Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ilija Brajković, Akcija
OK, we all know what it’s primarily used for: sexting, which parents can’t monitor because messages on Snapchat, as we all know, disappear after a few seconds.
With this article I’m risking one day to be called as “the one who spat on Snapchat, and today we are all using it”. There are two reasons why I’m not a fan of Snapchat: I’m either too old, or too stupid. Both reasons are a good excuse if by chance one day I’m proven wrong :-).
My hate toward Snapchat is not directed toward it as a communication platform. In this respect I believe it’s very good (although personally I don’t use it on a regular basis), especially for “kids”. They are up there, posting pictures from school and chatting, all without fear that their parents will know of this communication. If they are bored with Facebook, they go to Snapchat.
My hate for Snapchat is directed at its marketing potential. You know that Gary’s “Marketers ruin everything?” Well, I’ve already lost that poetic desire to play, and of course I’m looking at ways to use Snapchat for our clients, so that they could get some direct benefit from it. Perhaps we don’t have clients whose target group are teenagers, but let’s say we have. Community management (the real, professional one) on Snapchat is certainly not easy. It takes a lot of communicating and creating content on a daily basis. Let’s assume (and very conservatively at that) that it takes about 30 hours per month for this activity. Those 30 hours have to be charged from the client. Again, let’s be conservative and take only €20 per hour, it’s €600 that need to be charged from the client. In addition to Facebook and Instagram. For how many results (snap views, new followers…)?
If we take the hourly rate of €30, it amounts to €900 per month. For what … 180 followers? 500? 1200? For how many snap views? 2000? 3875?
I’m not sure how much moonshine I would have to consume to come up to a client and dead-cold offer them such a thing.
Oh yes, and on Snapchat it’s impossible to change the username. So if by chance one day you change the name of your company / brand, you have to open a new profile and lose all followers. This recently happened to us with a client; we lost all our 49 followers. This client no longer has Snapchat. It’s not worth the bother.
You know what Snapchat reminds me of? Twitter a few years ago. I was one of the biggest supporters and promoters of Twitter. I recommended it to all the clients because “you have to be where the influencers are, because if they retweet you, you will gain a lot”. We pushed Twitter, tried to communicate with followers, make a good result, and then … nothing happened. The number of active Twitter users in Croatia (and more or less in the region, except in Serbia), is insignificant compared with Facebook. Twitter now serves our customers only for the purpose of being there, but there’s no real community management.
It seems to me that Snapchat is currently just a big hype, which Instagram (Facebook) is brutally copying (more or less all the functions for which the Snapchat became popular in the first place). In a few years’ time, will kids be putting images on Snapchat or Instagram? If they have to choose one network, which will it be? How will we marketers be able to use such a thing? Will Snapchat introduce advertising options that will also be attractive to the little ones?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe in three years we will all forget about Facebook and move to Snapchat. Maybe we made a strategic mistake in the development of the agency Akcija and hopped aboard that train too late, so maybe we’ll lose some clients. Or maybe…