7 Creative Snapchat Tips to Improve Your Stories:
Stay engaged with Snapchat users!
Improve your Snapchat stories!
With these 7 creative Snapchat tips, you will keep your Snapchat fans coming back for more!
Discover seven creative snapchat tips to improve your Snapchat stories.
Snapchat Tip #1: Use Different Angles
Watching a video from one angle gets boring after a few snaps, so use the 10 seconds they give you to move around. This makes your story more entertaining.
Sure, you can go multiple snaps in a row to get your point across and tell a story. In fact, you should do this. However, mix it up with some short photos, filters, different angles, different settings, or show something with the back-facing camera. It’s not hard to do and makes all the difference.
Vary your snaps to keep your audience’s attention.
Snapchat Tip #2: Get Creative and Use The Features
Snapchat is a creative person’s dream. There are so many different things you can do with it. You can use emojis, 3D stickers, text, a pen tool, filters, geofilters, and so on. You really can go nuts. Use each of these creative tools in your next story, as they’re easy to add and can make a big impact.
Get creative with your snaps.
Check out this article to get five beginner and five pro tutorials on how to use these creative tools.
Snapchat Tip #3: Keep Your Snaps Snappy
Ten seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but on Snapchat, it is. You don’t need to show every snap in your story for 10 seconds. With photos especially, the human brain is quick; it doesn’t need 10 seconds to process a photo. If your story is entirely that, people will begin tapping to skip, and eventually they’ll drop off.
Your snaps don’t always need to be 10 seconds long.
Use shorter videos and photos to quicken the pace of your story to keep it more engaging.
Snapchat Tip #4: Tease ‘Em
Try to create intrigue about your story right from your opening snap. To motivate your audience to keep watching, tell people immediately if something interesting, useful, or entertaining is coming up. If your story isn’t hinting at least one of these three criteria, people will swipe to the next story.
Tease a story.
Be prepared for strangers to stumble across your story. If that first snap is just you making morning coffee, they may not stick around to find out more.
Bonus tip: Use an interesting last snap thumbnail. The tiny circular thumbnail of your story always shows your last snap, so make it intriguing! I’ve watched entire 10-minute stories just to find out what that last snap was all about. You’ll likely get more views on the entire story if that last snap looks interesting, as opposed to just a talking head or selfie.
On that point, your last snap teaser could get your story played over the competition.
Snapchat Tip #5: Tell a Story
It’s called a Snapchat “story” for a reason. You need a narrative to make people watch to the end of your snaps. As humans, we strive to find out how the story ends. Could your stories start with an issue or problem that needs to be solved?
The use of emotion can drive the narrative of the story and get your audience to sympathize with what’s going on. Draw your audience in and explain at the beginning and again throughout to feed them the narrative of what’s actually going on in your story.
Plan out your narrative.
The beauty of Snapchat is that you can integrate it easily into your lifestyle and daily habits. That said, the best stories have a little planning in them.
You’re not shooting a movie, though, so the effort you put into your storyboard may be minimal. It helps to grab a pen and paper to sketch out a rough story.
Snapchat Tip #6: Add Text
Try to cater to people who are watching stories without the sound on. If your story isn’t particularly visual or doesn’t make sense without captions or audio, they’ll quickly move on.
Include text to appeal to users who have the sound muted.
It’s not always possible, but add text to highlight a point. Using text will likely keep people watching and lets you say more in one snap, which reduces the need to have additional exhaustive, explainer-type snaps.
Snapchat Tip #7: Switch Up the Cameraperson
Great engagement happens when you introduce your audience to interesting people. In meetings, for example, do a short introduction of people and get them to say hello and share what they do. It’s fun and exciting to watch (and could get your meeting off to a fun start). Plus, those people may go and tell their friends/audience that they were on your Snapchat story, which is an added bonus.
Switch up your cameraperson from time to time.
If you’re part of a team, it’s easy to keep things engaging by having different team members chip in here and there. If you’re a sole proprietor, you can have guests on your Snapchat or do full takeovers as another great way to keep engagement up.
Conclusion
It’s official. Our attention span as a species is now less than that of a lowly goldfish (8 seconds vs. 9). So how on earth do you get people to watch your Snapchat stories?
The biggest problem is people not respecting the context of the platform. This isn’t LinkedIn! Remember, Snapchat made its name as a fun messaging app, so let’s keep it that way. You can still be professional, but keep it lighthearted and show your true self. Let your hair down from time to time.
Now it’s time to create your best stories ever! Remember, consistency is key here. If you can regularly create great stories for people to watch, you can quickly start to build a loyal following.
