5 Tips to Integrate Snapchat into Your Book Marketing Efforts

Snapchat is a fun, creative platform where users can customize their pictures and videos through the use of text, filters, sounds, and a drawing tool. What makes this mobile application (app) unique is that users send and receive “self-destructing” messages (each “snap” disappears in 10 seconds or less!) in the form of still photos and videos. While the content is temporary, with a little research and experimentation, a publisher or author can easily integrate Snapchat into their marketing strategy while growing their audience and selling more books.

If you’re interested in this unique application, here are 5 tips to integrate Snapchat into your book marketing efforts:

1. Understand Your Audience

According to a study from Comscore, Snapchat boasts a higher concentration – up to 75% – of millennial users than any other social media platform. Within these users, approximately 45% are people aged between 18-25. Anyone who is interested in leveraging Snapchat should begin by considering if their publications are right for this demographic.

2. Use Other Social Media Channels to Grow Your Followers

Once you determine that Snapchat is right for you, leverage other social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter to grow your following. Not only will this strategy help to determine if your followers are on Snapchat, it will also help you build an initial audience for your first few snaps.

3. Do Not Recycle Content

It’s always tempting to recycle content on your social media channels to save time. However, Snapchat is a “real time” and “in the moment” social media platform so your followers will expect different updates than Facebook and Twitter. Plus, you do not want to inundate your followers with the same information over and over again.

4. Be Creative with Your Snaps

Snapchat is unique in that the content you post/release to your followers is temporary rather than a permanent fixture in your feed or on your timeline. This fact means that there is already a sense of urgency built into your snaps. One way a publisher could take advantage of this urgency would be to offer promotions that require followers to take multiple screenshots to compose a code. Once your followers have saved the full code, they can redeem it on your website to save money on new and recent titles. Most of all, don’t forget to have fun with Snapchat – it’s not meant to be a chore.

5. Use the “My Story” Feature

Snapchat’s “My Story” feature allows users to add multiple snaps to that section of their profile. Each “story” is accessible to your followers or to everyone who uses Snapchat for 24 hours. By creating a story, you can create a narrative structure (i.e. reading the first page of a book) to your snaps should you choose to do so.