If Jim Jordan falls short, a stopgap might be Patrick McHenry.
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Snapchat is an invaluable tool for growing just about any business or personal brand. To use it well, you need to get more Snapchat friends.
While Instagram is awesome for showcasing products and edited “best versions,” Snapchat kills it at being completely natural.
It doesn’t hurt that 293 million people are active on that platform every single day.
Snapchat users spend an average of 30+ minutes on the app daily, opening it more than 25 times in a single day.
That level of engagement is almost unheard of.
The social platform may take a bunch of heat from critics who compare it to Instagram’s astonishing 1 billion users, but they’re dead wrong.
While the two platforms may be similar, they can be used in dramatically different ways.
Snapchat isn’t Instagram, and Instagram isn’t Snapchat.
Here’s how to leverage Snapchat for business and personal branding to get your first 1,000 followers in 30 days.
The first step in gaining easy followers on Snapchat is leveraging your existing contacts and connections.
These will be the easiest followers to get because they know you and are likely to follow you right back.
Since Snapchat connects to your phone, you can easily allow it to access your contacts and social media platforms.
That means you can instantly add selected contacts or Facebook friends with just a few clicks.
When starting up your Snapchat, head to your profile and click on the “Add Friends” button:
From here, select the “Contacts” menu and click “Find Friends” to allow Snapchat access to your contacts and social profiles.
Then navigate back to “Add Friends.” In this section, Snapchat will have a long, curated list of everyone you can add with one tap.
Now just sit back, relax and wait for your friends and family to follow you back.
With this simple move, you should be able to secure a decent amount of followers to get the ball rolling.
Next, you can use the existing followers you have on any other social platforms to spread awareness of your new Snapchat profile.
One of my favorite examples of this technique being perfected is from Gary Vaynerchuk. On his Twitter, he’s amassed over 1.6 million followers.
While that amount of followers won’t be the case for everyone, other social platforms where you have a following are a great place to find Snapchat followers.
Why? Because people don’t just use one social platform. They use multiple. In fact, the average person has more than 8 social media accounts.
Chances are, your followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram use Snapchat. Maybe not all of them, but some of them surely do.
To take advantage of this, Gary Vee promotes his Snapchat account using his unique QR code and direct instructions:
With Snapchat, you can generate a unique QR code that is shareable to anyone you send it to.
This makes it extremely easy for users to follow you. All they have to do is save the image, open Snapchat and import the picture.
To find your own Snapchat QR code, head to your profile on the mobile app and click on your profile name and image:
This will bring up a menu of three choices:
First, you can either share your Snapcode directly from your profile via email, text, or social media.
I recommend that you simply save your Snapcode to your camera roll.
Let me explain why:
If users are newer to Snapchat, they might not know how to add you via the QR code function.
That’s why Gary Vee used instructions on his Twitter post about Snapchat:
To make the process easy and ensuring he gets the maximum carry-over of followers from each social platform that he shared the graphic on.
So for this step, select “Save Snapcode to Camera Roll.”
One of my favorite tools for creating fast graphics is Canva. Taking that newly created Snapcode from your camera roll, you can import it directly into Canva and create a graphic for social media.
First, fire up Canva and select the generic “Social Graphic” template.
In the image editor, head to the “Uploads” section and upload the Snapcode that you downloaded previously:
You can then choose from pre-made Canva templates for a design that fits your branding.
If you don’t want a pre-made template, you can always edit your own using more uploaded content or background colors.
In just a few minutes of editing and tweaking, I created this simple graphic to post on social channels that will drive tons of easy follows:
Be sure to include simple instructions to reduce any potential friction by adding you.
Now take your graphic and spread it on your most active social channels.
Once you’ve done that, you can move onto your email list as a secondary way to drive social follows.
The key here is to provide incentives to following your Snapchat. You have to make it worthwhile for users.
If you are focusing on personal branding, can you offer them free content or a coupon for your online course?
If you sell products, can you offer them a small discount?
Let’s recap your steps to get you tons of followers fast:
Snapchat is a highly engaged platform. People spend a ton of time on the app daily. While that’s a great opportunity to capture attention, it also poses some serious challenges:
Luckily, Snapchat has a few tools up its sleeves with serious potential for crafting viral content, even if your brand isn’t well-known.
Bitmoji is a key addition to Snapchat that has become a cornerstone of content. It allows you to customize a virtual avatar that looks exactly like you.
It can be used on your Snapcode, in actual snaps and photos, and even messaging across Snapchat or other social platforms.
Its ease of use with Snapchat makes it widely popular. Users are able to simply take a selfie and Bitmoji instantly builds a potential avatar for them:
Once in the app, you can edit everything from your hair color and style to clothing and even eye color:
The real big win with Bitmoji comes in the form of creating more dynamic content on Snapchat.
For example, you can easily integrate Bitmoji shots into any photo you take:
You can use the search bar to find relevant Bitmoji scenarios. Everything from specific foods to events and keywords will bring up new Bitmojis.
Setting up Bitmoji is extremely easy and can only improve and aid in your content creation.
To get started, download the application on your phone and connect the two.
Bitmoji will prompt you to connect to Snapchat. Begin editing your avatar and it will quickly populate to your Snapchat profile, giving you new avatars to use in any photo you send to friends, followers, and your story.
Using BitMoji can also aid in the use of augmented reality features on Snapchat. And the AR features of Snapchat are already proving to be viral.
You might remember seeing the dancing hot dog meme that blew up the Internet in 2017:
That originated using Snapchat’s AR developing tools.
That single hotdog AR character was shared more than 1.5 billion times in 2017.
It’s safe to say that augmented reality features are making the content much more engaging.
So, how do you get started?
It’s easy. On your Snapchat, head over to take a new Snap, but click on the smiley face button next to your camera button:
This will instantly bring up a scrollable menu of augmented reality features that you can use for any photo:
Use these new and constantly updating AR features to create the most engaging, funny, viral content you can.
Everybody loves a good giveaway.
I mean, who doesn’t like getting free things?
It’s no secret that giveaways can have a huge impact on driving sales, growing your followers, and increasing your email list.
Don’t believe me? Let me give you a few examples.
Brian Harris of VideoFruit ran a contest in an attempt to increase his own email list for sales. Using a giveaway plugin, he grew his list by 2,200 subscribers in just seven days.
Josh Earl of SublimeTextTips grew his email list by 187,000. He started with a mere 5,500 subscribers, growing it by 3,400 percent.
Now I know what you must be thinking:
Did he offer to give away a new car?? A new house?
Not even close. The total prize value of his giveaway was less than $100.
You don’t have to give away your life savings or a dream house to benefit from a giveaway.
Simply providing value to your target audience can result in tons of engagement.
GrubHub recently conducted a Snapchat giveaway/competition, giving away a $50 gift card to the winners:
Nearly 33 percent of their followers on Snapchat participated in the competition. But not only did existing customers benefit, tons of new traffic flooded in.
They grew their already huge following by 20 percent from the giveaway.
Taco Bell has followed suit, creating small trivia games in which followers and new users can win gift cards:
The proof is in: Snapchat giveaways can result in big success when it comes to pleasing your current follower base and even growing it by reaching new interested users.
Consider creating a giveaway directly on Snapchat and promoting it on other social channels.
You can even partner up with other popular influencers in your niche to co-promote the giveaway.
Some of my favorite Snapchat giveaways have followed these themes and ideas:
Try putting those to the test on your Snapchat to see which generates the best ROI.
Another technique that I’ve used before with great success is using a third-party source to host your giveaway.
Using Gleam, you can ensure that all entries to your giveaway follow your Snapchat account.
Gleam works with hundreds of account integrations from social to blogging and your website.
Through intense verification methods, they confirm users follow your directions.
Getting Snapchat followers is incredibly easy using Gleam. You can promote the link on outside platforms to reach wider audiences.
Meaning you don’t need to host the giveaway or contest only on Snapchat. With this method, you increase your chance of reaching a broad audience rather than just your current Snapchat following.
Plus, making an account with Gleam is free.
Once you sign up, you can get a giveaway live in just minutes. When it goves live, you have a unique link that you can share with anyone:
Using a multi-entry system, Gleam collects all of the data and automatically chooses a winner for your giveaway.
It takes out all of the stress of managing typical giveaways that can get out of hand fast.
Be sure to offer prizes directly related to your target audience. You don’t want to bring in thousands of followers that don’t like what you post on a daily basis.
For example, if you run a blog about jewelry, give away a piece of your jewelry. Provide value that attracts the audience you need.
Getting followers and keeping them takes more than giveaways. It also requires great content to keep people entertained and following.
Snapchat organizes your feed based on who they think you are most interested in. So, users who watch your stories are more likely to see your content.
This provides an excellent opportunity to capitalize on more followers. All you have to do is focus on creating the best content you can.
One of my favorite examples of content that keeps users engaged and coming back for more was from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics on Snapchat:
Their Snapchat news story used a listicle style post to drive tons of clicks with 14 Secrets Olympians Won’t Tell You.
When you scroll on each page, you get to see one of the 14 different secrets:
Clicking on the right-hand side of each page brings users to the next secret, keeping them on the edge of their seats waiting for more.
One of my favorite aspects of the story was how it was leveraged to drive website traffic using a simple call to action:
With Snapchat’s swiping capabilities, you can link full articles from each slide.
Meaning you can tease content and stories on your Snapchat, but ultimately use those social visits for sales or leads on your site.
If you are struggling to find ways to create engaging stories like this on Snapchat, try thinking of them as a blog post.
You can even repurpose your blog content into new Snapchat stories.
For example, this recent post I wrote on Excel hacks could easily be broken down into seven different slides for my Snapchat story:
Take a look at any recent blog posts or pieces of content you’ve created.
Analyze them to see how you can split them into different slides for a Snapchat story. If you want to cover new topics, let Google do the work for you.
Searching for almost any topic on Google will give you multiple sub-topics to cover. For example, take a look at this search I did regarding the Olympics:
Notice the “People also ask” box? It gives me four topics instantly that I can use for a Snapchat story.
Each slide can cover a different question, giving you tons of content ideas to work with.
You can bring up these topics with most Google searches. Cover topics that you know a lot about, or use them as an opportunity to research and share the news with your fans.
Create story-driven content that keeps people engaged and your Snapchat friends coming back for more.
When all else fails, competitor research should be your go-to technique for content ideas.
You can see what works and what doesn’t without taking the risk yourself.
Instead of spending hours on content creation that doesn’t drive follows, search existing popular content.
The best place to gather more information on content ideas is from the Discover page on Snapchat:
While some of the content on the Discover page contains paid placements, it still gives you an idea of what content succeeds.
Look for stories on the Snapchat Discover page that are labeled “Popular Story.” These are unpaid, organic posts that are gaining traction.
Mimic their style, tone, and ideas with your own spin.
Users can follow your account by scanning your QR code, searching for your username, or searching by phone number.
Follow others, put your QR code in more places (like your business card), create engaging stories, and link to your profile often in content.
You can sponsor filters, create sponsored story ads, and use links in your stories to advertise your products.
You can now display your number of followers on your public profile, according to Search Engine Journal. Just select to display it in your settings.
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Snapchat’s platform has amazing engagement. People log in nearly thirty times each day.
This opens the door for capturing tons of new followers who love using the application.
But getting your first 1,000 Snapchat followers isn’t easy. Following someone on Snapchat is harder than platforms like Instagram or Twitter.
To combat this, share your QR code on social media platforms to spread it like wildfire. Send it to your email list and provide incentives for people to follow you, like a five or ten-percent discount or free content.
Start sharing viral content using BitMoji and augmented reality features. These additions to Snapchat are proven to increase engagement.
Run interactive Snapchat giveaways directly on the platform, or use third-party services to drive follows on your most popular platforms.
Then create engaging stories like the Olympics so you can keep people coming back for more. If all else fails, search for content ideas on the Discover page to boost your traffic.
Snapchat isn’t dead. It’s alive, and the user base is active. Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to 1,000 followers in just a month, growing your brand awareness and credibility in the process.
How do you plan to use Snapchat to gain more followers and build your brand?
The new year is right around the corner. And I know you are already prepared because you read this blog and tons of other marketing blogs, right?
But here is the thing: I also read most of the popular marketing blogs, follow all of the marketing YouTube channels, and listen to the same podcasts you do.
And I’ve noticed that very few people are talking about what’s really going to happen in 2020.
Sure, they will tell you things like voice search is going to account for over 50% of the search queries next year but all of that stuff has already been talked about.
And there are actually more interesting trends that will
affect your marketing that no one is really talking about.
So, what are these trends? What’s going to happen in 2020?
Alright, here goes…
We all love Google Analytics.
Heck, I love it so much I log in at least 3 or 4 times a day. And here is the kicker: I get so much traffic that my Google Analytics only updates once a day.
I really need to break that habit but that’s for another day.
You are probably wondering, what’s wrong with Google Analytics?
There actually isn’t much wrong with it. It’s a great tool,
especially considering that it’s free.
But here is the thing… marketing has been changing. New channels are being constantly introduced, such as voice search.
And transactions no longer are as simple as someone coming and buying from you and that’s it.
These days there are things like upsells, down sells, repeat purchases, and even checkout bumps. On top of that, there are so many different ways you can generate revenue for your online business, such as partnerships, affiliate marketing, and even webinars.
This has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that tie into their database better, such as Amplitude. Or better yet, you are seeing a big push into business intelligence.
A central place where you can tie in all of your data and make better-informed decisions so you can optimize for your lifetime value instead of your short-term income.
In 2020, you will see more companies adopting business intelligence solutions… from paid ones to free ones like Google Data Studio.
If you haven’t checked out Data Studio, you’ll want to start now because it is easy to pass in all of your business and marketing data into one place. For example, you can pass in more granular data from your Facebook ad campaigns into Data Studio while that would be a bit difficult to do with Google Analytics.
According to ComScore, over 50% of the
searches in 2020 will be from voice search. But that’s not really a new
trend… everyone has been talking about that for years.
So, what’s the big deal?
Optimizing for voice search is a great way to get your brand
out more, but how is that going to convert into sales?
I haven’t seen too many solutions so far when it comes to
capitalizing on your voice search traffic, but so far there is Jetson.ai.
If you aren’t familiar with Jetson.ai, it makes it so people can buy from your site using voice search. It doesn’t matter if it is Alexa or Google Home, they work with most of the popular devices.
What’s cool about Jetson.ai is that it can learn from each customer and customize the interactions.
For example, if I keep ordering the same toothpaste from a specific store using voice search, Jetson.ai keeps track of that so you can easily keep ordering the same product over and over again with little to no friction.
Heck, it’s easier than logging into your computer or pulling
out your phone to make a purchase.
Email, it’s something we all use in the corporate world.
But here is something interesting when it comes to marketing
emails… I’m in a group with a bit over 109 email marketers across different
industries in different parts of the world.
And can you guess what we are all noticing?
Our open rates are staying roughly the same and that’s
largely because we all know how to clean and optimizing for deliverability.
But our click rates are going down.
So far as a group we have seen our click rates drop by
9.4% in 2019.
That’s crazy considering as a group we have over 146 million email addresses.
Now does this mean email is dead?
Of course not!!!
Email is here to stay and will be here for a very long time.
But what companies will have to do in 2020 is to leverage more communication channels.
Chatbots will take off drastically. Not necessarily the Intercom’s or Drift’s of the world but more so the solutions like ManyChat and MobileMonkey.
ManyChat and MobileMonkey leverage Facebook Messenger and as they connect it with Instagram and WhatsApp it will get even more popular.
In addition to chatbots, you’ll see more people leveraging
tools that allow push notifications like Subscribers.
It’s so powerful, here is the impact I’ve been able to
generate from push notifications so far using Subscribers.
You can wait till next year to lever chatbots and push
notifications, but I’d recommend you start sooner than later. 😉
You’ve probably heard the word “moat” before. If you
haven’t, just think about water around a castle.
Back in the day, they had water all around the castle and
they used a drawbridge to get in and out of the castle, so it would protect
them from invaders.
With your business, you may have a moat. It could be a feature, your cost structure, a technological advantage, or even a marketing advantage.
Over the years, moats in the online world have slowly been disappearing.
It’s easy for anyone to copy these days. So, what’s separating you from your competition?
Something could work right now, but it won’t last forever…
But do you know what will still be a strong moat in 2020 and
even a stronger one in the future?
It’s branding.
People buy Jordan shoes because they love Michael Jordan.
His brand is stronger than ever even though he hasn’t played in the NBA for
roughly 16 years.
His shoes are so popular, it’s helped him boost his net worth to over a billion dollars. Plus owning a basketball team doesn’t hurt either. 😉
But what’s interesting is he’s made more money after
retirement than he did as a basketball player.
And it’s not just Jordan who built a strong brand… so
have the Kardashians.
Kylie launched a billion-dollar company according to Forbes and it was all because of her personal brand. Her cosmetic company isn’t doing anything revolutionary. She just has a strong brand… and good for her for monetizing her brand.
The same goes for companies like Nike, Ferrari, Tesla, American Express… and the list goes on and on.
It’s why companies are spending over 10
billion dollars a year on influencer marketing.
Just look at my agency NP Digital. It’s literally one of the fastest-growing ad agencies out there. And when I look at all of my competitors’ numbers, we are growing at a much faster pace because of my brand.
Yes, we have a great team, but again, that really isn’t a moat as a lot of agencies have great teams. It’s my brand that gave us a really fast kick start and continues to hopefully push us up.
You’ll want to build a brand in 2020. Whether it is personal
or corporate, it’s the best moat you can build in marketing. Plus, it will help
you with Google’s EAT.
When I first started off as an entrepreneur, I turned to SEO because I couldn’t afford the big ad budgets as my competitors.
Heck, I couldn’t even afford to run any paid ads.
Over the years, the playing field has become more level.
There are credit card companies like Brex that make it easier for startups to
get approved for larger limits and you may not have to pay them back right
away.
There are financing companies that will give you cash to
spend on marketing, so non-venture funded companies can more easily compete.
There are even companies like Lighter Capital that will give you loans without all of the headaches based on your existing revenue.
And to top it off, software solutions are now starting to integrate AI to give better recommendations. From Clickflow and RankScience to Distilled ODN… everyone is trying to use AI to make SEO and other forms of marketing.
Heck, BrightEdge can even automate your SEO (or at least a large portion of it). According to them, their automated SEO solution increases page views per visit by 60% as well as provides 21% more keywords on page one.
Keep in mind their clients are really big (their software starts in the thousands of dollars per month) so they would probably see better results than most companies, but still, you will start seeing many more software companies leverage AI.
Even with Ubersuggest, I’m working on creating AI that does the SEO for you so you no longer have to spend endless hours while, at the same time, saving you thousands of dollars.
In other words, the marketing playing field is getting more
even. And if you want to do well, you are going to have to leverage AI and
automation.
If everyone else is using it and you aren’t, you are going to get crushed because it will make changes faster and more accurately than a human. Again, it’s the only option you’ll have if you want to continually compete.
But don’t worry, there will be affordable/free solutions that exist, it’s just a matter of time. 😉
If everyone is leveraging the same AI marketing technology, how can you beat your competitors?
Well, it will come down to everything else… price, customer
service, upselling, operations, sales… All of the small stuff is what’s going
to help you win.
A lot of businesses were built off of one marketing channel.
Dropbox grew through referral marketing. Invite more
friends, get more free space.
Facebook was built off your email address book. Facebook used to tap into it and invite all of your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf.
Companies like Quora and Yelp were built off of SEO. All of those rankings really help drive their businesses.
But you no longer can build a business through just one
marketing channel. Good channels now get saturated extremely fast.
Even if they work and cause explosive growth, it will only last for a short while before your competitors jump on board and make it harder.
Marketing is now heading in the direction of being about “marginal gains.”
There’s a British cycling coach named Dave Brailsford. His
belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1
percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
And he’s right, that’s how you win a race.
The same will be with your marketing. There will be a big shift from people focusing on one channel and trying to find the “Holy Grail of marketing” to working on slightly improving each area of your marketing.
From split testing your title tags to get a few ranking improvements to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a little bit more on your paid ads to using Google Data Studio so you can better optimize for your lifetime value…
It’s all about the little things. That’s what is going to
add up to winning.
That’s what you’ll have to shift your mindset to in order to win in 2020 and beyond.
The problem with marketing as it exists today is that 95% of your visitors will never convert into a customer. And that’s if you are lucky.
Chances are you are more likely looking at 97% plus of your
visitors never converting.
The big reason isn’t that your marketing sucks or that all
of those visitors are junk and unqualified.
It’s that your message doesn’t fit every single one of your
visitors.
But through personalization, you can convert more of your visitors into customers.
A basic example of this is Amazon. When you go to Amazon, they know your patterns and what you typically buy so they show you what they think you want to see in order to boost their conversions.
And it works! When I log into Amazon I see tons of household supplies because that is what I buy the most often. I never buy dog food (which is smart because I don’t have a dog) so I’ll never see ads for dog food.
Businesses are also trying to personalize each and every single experience both online and offline.
Companies like Amperity are trying to create a customer relationship engine so you can better serve each of your customers, whether it is online or offline.
Marketing is going to become a game of personalization. With
ad costs and even general marketing costs rising, you have no choice but to
figure out how to convert the 97% of your traffic that just never comes back.
You’ll see a big push for this in 2020.
I know a lot of the stuff I mentioned above isn’t talked about a lot and they aren’t popular marketing topics that everyone wants to hear… but it is the future.
These are trends that will come true, some already are, and
you have to adapt for them.
Here’s the beautiful part, though. You just read this, and now have a chance to act on the information before your competition. So, make sure you go and do so.
I want to see you not only succeed but I want you to beat
your competition. And I believe you can, whether you are a big company, or just
starting off with very little to no money.
So, what do you think of the trends above? Do you see any
marketing trends that will come true in 2020 that few people talk about?
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