K atie c ouric

CHAPTER 10
THE REALITIES OF SNAPCHAT
his chapter is going to be short. I’m choosing to keep it that way for the
same reason I haven’t included a chapter on Twitter: I don’t use these
platforms. I don’t see them giving people the opportunities for growth and
monetization the way the other platforms do. In fact, as you’ll learn in this
chapter, many Snapchat influencers are leaving and moving over to
Instagram Stories. A lot of the content strategies you’ll learn here can also
be applied to that feature on the Instagram platform. With that said, some
brands still find a lot of benefit in using the platform, and there are
influencers who have made up to $100,000 a week.
The biggest hurdle to having success on Snapchat is the fact that the
only way to grow is either to do collaborations or pay someone popular to
do shout-outs. It’s extremely hard to get discovered on this platform. There
are hardly any search tools and Snapchat made a decision early on not to
support influencers.
However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t marketing benefits. Christy
Choi, CEO of First Influence, a digital marketing company with a core
focus on Snapchat, has learned how to use Snapchat as a direct-response
vehicle and has seen a lot of success in getting viewers to install her clients’
apps. Choi believes that this has worked because of the relationship people
have with influencers on the platform. Snapchat is a chatting platform. It’s
not really about the public display of photos; it’s built for a more intimate
relationship, where even if the influencer doesn’t respond, viewers still feel
like they’re having a direct line of communication with the person to whom
they send the message. This level of intimacy on the platform makes people

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feel as though they’re receiving a personal recommendation when an
influencer gives them a call to action. It’s like a friend holding your hand
and saying, “Hey, check this out. This is really cool.”