The Grudge Match of the Year

This week revealed one of the most surprising, yet greatest social media updates of 2016. Instagram Stories have arrived to compete with Snapchat’s ever-growing success.  Only time can actually tell us how much this will affect Snapchat, but as it currently stands, Snapchat’s willingness for change and innovation proves that it can (and will) respond and build upon its simple communication and raw material.

With the young Instagram Stories’ release, let’s take a look at how this affects Instagram’s overall experience and the competition it gives to Snapchat.

Brands

For brands, Instagram Stories is absolutely fantastic. According to Ad Age, “Nike, for example, generated 800,000 views in 24 hours for an Instagram Story that it posted on Tuesday, the first day the feature was available. On Snapchat, Nike’s best video got 66,000 views.” Receiving ten times more views than its competition, Instagram is simply able to utilize its built-in audience and keep them on the app longer as the article goes on to say: “Instagram updated its numbers last week, saying it has 300 million daily users, and Snapchat has about 150 million, according to sources familiar with the company’s internal figures.”

Secondly, stories from brands are more accessible on Instagram than Snapchat due to follower counts and how Instagram keeps the stories at the top of their timeline.

Users

For users, the impact may be smaller than expected. Currently, many of the stories have normal users posting their snapchat username in order to gain more followers and continue their usage of the snapping app. Confusion is strong as people play the knock-off card on Instagram and wonder why it would be used in such a way. Secondly, the issue for Instagram comes from only being able to horizontally access five stories at a time, having to scroll to see more. This is less accessible than Snapchat and might deter people from continuing their search for more stories. However, it takes away the less candid, more sophisticated aura that Instagram has touted for so long. This mish-mash of sophistication with realism is a nice twist for an app that intends to stay relevant thanks to its parent company, Facebook.

Something else that some people night not even notice is how much better the image quality is on Instagram (Especially for Android users). On Android, Snapchat doesn’t use your phone’s camera directly. It will grab a screenshot of what your camera sees rather than physically take it’s own photo leaving a much lower quality shot.

Snapchat's photo quality kinda sucks
Photo composed by user “pjmccartney” on Reddit

Who Wins?

As it stands however, Snapchat should be on its toes, but does not have anything to worry about in the short-term. As influencer Gary Vaynerchuk has pointed out: “Plenty of users will remain on Snapchat simply because they want to maintain their audience, they have a preference for Snapchat’s UX (user experience), or they’re spiteful about Instagram Stories being a ‘copycat.’ Snapchat has built a huge following and, while Instagram will probably take a bite out of it, Snapchat will still hold its own.”

Although this social media war should be interesting with willingness to change affecting the outcome, the real winner will continue to be brands.

 

Geofilters and You

Within the last month Snapchat has gone and opened the floodgates for anyone to submit a custom geo-filter for their venue or next event. Since launch we have gotten a ton of questions that we want to make sure are addressed and perhaps throw in a few little tips for you when planning your next campaign!

1. What is Snapchat

Custom Prom Geofilter
DJ MattW and Nick posing with their custom filter made by FilterGhost

Snapchat, for those who do not know, is a platform that started in 2011 as a way to send pictures and videos that would disappear in just a few moments. Sure it definitely had a somewhat “risque” past, but it has since grown up to become one of the top publishing and messaging platforms for people ages 12-23. You can send pictures of videos with text, emojis, lenses, and ridiculous “lenses” to people directly for up to 10 seconds before they vanish. Alternatively, you can post the same content to your story where it sits for 24 hours for all your friends to see.

2.Why should I care about it?

Great question, and frankly we don’t blame you for asking, but Snapchat (as cliche as it sounds) is the new frontier. You have a system in place that basically guarantees that your potential client/customer will see your content. You see, I am that guy who hates having notifications. I will always view a Facebook notification in order to make that little red number disappear, swipe away any card on my phone in order to keep my menu clean, and I will do the same to my Snapchat feed and stories. By posting consistently engaging content that portrays an entertaining or educational story, you will have your followers coming back often looking for more laughs, behind the scenes looks, and perhaps even deals on products or services.

3. What is a “geofilter”?

A geofilter is an image overlay that you can put over your “snap” depending on your geographical location. So if you are in downtown Chicago, you can put the name of the city over your snap to show that you are there, or (and this is where you as an advertiser come in) you can have a fence drawn around your next big event and whomever is snapping from inside it can use a filter featuring YOUR brand! Then when it is all said and done, Snapchat will email you helpful metrics telling you how many times the filter was used, and how many times it was seen.

4. Tell me more…

Let’s say you own a bbq restaurant and you have a big pig roast coming up that you want to . You can have a filter with a cute comical pig saying “Big Billy Bob’s Pig Roast 2016.” Anyone at the event can swipe to the left a couple times and use the filter to show their friends how much fun they are having. Alternatively let’s say you are DJing a high school prom. You can have the school’s name on a starry night sky filter with a dancing silhouette filter and “Prom 2016” below it and sell it back to the school for a small profit, or you can throw your logo on there for brand activation and give it away as a value added free add-on.

Metrics from a custom snapchat geofilter
With only 140 uses, this filter reached over 7,000 views.

5. So I should jump on this?

ABSOLUTELY! We have never seen an advertising platform this cheap before. You can spend $100 on design, $10 in getting the filter live, and (depending on the event/use) get somewhere around 200 uses of the filter and reach upwards of 10,000 people (Using round arbitrary numbers here…). For $110 that is insane! We have always been a fan of Facebook’s platform for its power and affordability, but Snapchat has something big on their hands. We already have been working with clients in using Snapchat for brand activation, and we cannot wait to see how this platform evolves!