by I’m sure you’ve seen an example of what Digiday is talking about here, how many media brands have swapped their Twitter avatars out to be Snapcodes to their Snapchat profile. The idea here is that since Snapchat profiles don’t have a link you can easily share on other networks where, presumably, you have an already substantial audience.
The “make your snapcode your Twitter or Facebook avatar” is an inventive solution, I’ll give people that. But it does raise the question of how to best cross-promote your network presences.
In general I’ve found fans react poorly to promoting an off-network profile, such as promoting a Twitter account on Facebook. Big moments such as the launch of a new channel tend to be the exception to that rule. So if you’re launching a new Twitter profile and you want to tell your Facebook fanbase about it that’s more or less fine. But continued calls to follow a Facebook account on Twitter or other repeated promotions come off a lot more poorly. On-domain is the best option for promoting the wide range of networks. There you can link to all the different profiles without it coming off as weird or out of context.
So why is this Snapchat work-around proving so successful that more and more media companies are both adopting it and constantly prodding their Twitter followers to find them on Snapchat without the sort of blowback that usually accompanies this kind of thing?
It comes down to, I think, that Snapchat is just seen as a wholly different beast. It’s not just another social network like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, so the audience sees it as a completely different and unique value proposition, not something that’s going to just be a different platform with similar content. There’s also that Snapchat is, quite simply, still a growing network. So there’s a very real possibility that you just didn’t know X publication had a Snapchat profile, meaning you need these cross-networks promotions for simple awareness.
The other factor is there seems to be general acceptance that this is necessary, largely because sharing from friends isn’t possible. There’s not Retweet or Share function on Snapchat that pushes cool content you’ve seen from a publication into your feed which is then seen by friends. Growth and awareness depend on this sort of tactic.
There was a study recently – I of course didn’t save it and can’t find it right now – that showed young people were disappointed upon finding that, after a couple years of using Snapchat almost exclusively, they had nothing to show for their efforts. There was no profile where they could look back and see what they’ve posted and they couldn’t go back through their friends’ profiles to relive old moments. The ephemeral nature of the app had left them with nothing tangible. Which is the, admittedly, the basic premise of Snapchat.
It may be that Snapchat pivots in the near future to provide profile URLs. My guess is that would be driven by business concerns as advertisers or media partners in its Discover section look for something that they can point back to. Or it could remain forever a network that prizes evaporating content. Only time will tell on that front. For now we’ll just have to get used to seeing Twitter and Facebook avatars that are less about branding and more about promotion.
