Snapchat, or Snap as it is now known, may not be the first name on every marketer’s lips when they think influencer marketing. But despite the obvious limitations of a network built around temporary content shared amongst close connections, it offers significant campaign potential.

Let’s look at the details.

Snapchat for influencer marketing — The details

If you’ve never used Snapchat for influencer marketing, or indeed anything at all, take a look at our guide to the platform . If that’s too much effort, here’s a brief summary:

Snapchat has introduced a number of functions and policies to help influencers thrive and foster better relationships between prominent users and brands. The most significant are:

Stories

Widely seen as the ace up Snapchat’s sleeve— although latterly copied by both Facebook and Instagram— Stories revolutionised the network. Rather than individual ‘snaps’ lasting for just a few seconds, users can batch them together to create a narrative, which stays live for 24-hours.

Verified accounts

As of 2017, Snapchat rolled out Verified status to all its most popular users. Previously reserved for celebrities, this allowed content from high-follower accounts to be discovered by anyone.

Preferred partners

2018 saw a huge push by Snapchat to monetise its influencer potential. Creators— those producing the most popular content— are labelled preferred partners. Brands can request their services directly through SnapHQ rather than tracking them down individually.

Analytics

Verified influencers now have access to audience insights, using the same categories as those given to brands advertising on Snapchat. In short, the evidence they need to prove their true value to companies.

 

How brands have used Snapchat for influencer marketing

Brands have traditionally taken two routes to work with influencers on Snapchat:

*Brands encouraging celebrities to post about their products

*Brands allowing celebrities to ‘take over’ their in-house Snapchat accounts for 24-hours. One example being Sour Patch Kids, which earned 120,000 new followers by handing the reins to influencer Paul Logan for a day.

Problems

All this sounds rosy, but influencers and creators have been moving away from Snapchat.

‘Shonduras’, AKA Shaun McBride, claimed 1.5million followers last year, and was charging $30,000 for every video with a brand mention. In an interview with AdAge he made his feelings pretty clear:

“They suck… They always sucked. They’ve never been nice to us.”

Key issues include a lack of advertising revenue share for content creators— which the likes of YouTube offer. Not to mention accusations of creator and influencer ideas being ‘stolen’ by the network. Annual Creator Summits have been labelled workshops for the network to fix issues, rather than make progress using input from valuable voices. Meanwhile, those preferred partnerships have been slow to materialise.

 

Game over?

Well, not quite. Snapchat remains the preferred network for 14-24 year olds. A demographic whose spending power will increase exponentially in the near future.

A recent update to its Android app is believed to have stabilised falling user numbers. Share prices are up 15% as a result. And the first Partner Summit was held in April 2019, where an array of new tools aimed at third parties, businesses, creators and influencers were discussed. Time will tell if these will be enough.