Snapchat and Instagram are two platforms that serve a similar purpose. Sharing and distributing images and videos, but they do that in different ways.

In the debate of Snapchat vs. Instagram, we will explore each platform as they have their distinct strengths, weaknesses and best uses and identify which platform you should use based on your business.

Snapchat marketing 

Launched in 2011, Snapchat is a social media platform, designed around users sharing photos, messages and videos with each other that have a limited amount of visibility before disappearing.

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Important Statistics 

Part of knowing what’s best for your platform means knowing the statistics and metrics that help determine Snapchat’s marketing potential overall and for your specific business.

• Estimated daily active users: 100 million, with 400 million snaps sent daily (Source)
• Core users’ ages: 13-24 years old (Millennials) (Source)
• 77% of college students use Snapchat 
• There are more than 10 billion video views every day on the platform. (Source)
• Up to 8x the amount of US, 13-34 year-olds watch live stories of an event vs the same event on TV.

Strengths

High engagement levels on Snapchat- Users are logged into Snapchat for 30 minutes every day. This means that they’re active and more receptive to messages that you’re sending; they’re also more likely to see them.(Carson, 2017)

Personal Approach-it creates a personal approach to the experiences to their viewers, which is a key elements in advertising to young people (Brown and Fiorella,2013)

Ideal for creating a sense of urgency-Because that Snap only lasts 10 seconds, it’s easier to keep people’s undivided attention before it’s gone. This creates a sense of urgency and can encourage users to take action faster.(Kotter, 2012)

Weaknesses

limited audience-Compared to the majority of other social media platforms, Snapchats audience, is extremely narrow, though admittedly very distinctive (this is good for you if you’re targeting teens and college students—not so good for you if you’re trying to target anyone else).

Content available for short periods – Even though this was listed as a strength it has its drawbacks. Content disappears after 24 hours, therefore if your audience doesn’t have access or forget to open Snapchat, your message will be lost, and the marketing potential for that particular Snap is gone.

Best Uses

Snapchat’s best uses include targeting young students that are teens, and young adults. If that’s your target audience, Snapchat is a must!!

Snapchat’s is good for campaigns that seek to utilise or create a sense of urgency or timeliness. Having a post that only lasts ten seconds makes users a lot more likely to take action on it immediately.

An example of using Snapchat to create a sense of urgency below!

Instagram Marketing

Instagram is a Social Media app that allows users to post images and videos online to the users following them. Descriptions of the images are also posted, and often contain clickable links and topics in the form of hashtags.

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Instagram offers a bunch of editing features including filters and photo editing tools. This encourages artistic and high-quality images.

Important Statistics 

• 400 million monthly active users
• 75 million daily users (Source)
• 80+ million photos are shared per day
• 4.2 billion likes a day (Source)
• The average user spends 21 minutes a day on Instagram
• 41% of users are ages 16-24, but 35% of users are 24-34(Source)
• Their engagement has surpassed Twitters. 

Strengths

Hashtags–  a crucial strength of Instagram are hashtags(#).  Users attach # to their images to describe them.These hashtags become clickable links that take users to feeds of images that use the same tags.

Marketers can use hashtags to connect with the interest of it’ audience and potentially even generate conversation.

Integration with Facebook- Instagram is a sister company of Facebook, therefore they have found a way to link both platforms together. Therefore, you can cross-promote your content by sharing the same content on both platforms simultaneously. This increases the reach of your content and is also brings good value, as content can be shared across platforms.

Engagement and interaction-  Instagram have features that let you like, comment on your post publicly on its explore page, without having people to add you. Therefore increasing exposure to an unknown audience and allows you measure engagement through the likes and comments                                 (Geho, P. and Dangelo, J. 2012).

Instagram also offers permanence- Content is there to stay!The products you promote once will still be visible to new users following you, or old ones that look back.

More appealing to older demographics –  See graphic below

Weaknesses

Lack of urgency- Instagram doesn’t work well for posts that are of a particularly urgent nature, such as a promotion and sales. The content does not have an expiring date, therefore creating a lack of urgency to act upon it. Snapchat does this much better with it’s deleting content.

Mostly effective for visual products- To be successful, when marketing on Instagram your picture have to be of high-quality to have your product stand out visually, as aesthetics are a key element of spurring conversation.Producing high-quality images will take more time to create and edit.

Competition-Instagram is also much more popular among marketers. Therefore your content has a lot more competition. Making it easier for users to scroll past your images, while Snapchat’s layout practically demands their attention if they click on your post.

Best uses

Instagram is ideal for products that visually stand out.High-quality images have found a home on Instagram.

It’s also the ideal platform when you’re looking to connect with a lot of new users, thanks to their hashtag. The hashtag can also be an extremely valuable tool for building your brand and generating conversation around it.

Beyond being a bookmark for content, the hashtag serves as the symbol of a community (Yang et al, 2012).

I hope this helped in your decision making. Time to get Digital!!

References 

Carson, B. (2017). Snapchat users now spend 25-30 minutes every day on the app. [online] Business Insider Australia. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-much-time-people-spend-on-snapchat-2016-3?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 5 May 2017].

Brown, D. and Fiorella, S. (2013). Influence marketing. 1st ed. Indianapolis, IN: Que.

Kotter, J. (2012). A sense of urgency. 1st ed. [Place of publication not identified]: Must Read Summaries.

Geho, P. and Dangelo, J. (2012). THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MARKETING TOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURS. 17

Yang, L., Sun, T., Zhang, M. and Mei, Q. (2012). We Know What @You #Tag: Does the Dual Role Affect Hashtag Adoption?. School of Information, the University of Michigan.