7 Ironclad Reasons Instagram Stories Are Superior To Snapchat
August 11, 2016
Instagram’s new story feature is making a massive buzz in the social media and tech world. It is a clear attack on Snapchat and its massive audience segment. The Instagram audience has slowly but surely been fleeing over to Snapchat. Snapping away, sharing content, and spending more time on Snapchat.
Instagram’s new story feature is an attempt to stop the leak and keep users on their site. Instagram has 7 ironclad reasons why their stories feature is superior to Snapchats.
An Established Audience
Brands and users have been building their Instagram community for a much longer time than Snapchat. Most brands have only recently looked at growing their Snapchat audience in the past 6 months. However, Instagram audiences have been growing since 2010-12 and massively exploded at the start of 2015. 2015 was when Gary Vaynerchuk said to go “all in” on Instagram.
If you took Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice and went all in on Instagram in 2015, you could easily have over 10,000 followers. Instagram influencer Emelina Spinelli did just that.
Easier Growth and Discoverability
Growing your Instagram audience isn’t difficult at all. According to Emelina Spinelli’s free Instagram training, there are 4 daily habits that generate a ton of followers.
- Use 30 hashtags on every photo to get more exposure. According to Neil Patel this is also the optimal number to use.
- Follow 200 people every single day, unfollow those who don’t follow back
- Take better photos
- Network your face off and do meetups
- And a bunch more here.
Instagram unlike Snapchat is a system that can be “gamified.” If we do certain daily activities we can see consistent daily growth.
Powerful Advertising Platform
Instagram is owned by Facebook and as such has access to Facebook’s advertising platform. Using Instagram advertising you can target mobile users and deliver high quality powerful ads. Generating traffic for around 50 cents a click or less.
If you have never used Facebook/Instagram advertising then I would highly suggest checking out Jon Loomer’s blog for everything Facebook. He absolutely kills it, and gives some of the best training around.
Deeper Market Penetration
Instagram stories are a play to try to keep that tween market. They want those 13-year-old girls to stay on their platform and keep posting their selfies. That being said, the market penetration to the older audiences is massive. Right now the grandparents of the world are on Facebook. The Mom’s and Dad’s of the world are on Instagram. The Tweens are of the world are on Snapchat and Instagram.
If the Instagram stories play, is successful and Instagram keeps the Tween market, Zuckerberg will have all markets segments fully covered. He will own a monopoly on the attention economy, the eyeballs of all users will be in his platforms.
More Influencers
Let’s cut to the chase, there are tons of Instagram influencers. My unscientific guesstimation would say there is easily 100x-1000x more Instagram influencers than Snapchat influencers.
Influencers have a clear strategy laid out before them and the attention of their users. Influencers help retain users to a platform. We go to Youtube to get our news from Philip Defranco than jump on Periscope to watch Geoff Goldberg give us a live tour of NYC.
These Instagram influencers are a vital part to the Instagram game. They now don’t have to leave the platform and move over to Snapchat to build their audience further. Instead they can craft their “Snapchat stories” right on Instagram.
Cleaner UI
Snapchat’s interface is confusing as fuck if you didn’t grow up with it. Douglas Adams has a rule when it comes to technology.
“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
For those aforementioned souls 36 years or older. Snapchat’s interface is against the natural order. But Instagram’s interface seems much cleaner and more natural. There is much less to do and makes intuitive sense.
Unless you spend massive amounts of time in Snapchat or take a course, the interface will take forever to learn. It seems unnatural, and you will want to stick to the familiarity that is Instagram.
Clear and Effective Monetization Strategy
Facebook/Instagram… should we just call it Facegram? Either way, the Zuckerberg corporate goliath has monetization down. That massively powerful advertising system we spoke of works two ways. Not only does it keep Facebook’s ledgers in the black, it also makes it clear for brands to measure the ROI.
When you know that $ 100 of advertising with Facebook nets you $ 450 in sales. It is not only easy to continuing investing in the platform, but creates a desire to feed the beast more.
From personal experience, it is an addicting feeling watching those sort of daily transactions. You get excited by how much Facebook charges your credit card because you know that it will generate much more long term.
Snapchat on the other hand doesn’t have a clear and effective monetization strategy. Sure, you can create a cheap custom Geo-filter for your event. If you are a big brand you can splurge and spend $ 750,000 on a nationwide geofilter. But measuring the ROI is much harder on Snapchat.
My newly verified buddy Brian Fanzo better known as isocialfanz made a geofilter that generates 100,000 impressions for $ 32 bucks. This is a stellar ROI in terms of eyeballs, but is a much more difficult to track down to how much more business he generated.
Instagram’s monetization strategy is a huge boon to brands and advertisers. If brands and advertisers can’t understand the ROI of your platform and won’t invest. All the users in the world don’t help. Look at TSU for an example of exactly what I mean.
Overall, Instagram might not be successful in their attack on Snapchat. That being said I see 7 ironclad reasons why their stories feature is superior to Snapchat stories.
What are your thoughts leave them in the comments.
I will be sharing the reasons why Snapchat stories are superior in the next article.
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