Although Snapchat was a pioneer in the formatting of photos and short videos which disappear after a few seconds, Instagram Stories is currently beating them today.
Instagram Stories has only been on the market for eight months, and it already has more users than Snapchat. There are 200 million daily active users on Instagram Stories vs 160 million Snapchat users active in this social network every day.
The firm Delmondo conducted a study from July 2016 through November 2016 stating that Snapchat lost 40% of unique viewers during that period. This increase is attributed to the release of Instagram Stories. We at Seo Brand believe that this migration is due to the following reasons.
1. Influencer Discovery
For marketers and social media influencers, Instagram is more attractive to invest their efforts. This is because Instagram has more than 700 million monthly active users. Snapchat growth over time is instead slowing down.
Have you ever tried finding new users on Snapchat? It’s actually much harder than finding someone on Instagram. Snapchat is less intuitive and does not utilize resources such as hashtags. Instagram, however, offers suggestions on who to follow based on your current likes and followers. It’s a great discovery tool to find new influencers. The Snapchat Discover page works for accounts you are already following, but does not encourage organic growth.
2. Metrics and Insights
Instagram provides users with all of the important information needed for campaigns and growth. Here are just a few of the metrics we encourage you to track for Instagram:
- Engagement (comments and likes)
- Followers over time
- Referral traffic, or website traffic
- Branded hashtags
- Reach
On the other hand, Snapchat does not give users any way of ranking influencers. Nobody knows how many people follow an account. While you can view minimum metric such as unique views, the number of stories viewed, and the number of screenshots taken, this may not be enough information to build a complete social media campaign.
3. The Facebook Connection
If you want your brand to have a social media presence, you must have a healthy marketing strategy on Facebook. Instagram seamlessly allows you to post to both social networks at once, saving you time and energy.
Snapchat and Facebook are not as easily compatible. Facebook once attempted to purchase the social network and was turned down. Since then, Facebook decided to add Snapchat-like features to their platform. This has negatively affected Snapchat’s growth in recent years.
4. Tagging and Link Sharing
Snapchat does have linking capabilities for advertisers. However, the average user who does not pay for advertising cannot use links.
This is one of the biggest complaints of influencers, because they are unable to post links to other social networks, websites, or partnership pages. This slows and in some cases, stops their social media growth, forcing them to use other channels of influence such as Instagram.
5. Content Options
All the content on Snapchat must be captured in the moment with your smartphone. You have the possibility of uploading videos or images from your phone’s personal gallery, but it will appear with a large white border around it. This can interfere with the quality of the image.
On Instagram, users can record their videos or take their pictures, and then edit them in any software they choose before uploading the content to the social network. This often makes the image more appealing to their followers.
Using the Right Platform For Your Company
So which social media channels can increase the bottom line for your company? Every business is unique, and so is every audience, so you must tailor your choices to what will work for you.
Thankfully, SEO Brand’s trusted social media team is here to help. We will sit with you and help you decide which social media platforms are best for you and why. Talk to one of our team members for your social evaluation today!
About The Author
Born and raised in Venezuela, Diego Barboza decided to move to the U.S. to pursue his Master’s Degree in International Business and Marketing. Having more than 5 years of experience in business and marketing and a natural ability with computers, he decided to specialize in digital marketing. In his free time, he enjoys reading, travelling, and going to the movies.
