I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a technology-addicted, stereotypical millennial. The first thing I do when I wake up is reach under my pillow and grab my iPhone. My eyes squint as the screen illuminates, and muscle memory leads my fingers to my first source of infotainment for the morning – Snapchat.

The first time I heard about Snapchat, I was freshly 19 years old and a sophomore in college. I used the app to send my friends photos of our peers sleeping in lectures and to stalk football players on campus (I’m being honest). Since then, the app has boomed and evolved, with developers realizing its limitations and making strides to continue to provide an innovative and unique content-delivery service. Most importantly, Snapchat found a place for businesses to fit into their mix.

If your business is on social media, you should add Snapchat to your mix. Here are three of the great things your business can do with Snapchat:

Reach your followers directly

Your Snapchat “story” is a timeline of photos and videos with text captions that are available to your followers for 24 hours. Unlike Facebook, whose organic reach has plummeted to less than 10 percent, your Snapchat story will be available to all of your followers. Snapchat allows you to see who viewed your story, giving you some measurable data moving forward.

What’s genius about the story is that you can share as-it-happens information with followers with little to no planning needed. If something neat or newsworthy goes on, you can immediately add it to your Snapchat story. Your followers will be able to gather information there before it goes up on your website or other social media accounts.

Tell stories with ease

Using your story, you are able to string together a small video and photo series to tell behind-the-scenes stories that would be too lengthy for Facebook or Twitter. One of my favorite accounts to follow is a dermatologist name Dr. Sandra Lee out of Los Angeles. She talks about different situations she encounters during the day and includes footage of procedures on her story. I’m able to get a behind-the-scenes look at what she does, and I feel like an insider.

With Snapchat, you’re able to give your followers an insider’s perspective, helping build your brand and the personality of your business. Use this to your advantage – share the fun things that you love about your business with your followers!

Get in front of new audiences with on-demand geofilters

For as little as $5 per day, you can design a geofilter – a virtual scrapbook sticker that can be applied to a photo taken in a set location. Businesses can design and submit the filter to Snapchat, set the location and timeframe they want the filter to be live, and any guest who takes a photo within those set parameters will have the option to add the filter. As they share this with their friends and on their story, they are promoting your business.

Here’s an example – if I try a new restaurant, I may take a photo of my burger because it looks amazing. I’ll scroll through and add the restaurant’s filter to the photo and put it in my story. Everyone who watches my feed will see the burger and know where I got it. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to promote different facets of your business and get in front of new audiences.

Want more information about how to implement Snapchat for your business? Reach out at insight@obsidianpr.com.