Getting acquainted Reach
  • 100 million daily active users (and growing)
  • 7+ billion video views daily
  • 37% of users are 18-24 year olds
  • Of 13 - 34 year smartphone users, over 60% use snapchat
What Snapchat can provide for marketers
  • A fresher audience
  • For 18-24 year olds, the trendier place to interact with their social network is often Snapchat as their Facebook newsfeed often includes parents, grandparents, extended family, etc.
  • Real-time marketing
  • If done correctly, the content is fun, engaging, fast & memorable
  • Curating content not available on other channels as it’s not shareable (strategically) -- versus curating a “permanent” online persona (such as an Instagram feed)
  • Personal storytelling
  • Geofilters: defined as “dynamic art for different places” -- perfect for traveling!
  • Provides a “behind the scenes look” for a certain program if you team up with students currently abroad
  • Utilize social influencers to increase your reach (these influencers might be among your students!). Consider teaming up with them for a week to promote a certain destination or program.
  • Drumming up awareness
  • Consider sending out a snap along the lines of: “The first 25 students who come visit the study abroad office will receive a <INSERT PRIZE>. A fun way to generate foot-traffic
  • “Live Event Access” -- have one of your peer advisors stream your next study abroad fair or feature fair attendees
  • Campus stories are GREAT opportunities to extend your brand beyond your friends. Not all snaps make it to the campus story, especially the very commercially-oriented ones. But if you do, you could get a massive audience with very limited efforts and in a short period of time.
Things to consider
  • Users can view snaps at their leisure versus having to guess the best time to post something to gain the most engagement. Stories are live for 24 hours and viewable multiple times.
  • As a marketer, you can see “view analytics” to measure your reach with each story.
  • Interactions are easy -- you can snap a quick photo back or shoot off a quick chat. Users love instant gratification!
Snapchat pros
  • Free to create a geofilter for your study abroad office on campus. Allows students to share that they’re in your office when snapping with their friends/family.
Snapchat cons
  • Difficult to maintain the balance of academically rigorous program options and credit-bearing endeavors with the casual, spontaneous, errors-welcome environment of Snapchat.
  • No in-depth analytics for regular users beyond scores, screenshots and views which have to be manually retrieved.
Ready to take action? 
Here’s an excellent Get Started Guide by Social Media Examiner. If you utilize Snapchat at your organization, we’d love to hear from you. For example, have you seen success? What’s difficult about managing this platform? We'll add that content in here!

​Sources:
Snapchat
Social Media Examine: 5 Ways article
Social Media Examiner: Improve article
Curated
Ad Week: Social Times