This morning Instagram announced its “New” search for stories features, funnily enough, a day after Snapchat announced a very similar feature. You can now search locations for stories in a certain area; where Snapchat has introduced events stories, much of a muchness.
What does this mean for Snapchat? It was the new kid on the block, shooting into the social media arsenal of millions as a leader with its new filters and face swapping functionalities that hadn’t been seen before. More importantly, it quickly positioned itself as the must-have tool for business to communicate with Millennials and their younger counterparts. Now it has fallen victim to the Facebook/Instagram giant. Given Facebook offered $3Bn for Snapchat which was declined; is this the result?
Should Snapchat have seen this coming and evolved faster? Is this how natural selection works in the new digital world?
It used to be “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” now it’s “If you can’t buy ‘em, destroy ‘em”.
While it has taken a while for Facebook and Instagram to introduce their new stories and filters; they are now continually evolving these tools. It was inevitable that this was going to be the fate for Snapchat. Now Facebook/Instagram are keeping their users engaged on their platforms by almost daily new features and functionalities. Features such as the ability to archive your posts, being able to change the way you are contacted by your customers, and now the search for stories features have made Snapchat as redundant as the fax machine. Instagram is now the swiss army knife of social media. And why’s that important? Because it is keeping the engagement of users… your potential customers.
As a business, more than ever before, you need to be asking yourself “Are we spreading our presence too far across too many social media platforms?” It is becoming more and more evident that fewer influencers and businesses are using Snapchat. They are moving their focus into Instagram, firmly switching their loyalty from one platform to the other. They are doing this because that’s where their customers are. So you should probably be moving too… There’s no point flogging a dead horse to make it run faster.
What does this mean for your social media strategy? Perhaps simplification? Putting your time and energy into platforms where you see returns and that comes from being able to reach customers. To effectively do that you need to understand who your ideal customers are and wherein the digital universe they are. Most likely, when you understand that, you will only need to be concentrating on one or two platforms. This will make your digital strategy far more efficient to execute in both terms of time and cost.
As they say, less is often more.
