As the world of social media evolves, day by day social media platforms continue to develop and release new innovative features to make them better than the rest. In order to keep up with the ever changing social media industry it's important for marketers to recognise and evolve with these changes. This includes adapting your influencer marketing strategy in order to gain the best results for your brand.
In this article, we'll be looking specifically at Instagram vs Snapchat and focussing on their highly similar features to determine which is better for your influencer marketing strategy.
Snapchat is a popular and fun mobile app that allows users to send messages, images and videos which disappear after a specific time limit. This can be anything from 10 seconds or up to 24 hours if the snap is added to your story.
Instagram is a social media platform that allows its users to connect with family, friends, companies, and many other outlets all over the world. With many features from just posting a picture of yourself or a product to using hashtag and location stories, Instagram is one of the best ways to get an image, an idea, or a video to the world.
So let's take a deeper look at the features of these two platforms and how they can benefit your brands. Firstly let's take a look at the algorithms!
Snapchat
Unlike other large social platforms, Snapchat does not have an algorithm boost in place which means all stories are still shown in order of the time they were published. This lack of algorithm ultimately gives Instagram a boost over Snapchat when using specific influencers to target certain markets.
The Instagram algorithm is one of the top algorithms in the social media business. It contains information such as
Engagements: How popular the post is from likes to comments
Relationships: The accounts one user regularly interacts with
Time spent: The duration spent viewing a post
Relevancy: The genres of content users are interested and have interacted with.
All these different aspects of the Instagram algorithm make it such a complex, yet efficient social media platform. We at The Blogger Programme focus on understanding Instagram’s algorithm so we can pair you, the brand, with the best bloggers to get your brand/products out to the world in the most efficient way. If you have seen or received one of our campaign reports you would see that The Blogger Programme focuses on how the general public reacts to a blogger’s posts. We look at total blogger following on Instagram, Instagram impressions and finally Instagram engagement. This information helps us analyze the best bloggers you, the brand, need for your campaigns.
Another key and very similar aspect of both social platforms is their 'stories' feature. The stories feature initially started off from Snapchat and was quickly replicated by Instagram following it's popularity. So what's the different in this feature across both platforms and which one is better for your business?
Consumer insights platform Whatsgoodly surveyed 1,106 millennials in November 2016 and found that a whopping 88% of consumers prefer Snapchat stories over Instagram stories. The survey was later repeated with 1,991 millennials in April 2017 and the percentage of users who picked Snapchat actually fell from 88% in November to to 78% in April which indicates that Snapchat's popularity is slowly decreasing as Instagram continues to be a fierce competitor for the app.
Snapchat
Snapchat allows users to share snippets of their daily lives through video and picture to their friends, family, and occasionally the public. Snapchat stories delete after 24 hours after being posted and similar to Instagram, Snapchat have also recently released a new update which enables businesses to add direct links within their snaps.
Using this swipe up ability, users who are interested in a product can access this product on a brand’s website by just swiping up on the story. Snapchat is less public than Instagram, but with both companies updating their story abilities it adds another efficient way for brands to get their name and products out there. Snapchat’s latest feature, “Map”, allows users to look at a map of the world and see where there friends are at a sudden notice. This feature would be good for brands with large events, allowing influencers to turn their locations on during these events.
Instagram started back in 2010 and has evolved more and more every year since it was created. It started as only pictures, then allowed videos, and its newest feature is the Instagram story. The Instagram story, like the Snapchat story, allows users to post a quick snippet of the event/product/location they are involved with. Instagram stories will last 24 hours after they have been posted and now include the ability to swipe up on a story (for business profiles with more than 10k followers). Swiping up on a story will take the user directly to a website or landing page that has been linked by the social influencer or brand. This new feature is a quick way to get users to a brand’s website or a blog post. Instagram has also updated its geo-tags, hashtags, and hashtag stories which is another way a blogger can get access to company information/product information. A hashtag can be something related to a brand’s product or brand’s name that when attached to a picture or story will bring up brand information for the user to further investigate.
While Snapchat continues to add new features, such as their Maps, the pool of users that Instagram currently has is too big to not take advantage of. With Instagram’s complex algorithm and large pool of users they are a dream platform for brand’s to get in touch with users. With Snapchat evolving quickly, it wouldn’t be a mistake to use both of these platforms for more diverse marketing. Ultimately which platform you choose to use will come down to your target market and campaign objectives and ruling out one would be very tough to do.
In terms of which platform influencers tend to use more, an interesting study from marketing analytics platform Captiv8 revealed that 57% of social influencers post more on Instagram than Snapchat each day. Interestingly beauty and celebrity influencers on average post more on Snapchat while Instagram is more popular amongst lifestyle and comedy influencers.
However regardless of whether you choose one or both, it's important that you note and make use of each platforms new updates and features as these can significantly impact and boost the results of your campaign. Here at The Blogger Programme, our team of experts are on hand to assist you in your influencer marketing strategy.
Get in touch at brands@thebloggerprogramme.com and receive a free influencer marketing proposal today.
TBP x
