Snapchat OR Instagram for Your Small Business?

As a small business owner, you are responsible for doing… well everything. That includes doing your own social media. There may be a point in your journey when you just want to focus on just a couple of social media sites and you want to choose between Snapchat and Instagram because doing two ‘stories’ every day would probably get exhausting!

Here are a few pros and cons for each site to help you decide where you want to put your efforts.

Snapchat Pros

Personal – If someone follows you on Snapchat there’s a big chance that they really want to see your story.

Easy – you can easily start snapping and picking up new techniques seems very natural

Great cinematic results – The filters are really the best looking and functioning.

Snapchat Cons

Need exclusive access – unless you are telling people to constantly add you on Snap (annoying!) or billboarding your ghost code, you aren’t going to have enough followers.

People switching to Insta or Facebook – Although Snap was the first social media site to do the story thing, others are taking over to keep people on their platform.

Instagram Pros

Wide audience – lots of your customers are on Instagram, trust me. People love images!

Engagements – Its fairly easy to get people to engage with an Instagram post. When others see tons of likes, comment or shares they are more inclined to do so themselves

Analytics – When you connect your Facebook Business Page with your Instagram account you can get valuable information like the time your users are online.

Instagram Cons

Not many people are interacting with stories (YET) – Instagram stories are fun to watch but people’s attention spans on Insta seem shorter than those on Snap, about 4 pictures in and people start to drop off.

Live streaming is annoying – Anyone you follow will automatically send you a push notification if they Go Live or haven’t added anything in a while. Although you can shut this off you have to turn it off for everyone. You cannot just turn it on for one user. I have yet to see it utilized in a way that a brand would be able to use it efficiently.

Only one link – Instagram wants to keep consumers on their app so they limit outgoing links to only the one in the bio. It’s difficult to get your customers to click off Instagram.

Check out this video from Neil Patel

and his response to me!