To experience success with social media, it’s pretty much a rule of thumb that you should try to be an early adopter. When a new platform comes out, get on it and try stuff! See what sticks. When new features gain popularity, they tend to get copied and improved on other platforms, and it’s part of why the social media landscape changes so much and so often.
Even so, each platform will always have different tools, different strengths and weakness, and different audiences. In this lesson, I’m going to walk you through some of those differences with Snapchat, and show you how you can still use the benefits of a platform even if the bulk of your audience exists on a different one.
Transcript
Hi, my name is Bucky Beeman, commercial real estate agent from Rochester, Minnesota, and I like to create content in different ways and market in different ways than my competition here locally, and [I’m] trying to do things differently in the industry as a whole. So today, I wanted to show you one of the ways I’m doing things differently, and that’s creating content on Snapchat.
Snapchat definitely has lost popularity over the last couple of years in the business demographic, I would say. There was a time when Stories were not able to be shared on Instagram or Facebook, and Snapchat was the first leader in allowing people to share stories that were going away after 24 hours, and people were following those stories because they were generally interested in what someone was up to. And it was kind of like the real life documentary, where you were able to follow along as people were creating content as things happened in real time.
And now that Instagram has created that feature, and Facebook has created that feature, Snapchat has, as I mentioned lost popularity. I know some real estate agents that have deleted it just because they’re doing Stories on Facebook or Instagram, solely, and not working on Snapchat. But there’s still ways to create on Snapchat, and I just want to a couple unique ways you can consider if you’re looking at doing things differently in your marketing efforts.
So, Snapchat: I think one of the unique features is it has really cool face filters, and it also has the Bitmoji feature. And so, as you can see here, there’s what I call Bitmoji Bucky. And Bitmoji Bucky is somebody that can become popular. It’s a caricature of yourself on your social media, and it’s somebody that you can use as another personality to share about what your Bitmoji or my Bitmoji Bucky is doing on a regular basis. So, one way that I’m using Bitmoji Bucky is I take a video or a picture, such as I’ll do now a video…
[Bitmoji Bucky avatar is whistling while Bucky records]
…so that video is complete. I can add text to this video, I can add stickers, I can add different functions. I going to say “Bitmoji Bucky (hopefully I spelled that right) is cleaning the office today.” I’m going to check my spelling on that. So I added the text. I can add other features such as time. You can have it stick directly on your video so it looks like it’s actually edited into that screen. You see the time, how it’s in the background there? You can add additional features, like a sticker at the very top… it’s very easy to create on Snapchat. I find it easier than even Instagram with adding features and stickers. It’s just smooth. And maybe that’s because that’s what I started with, or maybe it just because it truly is. I guess you have to test Instagram and Snapchat next to each other.
So I can add this story: there’s a little plus sign on the bottom right hand corner that will add it to my Story so those following me on Snapchat will see this clip. But, more importantly, you can save this to your camera roll, because I imagine a lot of you don’t have a big following on Snapchat, nor will you gain a big following on Snapchat. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t post it on Snapchat, it’s just the truth. It’s the younger demographic that’s on Snapchat. And you can save this, and then it’s in your camera roll to repurpose onto Instagram, Facebook, and you can show off what your Bitmoji is up to, and then people find that entertaining and interesting, and it’s just another additional way to create unique content on your other platforms.
So I’m going to add this to my story. I do want to proofread real quick, make sure I spelled Bitmoji right. One of my strengths is not spelling, that is for sure! Yes, I did spell it right, perfect! So, I am going to add it to my story. So there it is, added to my Story within Snapchat, and now I’m going to go over to Instagram, and it’s saved there in my camera roll. I can add additional features within Instagram if I wanted to: additional text, stickers. I’m not going to at this point… and there is also on the Story of my Instagram.
So that’s one unique way you can use Snapchat. Another unique way you can use Snapchat is the face filters are a lot more interesting, fun, unique, and I don’t see these same looks, if you will, on Instagram. Now, they’re trying to, but it’s just not as clear. It’s not as good, it’s not as creative. There you go. And you could come up with a segment of whenever you’re wearing this you have a different personality, voice, you know, people look forward to that humor within your content, and again you can repurpose it. This one’s like an obvious one for me [moose costume with holiday sweater], just because my name is Bucky, so here we go.
[Begins recording Snapchat video]
“Have you ever wondered why they call me Bucky? Little did you know, I actually have horns coming out of my forehead.”
[Snapchat video recording ends, video replays in background]
There you go! Save it in your camera roll. I don’t even need to post it right now, I can save it for later content creating, you know, building into your pipeline of additional things to share throughout your week.
So, there you have it. That’s some tips on ways to use Snapchat in a unique way to help your marketing efforts be different than everybody else’s out there. Thank you for tuning in. Keep marketing differently.
