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Rachel Hartwick 6 min read

Three Ways Your Nonprofit Can Use Snapchat

Snapchat is taking the social media world by storm, and it’s time that nonprofits embrace the growing trend. You may write it off right now, but if you want to gain new audiences interested in your nonprofit, it is absolutely crucial that you’re staying on top of new audiences and meeting them on the platforms they’re on. 

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Think Snapchat is targeted at too young of an audience? This isn’t something to ignore—the first people on many new social media platforms skew younger. 18-24 year olds also first adopted Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, just like they’re doing with Snapchat.  

Companies are already taking advantage of Snapchat to advertise and news outlets are getting their content out quicker; it’s time to get your nonprofit in the loop. But what are the benefits of Snapchat, and how can you get started?

  1. You’re able to buy a Geofilter for people to use during your advocacy or fundraising events.

Location technology has been around for a while, but it’s becoming more and more feasible to use to your advantage, as we’ve seen with the Pokemon GO craze.

A Geofilter is a popular part of using Snapchat. Geofilters are small graphic images that usually frame the bottom of your photo, and they’re aligned with your location. For example, if you’re from the DC area, you’ll see a number of Washington DC-themed Geofilters pasted on top of people’s Snapchat photos.

The best part about Geofilters? Anyone can design them—even you!

Another great thing about Geofilters is your nonprofit doesn’t even need to have a Snapchat account, to utilize them, and most importantly, people do not have to be following your nonprofit to see, and use, the Geofilter. Anyone in the area with a Snapchat account can see them!

So how can you utilize this for your nonprofit?

 For as little as $5 for a few hours, you can choose a geographic area, a date and period of time, and in that time when people get on Snapchat, they’ll be able to post Snaps with your filter to their story!  But these pictures don’t have to be limited to people using Snapchat—you can easily take screenshots of your favorite Snaps and tweet them out to get people excited.

Note sponsored lenses — video filters that go over selfies — can sell for between $450,000 and $750,000 per day.

  1. You can tease your audience with Instagram stories to get them excited about your Snapchat.

Instagram recently released a virtually identical feature to Snapchat—the “story.” Snapchat is known for its ability to post stories, which followers can view for 24 hours before the picture disappears into the void to never be retrieved again. Just last month, Instagram released a strikingly similar feature. This feature allows you to post stories that your Instagram followers can see, so you won’t have to create a new audience base from scratch (as you would have to with Snapchat.)

Does that mean that you should totally scratch the idea of making a Snapchat account and turn to Instagram? Absolutely not. Snapchat is a different audience than Instagram, and has more than 100 million daily active users. With Instagram’s story release, some have even vowed to not post to the Instagram stories, claiming it unfair that they “stole” Snapchat’s idea.  

This means despite what people may say, Snapchat is still totally relevant, and is still trumping Instagram when it comes to the number of stories posted.

  1. You can connect with other nonprofits who are on Snapchat.

WeDidIt put together this list of the 10 best nonprofits on Snapchat, and many others are joining too. See if you can create a partnership with fellow nonprofits with Snapchat. Can you all plan a Snapchat scavenger hunt together to raise money? What if you had a competition of who can get the most Snapchat followers? Help your fellow nonprofiters and take charge of the Snapchat world. The possibilities are endless.

Although starting a new platform from scratch may seem overwhelming at first, Snapchat’s numerous benefits outweigh the cons.

What’s your nonprofit’s “story”?

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