How Snapchat is becoming more appealing to publishers

Snapchat is becoming more serious about becoming a publishing platform that will appeal both to new users, but also popular media publishers.

Snapchat has seen an impressive growth this year, already counting 10 daily billion video views, but this is not enough for the platform’s plans to monetise its success.

Snapchat may focus on instant communication, while it’s planning to become a popular publishing platform, also offering an effective advertising model for brands. Thus, it was only a matter of time until it focused on Discover and Live stories, making them more appealing both to users and publishers.

It was only a few days ago when Snapchat announced the redesign of its Discover and Live sections, introducing a thumbnail and a headline for each story.

Redesign

Snapchat was already featuring a unique page for its Discover section, showcasing publishers’ channels and their daily content. What’s more, some of the channels’s icons were also visible at the main page of the Stories, although there was no preview of each channel’s content.

Thus, Snapchat decided to make it easier for users by adding a thumbnail and a headline for the most popular story of the day from each channel, in order to give an idea of what a user should expect.

This should increase the views of each channel, turning Snapchat into an interesting publishing platform with an increasing number of readers.

For example, Buzzfeed’s Snapchat channel brings in 21% of Buzzfeed’s total traffic, which is a great example for any publisher questioning Snapchat’s effectiveness.

Increasing content consumption

Snapchat is hoping to increase the number of views among all the channels, but also among Live Stories, as it hopes to be seen by users as something bigger than a fun and casual messaging platform.

That’s why it also decided to introduce a ‘subscribe’ button that (Read more...) keep users up-to-date about their favourite channels.

Snapchat’s ephemerality has maintained engagement among users, so it’s time now to use this engagement to increase the content consumption on the Discover channels and the Live stories.

Attracting more publishers

The bigger plan is to attract more publishers and there’s no better way to persuade them to join Snapchat than to showcase the effectiveness of channels, appealing content and increasing interest for more stories.

Many publishers seem to be cautious on Snapchat’s function, especially when it requires a commitment of budget and time which needs to be returned. Not everyone can create Buzzfeed’s content, but the diversity of the channels and the rising interest towards them proves that any type of content can be appealing, providing that it’s presented in a Snapchat-friendly way.

(Forget the longer texts and the boring formatting)

Shifting focus

Snapchat is expanding its editorial appeal and its recent redesign is asking from publishers to take the platform seriously regarding its media future.

What’s more, its sudden growth creates the need for new roles, clearly aiming for a bigger editorial focus at a global level, an improved curation of content and a wider strategy regarding its status in the world of social publishing.

A more complete social network

Snapchat is now the most open social network regarding its future plans and its strategy, and this might be the key to its sudden success, but what we can tell is that it’s gradually heading towards a mature stage, hoping to become a more complete social network, attracting users, publishers, brands and advertisers, all at the same time and at the same enthusiasm

This is certainly a challenging task but its recent stats indicate that it has every right to think big, whether it’s about ecommerce, video advertising, or media domination.

Tereza Litsa is a Writer at ClickZ.