Snapchat has been on the forefront of ‘curating stories’ with its impeccable ‘story’ feature for the last couple of years now. The ‘story’ feature can be used to tell a story in sequence beginning, middle and the end, which opens up many possibilities for the social media presence of artists. Surely this feature has been found so useful, that it has also been implemented on Instagram. Despite Snapchat has lost a sizable traffic from this move in summer 2016, it is still a very useful platform especially for brands and artists who are aiming to reach out to millennials.

So why should you use Snapchat?

The first one I would say is branding. Brands that use Snapchat prove that they:

• stay on top of new things
• love testing their limits and creativity
• know where’s their target audience              

In the world of distracting news feeds where attention span is only a few seconds, the average time span that 18-29 year olds use Snapchat is 20 minutes a day. This is much shorter for other networks, and I think it is by far the most important feature of Snapchat in this context. This means they are more likely to pay attention to the content, as you can see the snap once; despite they spend much less time than other platforms. So, to sum up, Snapchat is something millennials actually pay attention to. Therefore, it still maintains its attractive position for brands who are aiming to reach out to this demographic, which is why it should also matter to artists whose target audience is this age group.

So how can you use Snapchat to interact with your followers?

1.Telling a story at Snapchat

“Story” can be used to tell a story in sequence, beginning, middle and the end

Examples:

a) Recording and producing timeline. You can feature the creation of a song or a video in your snapchat story from beginning to the end, which would be a very cool way to engage with your fans.

b) Count-down. This could be used for new product releases that have a specific release date and time. The way this would works would work could be featuring multiple stories, such as  blurred image at 12pm, making it more visible as hours go by.

c) Access to live events.

 

2. Contests. Contests create community, and offer brand new ways to encourage followers to engage in your work, products or services in crowdsourcing contests.

These can be anything from ‘name that tune’ to ‘send me the best picture about summer’, and they could be amazing ways to engage with your followers.

 

3. Giveaways/Coupons/Promotions

a) Free give aways. These are great for increasing your Snapchat users, especially if you are offering gifts or food – or other things a millennial would be likely interested!   b) Snapcodes. They are great for letting people know about certain products or services (could be included in email for digital purchases).

 

What are some of the best features you like about Snapchat? Do you use any other tools to engage with your followers? If you have anything else you would like to add, feel free to share them below!

Alper Tuzcu is a Berklee College of Music and Denison University alumni, and a Boston based guitarist, songwriter and producer. You can listen his debut eclectic album  ‘Between 12 Waters’ featuring 8 different vocalists on Spotify, follow him on Instagram  or Twitter @alpertuzcu, and visit his website www.alpertuzcu.com