SnapChat Is Not A Place For Social Work
Last year I started search for fun ways to use visuals to promote my blog and part time training I do. I really enjoyed Vine and did some creative things attaching it to some blog posts (and also made fun of then President Elect Trump a bit). You can find my dusty collection of Vines here.
Then enter Snapchat… I was all-in. I loved my first two weeks on Snap. It was a fun way to interact and create content. After hitting it Snapchat hard for about 4 months it started to fade. The return on investment of time to promote my blog and training gigs was not worth it. I thought, maybe I am not doing this right? I read a lot of articles by some of the best on there. I had this illusion that I was going to the most famous social worker on Snapchat. Could there be such a thing? Turns out… not so much.
I found it more and more time consuming to build a following, create content, share it on my other outlets, and finding most were following me just to offer me their adult internet services. I was thinking about playing with Instagram for promotion but came across to a good post on here that made me solidify this strategy…
I do find the user experience on Snapchat to be very closed and I am not able to promote things very easily. I enjoy using screen shots of things and you can’t do that on Snap. I found creating short videos and pushing them to my other outlets to grow my Snap following was cumbersome and the videos was grainy.
After two weeks of instagram, I found I have reached more people than I did in my four months of pushing on Snapchat. That is not to say Snapchat is not for you or your brand. I just found it was not great for my blogging audience. The portability between Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is ten times more handy for promotion than the closed system on Snap.
I also like how I can easily separate my personal from professional account on Instagram. This is important when creating content about health and mental health. Also attempting to not annoy my friends with social work and healthcare content. I have not made a huge push on Instagram but I am much more pleased with the UX.
Quick visual content is still king and Snap is a great place for that. I still think Snapchat can be wonderful for nonprofits and agencies that work with teens and young adults. It can build a fun sense of community. I also love it for those that do marketing. If you are on Snapchat, I recommend you follow both Sarah Stahl and Kristy Gillentine. As they are filled with great tips and creative ways to use Snap. If you create art and/or music, Snapchat is great way to interact with your audience. Certainly not anti-snap and found this to be a thought provoking read…
Maybe I gave up on it too early? Maybe I can still carve out a niche with it? I have been asking this question for months. But finally decided to give up. My audience does not seems to be spending time there. Or if they are they probably don’t want to hear about social work, mental health, and technology. For such I niche I want to attempt to promote it on a more “open system”. At least for now, Instagram will be the place I will be creating and sharing visual content…
…You can find me there at @STUCKONSW …
