Snapchatters who have you in their phonebook may see the name they’ve saved you as in their phone.
How to Change Display Names on Snapchat
In addition, your friends can change your name to be anything they choose for their own friends list. When a user changes YOUR name in their OWN friends list, that change is only visible to them. This is how you can give friends a name that helps you keep them organized. For example, if you know two Keiths you can give them each a name or last initial to sort them out. Since many of my contacts are from work, I tend to give them a few letters after their name indicating where they work.
Changing Display Names also helps you hide who you are talking to on Snapchat. When you change someone’s Display Name, then it changes the name listed each time a notification pops up from that person. It’s very quick to do and its shown in this video. You just head to the individual’s entry in your friends list and edit their Display Name.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/814300/snapchat-users-in-the-united-states-by-age/
How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business
How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business
There are common questions every business asks when setting up a new social media strategy. One common question is, “Which social media platform is best for my business?” What is really meant is, which social media channel is going to drive the most website traffic and sales for the business.
First, determine what resources your business has to devote to social media and other marketing efforts. Are you a solopreneur who is going to work on a do-it-yourself (DIY) strategy and little or no budget? You will need to invest in some free or low cost tools to your social content creation does not suck up the day, every day!
Brands have a full marketing team and art department that works together to produce content and measure results. A brand will most likely going be on all major social channels. They will also experiment with some of the more promising flash-in-the-pans in case one sticks. Remember Meerkat of just one year ago? Vine is gone now too, with Periscope barely hanging on. Trailblazer Snapchat is in a copycat battle with brazen Instagram.
Start with the largest social channel, Facebook. Founded in 2004, Facebook has over 1.18 billion daily active users on average. If a brand wants to have a real strategy on Facebook, they will have to optimize the mobile user’s experience too. Facebook has over 1.09 billion mobile daily active users on average. [1] The largest social channel also has the widest age range, although younger users favor Instagram and Snapchat.
What is the age range of your target audience? Whom do you need to reach to acquire more customers? Snapchat skews toward the younger audience with 46.8% of its users between the ages of 18 and 24. However, there are. More recent surveys shows 31% of 25 to 34 year olds use the mobile-only app. [2]
Can you represent your products well in photos? Visual social media platforms such as Instagram make photo sharing easy. If you r brand is about food, travel, beauty, or fitness these social channels are a good fit!
Like Snapchat, Instagram is also a mobile only social media app. As of June 2016 Instagram boasted over 500 million monthly active users! Any service can do well on Instagram with a little creativity and imagination.
The other highly visual app is Pinterest. The mobile and desktop social media channel has surpassed 150 million monthly active users, which is a 50% increase over last year’s numbers.
The social media site recently announced it has surpassed 150 million monthly active users,
Even if your business or brand is social media veteran, do not ever stop asking those first questions. Many start posting on social and never take the time or do not have the resources to assess their efforts and regroup. Periodically check analyze your metrics too see which social media channel is working best for your brand. Try to at least estimate the ROI and consider repositioning as needed.
Sources:
[1] Facebook Company Newsroom
[2] Comscore 2016 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus
[3] Pinterest Blog
Social Media for Live Events
Social Media for Live Events
One of the most common questions businesses working on a social media strategy ask is, “What do I post?” I am asked this by businesses of all sizes; from startups to established multi-million dollar brands. Social media users of all experience levels want to know what type of content works well for their followers and how often to on various social media channels. Early social media consisted of simple text posts that may or may not have included images. Now, an imageless post is a sure way to watch your content get lost in an endless newsfeed or stream. Images must be well thought out to attract and hold a reader’s attention. Enter the social media video!
Live events are excellent ways to connect with your customers, vendors, and social media following. Of course the events have to be well chose and relevant to your business too! Live events give you a chance to talk directly to your audience, in person. Social media helps gets your audience to your venue.
When I am out speaking at public events or developing content for my blog and my Metrony and PinTalk YouTube channels, I make it clear that I am a big proponent of video content. I have been working hard on my own YouTube channel – yes, please subscribe –as it allows me to answer readers’ questions and to demonstrate features of social media channels. It took me over a year just to get set-up with audio-visual equipment that I like. I did not have someone to show me what to do, until I sat and spoke to a photography expert at a conference. Since then I have been building up my video and social media content, as I know how useful it is.
Video is one of the best ways to convey your brand’s message to an audience. It is great for ecommerce selling, as stats support that users are more likely to buy after watching a video of a product. The cost of video production has come way down too. All but the big brands used to shy away from video because the cost was prohibitive. Fortunately, quality video content is much cheaper to create thanks to smartphones and followers love to experience events with you!
Three major social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat – have made it easy for us to connect with fans via images and live video. Below you’ll find a short list on what works well as well as the strong points of all three.
Facebook Live
Facebook is nets over 8 billion video views daily. It is a fun and engaging way to share an event, such as a trade show, sporting event, or news event with your audience. Facebook is the largest social media channel and therefore gives a brand access to the largest audience. Although Facebook has the largest audience, remember the younger segment of users favor Instagram and Snapchat. This will help determine what content to post on Facebook and what to use on Snapchat. Yes, content should be customized for each channel. One easy way to do this is by changing who is narrating the video. A 40-something may connect with your Facebook audience, while a millennial is perfect for Instagram, and Snapchat would do well with a teen. Another way to connect to multiple age groups is to vary which products are featured.
The advantage of Facebook Live is that a video’s viewing audience can be restricted by age range, gender or location. Restrictions help you ensure that brands do not lose followers by blasting the wrong audience with orrelevant or too much content. Facebook Live continuous videos have no time limit.
For example, if a brand is at a trade show and has a giveaway or offer where the winner must be present to win, it makes no sense to broadcast to their entire Facebook audience. Instead, restrict the giveaway to those who are nearby.
Facebook Live lets viewers can post questions to the live stream giving the broadcaster time to respond during a live stream. The speaker can answer question in real time providing fabulous audience engagement.
Snapchat
Although Facebook has a much larger number of users, the youngest segment has moved on to other social media channels, namely Snapchat. This social channel’s users watch 10 billion videos daily. Yeah, 10 BILLION! That is significantly more than the number of daily video views reported by Facebook.[1]
Snapchat reaches a different audience than Facebook. Sixty-percent of U.S. 13- to 34-year-old smartphone users are also Snapchat users [2]. Do not ignore Snapchat if you think your brand only fits an older audience. The average age is increasing as older smartphone users embrace the social media mobile app [3]
So how do you use Snapchat for at a live event? The content on Snapchat is like no other social media channel. It is clever, creative, unique, and frequently humorous. Use Snapchat to allow viewers to experience the event with your brand! In the days leading up to an event, post teaser photos and videos announcing that your brand will be on-site. Show with images and videos what you are doing to prepare for the event and where your fans can expect to find you.
Brands can use photos, videos, or a combination of both to lead users through the live event. Coupons and promotions, although not clickable, can be communicated by drawing on snaps or having the narrator say it during a video. Snapchat users can control who sees their stories by changing the privacy settings on their accounts.
Instagram Stories
Instagram launched Instagram Stories in early August 2016. Instagram did not attempt to rename anything their new update as many Snapchat ideas were used in the creation of Instagram accounts. Even the name “stories” was copied. Instagram Stories allow brands to share events in ways pre-story Instagram could not. Like Snapchat, Instagram Stories have text and drawing tools available. Also like Snapchat, the photos and videos disappear after 24 hours. The use is the same as it is for Snapchat posts.
The advantage of Instagram Stories over Snapchat is that Instagram has a much larger user base; 500 million versus Snapchat’s 100 million. It is the best social channel for connecting with millennials. To enhance the strategy, Businesses can also run ads on Instagram via a self-service portal. Whereas on Snapchat, the ad portal is only open via agencies with access to the API and with large budges.
Sources:
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/snapchat-user-content-fuels-jump-to-10-billion-daily-video-views
[2] https://www.snapchat.com/ads
[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/04/15/a-sneak-peek-into-snapchats-advertising-revolution/#3926c5845ead
How to Advertise on Snapchat
How to Advertise on Snapchat
In case the idea of embarrassing your teenager has kept you off Snapchat, let’s cover some basics before getting into how to advertise on Snapchat. Snapchat is a fun mobile only app where users upload video and photos. The images are sent to individual friends, or saved to a story that lives on the app for 24 hours. There app has more features including chat, stickers, marking up images, but short-lived photos and images things gives you the idea.
Over 60% of U.S. 13 to 34 year-old smartphone users are on Snapchat web app. Nearly 100 million people use the Snapchat app each day to consume 8+ Billion video views. Yeah, 8 BILLION videos every day! Snapchat video viewership rivals that of Facebook.
The average Snapchatter is between 13 and 24 years old, with 37% of users falling into the 18 to 24 year old range. Snapchat is the best social channel to reach out to this young demographic.
Snapchat’s fun disappearing content is definitely a unique challenge for brands wishing to connect with the audience on this channel. Content posted by brands is short-lived, always entertaining and frequently humorous. Snapchat forces brands to develop a content marketing and advertising strategy that impresses fast!
The app offers opportunities for brands to advertise to Snapchatters. Businesses can buy 3V ads, which are interstitial ads, within branded content such as the CNN story. Individuals and brands can purchase local geofilters. The geofilter offers an effective way to advertise locally, in real time. They are quick and easy to set-up.
A geofilter is an image overlay that users within a certain geographic perimeter can see and add to their snaps. The snaps are saved to a live, local story. For example, those using Snapchat during New Year’s Eve in Times Square can opt to add the New Year’s Eve filter to their snaps before they are sent or saved. The geofilter is offered to everyone within a predetermined geographical area.
Snapchat offers two types of geofilters:
- A Personal Geofilter is one that doesn’t include any branding, business marks/names, or logos, and doesn’t promote a business or a brand
- A Business Geofilter is one that promotes a business or a brand
A geofilter covers a geographical area between 20 thousand and 5 million square feet. They are purchased for a maximum of 30 days. A “fence,” chosen by the advertiser, while placing the order determines the geographical coverage.
Buying a geofilter on Snapchat is easy. The web app, Snapchat.com, has an easy-to-follow- web interface for individuals, designers, and businesses to download example templates. Snapchat geofilters are 1080px wide by 1920px high and must be in .png format. Download a Snapchat ad template or design your geofilter, upload it to Snapchat, and then move on to picking the dates the geofilter will run and choose the geographical area – called a fence. Snapchat employs an easy-to-use Google Maps interface to help choose the fence. After that, enter payment information and the Snapchat ad is good-to-go. The ad price is dependent on the duration and day of week. Snapchat reviews geofilters within one business day.
For now, there is no targeting based on age, gender, or interests. However, the geofilter represents a new and unique way to advertise locally, in real time. It also helps brands reach out to a demographic that Facebook lacks and Instagram barely reaches.