Launched in 2011, Snapchat is a social media platform used to send videos and pictures, both of which will self destruct after a few seconds of a person viewing them. Although it’s main users are teens and young adults,  it is becoming increasingly popular with the older generation and brands. Most notably the Louis Vuitton Roman exhibit with a Snapchat story.

Not a new app, but the one that marketers and business have not got their head around yet ( so simple to use that it actually becomes complicated), therefore less competition. The lack of competition on Snapchat means that your business has a great opportunity to shine .Unlike other social networks, it doesn’t matter when you post content on Snapchat. Your snaps will never be buried in a busy timeline; they stay unopened until your followers have time to view them. After snaps are opened, they’re available for only 1 to 10 seconds.

Snapchat Principles Snaps disappear so quickly, so you may be wondering if it is worth the effort as a marketing tool. If you think about it, most social content is viewed right after it’s posted. Content tends to last longer on platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, but it’s far more common for social posts to have a short shelf life. Snapchat makes this short shelf life an integral part of the platform. Because snaps vanish after one viewing, you have users’ undivided attention. In this way, disappearing content is actually positive for marketers. Short & sweet. With a Snapchat story you can combine a series of Snaps together to create a longer piece of content. The advantage of stories is that your followers can view them as many times as they want within 24 hours. Let’s say you have an event coming up. On another platform like Facebook or Instagram, you might post photos of your team together or make a short video clip of what happens behind the scenes. However, you could make a Snapchat story of all of the brief moments that occur throughout the day—like the seconds before the event to the present. This builds up anticipation for an event or product release and can help spread the word organically.

Campaigns The 15 best Snapchat campaigns of 2015 shows exactly how to put together a campaign on snapchat and this video below gives a helpful tutorial of how to use the features.