If you are one of the 100 million Snapchat users, then you will already be familiar with its new function, Discover. Discover is an online magazine hosted by Snapchat but populated by a small amount of large companies.

The interesting thing about Discover is that these big companies are being asked to pay up to $750,000 to be able to post their articles or videos to a section of Discover, and not only that but their three quarters of a million pounds is only to show their section for one day, just twenty four little hours. As you can imagine if you are asking companies to pay such large amounts of money for only 24hrs worth of branding space, then only the larger companies are financially eligible to make use of Discover.

Who’s Using It?

However, business of any size can still use Snapchat for marketing and many companies do. Ultimately, any way a company can engage with its customers is good for a business, and Snapchat is another way to break down the formality of that customer relationship and to show a more human and approachable side to their business. However, it can be all too easy to get overly concerned with the self-destructive nature of Snapchat’s communications, although as with any other social media it’s important to embrace the positives. Think instead of the possibilities of having timed teaser trailers or providing brief glimpses of products that intrigue the user enough to make them find out more about them, maybe even competitions where you ask your customers to take shots and videos of them using your product.

Like other social media tools, Snapchat works better in conjunction with other tools, like using Snapchat in collaboration with other social-media tools such as Vine, Instagram and Twitter. For example, an on-the-go image created in Snapchat can be saved to a mobile device using screengrab, then edited or just pushed out to your various audiences.

One of the later additions to Snapchat is every user being given an individual QR code. This code can be scanned into a smartphone allowing you to connect to that user on Snapchat. So you now have this QR code which you can add to your social media; your Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram images for example. This code will now start to encourage your social media followers to engage with you through Snapchat. They’ll see stories, chats and videos that intrigue them and then leave them to head back to your social media and website to find out more information. Marketers can use these codes

Snapchat is another tool in your company’s customer engagement toolbox, and like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, amongst many others they are considered essential to a successful company. If you need some help with using Snapchat, then have a look at this guide which will tell you what you need to know.