Mark my words, 2016 is going to be know as The Year of the Snap and within the next year it will become far more mainstream.  

Snapchat will soon pivot from an app traditionally known as a fun “photo texting” app for teenagers and people who want to send disappearing photos of their private parts, to a service that the mass market will adopt as a fun way of communicating and a meaningful way for companies or individuals to build brand equity and a meaningful connection with their consumers.

Now, I’m going to focus on the last comment and how it can help people in business. 

PREAMBLE: Attention is the currency of this generation.  Fifty years ago brands advertised on the radio, television, in newspapers, or even on billboards because there were so few options for consumers to entertain themselves with (remember when there were only three channels?).  Today, can you think of the last time you actually payed attention to a TV commercial if you couldn’t PVR your way through it? How about radio; do you ever listen to commercial-free satellite radio or listen to podcasts instead? And billboards: for goodness sake, look to your left and right the next time you’re in traffic, I can almost guarantee one of those two people will look at their phones once within a minute.  How can billboard advertisers claim that drivers are looking at their signs, drivers aren’t even looking at the road! 

What are people paying attention to? Their phones.  Whether it’s surfing the web, using an app, or connecting with friends on social media, people are spending more and more time staring at their phones.  They’re now spending huge amounts of the time that they previously spent looking at traditional advertisements, looking at their phone in some way shape or form.

How can businesspeople benefit from this knowledge that eyeballs are increasingly being pointed at phones, and specifically how does this relate to Snapchat? Simply speaking, where attention is money follows.

A NOTE ABOUT THE COMPETITION:

• Twitter: Twitter isn’t dead but Twitter has a massive attention issue.  Early on the culture of Twitter became about following massive amounts of people who you likely had no personal connection to.  This now plays out in most individual’s Twitter streams being far too “noisy” for those looking to advertise or build a brand on Twitter to be able to effectively cut through the clutter. 
• Facebook: Facebook is an excellent medium and far from even reaching it’s peak.  That said, Facebook makes brands or individuals pay if they want to build a following on Facebook. So unless you’ve got a bundle of cash to build “Facebook Likes”, this might not be the best option for all businesses.
• Instagram: Instagram has huge amount of attention paid to it, in fact I would go so far as to say that as of writing this article in January 2016 Instagram has the highest amount of attention paid on a per post basis.  That said, Instagram is becoming noisy with A LOT of people on it, and because it is so heavily based on users simply viewing photos and not interacting with other Instagram members that it is hard to build deep connections with passionate followers.

I would go so far as to say that I would much rather have 1,000 watching my Snapchat Stories, than 100,000 following me on Twitter because if 1,000 watch my Snapchat Story I can almost guarantee that nearly all of those 1,000 people are actually consuming (ie. watching) my content.

ON TO SNAPCHAT

Snapchat is dominating the attention game right now. Beyond that, Snapchat is dominating the authenticity game right now.  

Snaps (which basically are just photos and videos) sent directly to one of your contacts on Snapchat, or Snapchat Stories which are available for all of your Snapchat followers to view, only last 24 hours and then disappear.  This disappearance means that people on Snapchat become addicted to viewing each and every Snap that is put up on Snapchat; because they don’t want to miss it.  In other words, there is a HUUUUUUUUUUGE amount of attention being paid to Snapchat.  And remember what I said, where attention is money follows.

Also, Snapchat snaps and Snapchat stories have to be taken within Snapchat; they cannot be shot with your camera app then customized, filtered, edited, etc, to make you look better than you actually did in the original picture.  This results in Snaps being very raw, authentic, off the cuff.

Here’s how I think it will help change business: Snapchat will level the playing field between marketing Davids & Goliaths.  Big companies might be able to outspend small companies, but small companies can always out-authentic and out-creative big companies. Snapchat gives small companies a medium with which they can build deep, lasting, authentic connections with end consumers at a fraction of the price of advertising in traditional mediums.  Small businesses who want to build a business that competes with large companies will be able to succeed more often than they were able to in the past.

Why is Snapchat able to help small companies and individuals more than other social media services have in the past?  First, Snapchat has a lot of attention being paid to it. Second, Snapchat is authentic.

AUTHENTICITY builds TRUST

People LIKE brands they TRUST

Consumers BUY from those they TRUST

So here’s the bottom line: if you’re a small business or individual looking get an immense bang for your marketing effort buck, while at the same time building genuine connections based on trust and respect with your consumers YOU NEED TO GET YOURSELF ON SNAPCHAT.

Thanks for reading everyone! If you want to connect and follow my triathlon training, life married to Kim Babij-Gesell, and life as social media grand poo-bah you can check me out on Snapchat at “ARaceTaren” or downloading my Snapchat Snapcode at the top of the article.