Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Sandro Čanak, Pioniri Beograd
It seems as if Snapchat has taken agencies and those involved in digital marketing by surprise, while Millennials have been actively playing with it for over two or three years now. During that time, this social network has undergone major changes aimed at users, and now at brands, which are competing with one other as to who will better utilize its functionality in the major markets.
One reason this visual platform was ignored by the business community for so long was probably its light nature – the instant sharing of photos and short video forms, which are deleted after viewing or after 24 hours if they were posted as My Story. And perhaps the very idea that gave birth to this platform – “I wish these photos I’m sending this girl would disappear” – definitely did not sound like a winning concept, but today it has over 100 million active users.
Social networks are becoming more and more instant, as users don’t have the time, or, often, the interest, to linger too long on any particular web content. Looking at it from this perspective, Snapchat’s success is entirely valid, and just how successful it is becoming is best illustrated by Facebook’s concerns (and their attempt to buy it), and the introduction of Messenger codes modeled on Snap codes. Snapchat actually succeeded in taking a failed concept of QR code and turning it to its advantage, by using it as a mechanism for adding friends. Facebook followed this trend and has recently begun providing a similar method through Messenger.
However, if we look at Snapchat’s use for marketing purposes, and the launch of company profiles, several questions arise concerning the business relationship with a client. As Snapchat is very much an instant social network, probably more so than any of the others, the classical mechanism of the monthly plan of action falls apart. It’s not possible to prepare all the materials in the app itself, send it to the client for approval, and then post – unless we cheat with some third-party app.
It’s the same with any form of live broadcast of an event over Snapchat, which is only possible if the client has confidence in us and there is a script. Can we step out of the script sometimes? How much are we allowed to improvise in real time broadcast? How do we solve the issue of the lack of analytics?
Now in high growth in our market, although there is no official data on how many users it has gathered, the future of Snapchat in the marketing world is still uncertain. Whether Snapchat will improve and change its interface and structure in accordance with the needs of business users is one of the key issues. Also, through On-Demand Geofilters, Snapchat is getting closer to small businesses, with affordable prices and the easy creation of filters, while it charges the giants gigantically for other options, which is completely opposite to Facebook’s business concept.
At the moment it looks as if it’s quite possible that Snapchat will continue to focus on private users, while brands will have to adapt and follow.