06 Aug Snapinar: Behind the Scenes of our Webinar on Snapchat
Earlier this week, we hosted the first ever “Snapinar.” Like a webinar, but on Snapchat. And of course, the topic for the first ever Snapinar should be about Snapchat!
When social media marketing is all you do, you learn a lot in the space. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. And because we’re givers, we constantly seek out ways to share what we know about the platforms and trends with you all and our clients. At the start of July, we knew we had more to share on the Millennial-based phenomenon that is Snapchat. We decided the most appropriate way to share what we knew about the channel was to tell the story in its native “Story” form. And, a Snapinar was born.
If you missed it, have no fear. We saved it, just for you:
[youtube id=”ixq3MALMZto” width=”600″ height=”350″]
Obviously, a lot of the content featured speaks for itself. We also had several people ask how difficult it is to run a Snapinar. I thought I’d address those questions here, in case you have a topic you feel would be perfect for a Snapinar.
Your Snapchat presence means nearly nothing if you don’t promote it.
Quite a few brands have Snapchat profiles that they work hard to update. However, they rarely talk 
about them on their other social channels. They don’t have an easily scannable Snapcode (AKA BooRcode) on their website or social profiles. Snapchat profiles exist in the ether unless you know the exact brand handle or (better) have the Snapcode to scan. Prior to the Snapinar, we asked our employees to share the Snapcode and the Snapinar announcements with their networks and we also promoted it heavily on our own social channels. Everytime we pushed that content out, we saw huge spikes in Snapchat friends/followers. Your best friends and best customers are likely on Snapchat. They probably just don’t know how to find you there. Make sure you help them to do so. Additionally, an event or promotion held on Snapchat that you can easily promote will grow your channel and help your content to become more visible.
Snapchat Stories are a different kind of multimedia content than you’re used to.
When we talked about how we could execute a Snapinar, we knew we had to keep the content native to the platform. Simply talking to the camera and showing you statistics in a PowerPoint-like format [read: traditional webinar] wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, we tried to add some comedic relief and personality to the content and the story. It also means imperfection. As someone with a media production/video background, it’s difficult to become accustomed to the low-production value of the content on this channel. However, if your content is too polished, it’s going to feel fake and staged on this network. For a brand attempting to manage a Snapchat profile, these points are key in getting viewers to come back and repeatedly watch your Snap Stories. Don’t strive for perfection. Strive for fun and engaging.
Snapchat Stories require planning.
We had a team of about 10 that contributed and spent time storyboarding the content we shared. We obviously know the platform and the data, but we spent time deciding a long list of variables. You could use this as a checklist:
- The most important facts to share
- How long each item would appear
- What would be written in Snapchat-esk doodles vs.when we would use the text features
- What props would be needed and how they would be shot
- Which scenes would be image and which would be video
- What would appear in other visuals and the most interesting composition for those
- Who would be enlisted as top-tier-talent
- How long the Snapinar would be based on channel standards.
- Image composition that allows for text
The real-time nature of the content also adds to the need for planning. Many brands that use Snapchat use it to cover live events, and that content can be easily added to a Snap Story in real time with little to no planning. But if you’re Snap Story is meant to be more cohesive and planned, things like image composition, backgrounds with color blocks that can easily be written on, and content dividers need to be carefully planned out.
We had anticipated questions, but received none
With the two-way nature of the platform, we expected to receive questions via the platform and via Twitter, being that we had promoted it there. We were prepared to answer them as add-ons to our Snap Story throughout the day. However, we didn’t receive any questions that hadn’t already been featured in the Snapinar. Hopefully this means people got a lot out of the Snapinar and it answered any questions you may have had! (And if not, feel free to comment below and I’ll respond here). If you’re a brand leveraging this platform, engaging in real-time with users on the platform should be an integral part of your strategy. This two-way communication with top brand promoters should help to prove out the value of the network in the early days when impressions may be limited.
We hope you enjoyed the Snapinar!
