Survey: Want to reach millennials? Use Snapchat

To relate to a millennial audience, look into Snapchat.

If you’re using Facebook or blog content to target consumers under 30, a Variety survey suggests Snapchat is a more effective tool—and a necessity for your social media strategy.

“Roughly 44 percent of the 1,117 U.S.-based Snapchat users between the ages of 13–24 surveyed in February who said they had used Live Stories and/or Discover reported doing so on at least a daily basis,” the survey states.

Snapchat and branded content

Last July, Snapchat shifted where users interact with its Live Stories and Discover features to give them a more prominent location:

From The Verge:

Snapchat is taking some drastic steps to make sure [consumers] know about Discover, the special section where chosen [news] media partners (and Snapchat itself) post content for the app’s millions of users. The company updated its mobile app with a redesigned Stories screen that sandwiches a very prominent shortcut to Discover partners right beneath your stories and above those from your friends. The “live” section has also been moved up to this spot, and it, too, gets preferred placement over your friends.

Although roughly 70 percent of respondents said they mainly use the app to share stories and chat with friends, brand managers using the features can rest easy. Data suggest Snapchatters’ attitudes toward Discover and Live Stories aren’t negative.

Variety reports that three-quarters of those surveyed said they “liked” both content areas. Only 14 percent said they’d never seen Discover; 12 percent haven’t checked out Live Stories. When asked whether they were looking at the sections more often than they did a year ago, 29 percent said they perused Discover more, compared with 24 percent who are viewing more Live Stories.

[RELATED: How to communicate with a millennial workforce.]

“As for whether the advertising levels within the two categories are acceptable, only 12 percent felt there were too many ads, while just under 50 percent deemed the number ‘tolerable,’” the survey states.

Millennials and news

Though some PR pros might say otherwise, data show that millennials are reading the news. For specific information (such as updates on the 2016 presidential election) Snapchat is their preferred platform.

BuzzFeed was the most popular Discover channel and is regularly viewed by 54 percent of users, Variety reports.

One established brand—The Wall Street Journal—finished dead last among millennial audiences. The Journal is one of the recent additions to Discover, Variety says.

Here’s more on how various media outlets have fared using Snapchat’s content features:

The news isn’t all bad for the less-viewed Discover channels — and it’s particularly positive for Snapchat: More than half of respondents say they first heard of brands including Mashable, Vox, Tastemade and Fusion on Discover.

Ways to interact

Although a brand’s Snapchat score (the number of snaps sent and received) is important, it isn’t the most effective measure for determining a piece of content’s reach.

Experiential marketer Christopher Ryan says brand managers must accurately track content and users’ interactions:

Almost all your work in Snapchat will be in the form of stories. Stories are a string of Snaps that create a narrative that other Snapchatters can view for 24 hours. You will need to measure the following engagement return on investment:

• Opens (how many friends opened and viewed each snap of the story).

• Screenshots (how many people took a screenshot of the content).

There are other metrics, but those two are the most important, he adds.

If your brand is part of an event, Ryan says the app’s Geofilters can help to garner attention online.

“Geofilters are fun overlays that [brands or] events can buy and can be branded with fun graphics, but not with website or email addresses,” he says. “What these provide is ROI not only during the event, but for 24 hours after the event as their friends watch their Snapchat stories.”

Survey data show that nearly half of millennials’ favorite feature was “creating my own stories.” Image add-ons such as Geofilters also scored highly.

How do you use Snapchat, Ragan readers? Has the app’s content features helped you to target millennials?

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