How to Build a Following on Snapchat

Snapchat remains one of the most important social media platforms to promote your brand on. This is something that many marketers and businesses don’t realize however and often it is overlooked as a channel. There are several reasons for that but one of the biggest reasons is that it’s not so obvious how Snapchat marketing actually works.

If you look at Facebook, this is incredibly easy to understand right away. Facebook marketing involves posting things to your Facebook wall, which in turn will be seen by all your followers. And if some of those followers should like your content or share it, then it will also be seen by their connections on Facebook and thus your following will grow.

The problem with Snapchat is that it doesn’t have a wall or a homefeed and there is no way for people to discover you if they’ve never heard of your brand before. So how can you go about growing your following? And what use is there in posting?

Growing on Snapchat – The Answer

Of course this is a very short-sighted view. Suffice to say that Snapchat would not be the global phenomenon that it undoubtedly is today if it didn’t have any means for users and brands to increase their audience.

So what do you need to do? The answer is simple: you promote your Snapchat on other platforms and that way build interest for people to actively follow you.

And the simplest way to do that is to download some of the content you are creating for the social tool and then to share that elsewhere – on Facebook for instance, or on Google Plus. The idea then is that people see this, think it looks great and thereby realize what they’re missing and are motivated to find out more.

This is something that Arnold Schwarzenegger does very well. He updates his Snapchat regularly and that way manages to maintain a very close relationship with his audience on the channel. His fans get to come with him to visit the locations where he might be shooting or promoting his latest movies and they get to see humorous videos of him doing his best quotes.

Every now and then he simply posts this to his Facebook following with the message ‘follow me on Snapchat’. Each time he does this, he’ll undoubtedly get a ton more followers on Snapchat.

This same method works on every single other social media platform and it will likewise work if you promote your Snapchat on YouTube or through your blog directly.

Why Snapchat is Worth the Promotion

The question you might now be asking is: why is Snapchat worth the promotion?

After all, if you need to promote to followers you’ve already acquired, why get them on Snapchat? Why not promote to them through the platform you already have?

The answer is simple: Snapchat has some of the highest engagement in the industry. If you post a story on Snapchat then you can expect 90% of your followers to open it – which is huge.