Like film reviewers who have to watch films they are not interested in seeing, social media consultants have to get into social networks that don’t interest them, but may interest their clients. Snapchat is one of those for me.

It is a social network for sending photos and videos that “disappear” shortly after viewing. If you are one of the millions who don’t have an account, then you’re not one of its 100 million daily users.  It is very popular with college students.

It’s a network that can’t be ignored by companies because it surpasses Facebook numbers with its 10 billion daily video views.

One of the oddities of Snapchat is that getting followers is not the main goal. Its appeal is that it seems to develop deeper personal connections with users through its image/video storytelling.

Some companies jumped right in but many companies (and individuals) still don’t see the appeal. After all, don’t you want your message to have a long, useful shelf life and NOT disappear?

Actually, brands like Disney have taken advantage of “disappearing” promos and teasers that encourage and a rapid response/engagement. Quick, before it disappears!  and build brand awareness. The digital “limited time offer.”

The first time I opened the app, I did not find it at all intuitive. How do I do this “snap?” Define “story”Lenses? How do I find people to follow and share content with? Where are the suggestions and discovery tools? I checked out a few guides but that will only get you going. Creating a strategy is much further down the road.

I have only worked with two clients who tried it. One stopped using it after a few months. The other is still “experimenting.”

You might also look at some free tools like GhostCodes which helps with the discovery aspect. Though I believe that should be natively baked into an app, others will say that Snapchat is not all about finding new followers and being the “most popular” (a natural tendency of all of us) is not the rel goal.

Snapchat is evolving. It was released in 2011 and three years ago they added “Stories” which are visual montages that are not private but blasted out to friends. They added channels which are curated streams of content from known publishers like CNN and BuzzFeed, and Live Stories which are ones curated by Snapchat, mostly from big events like the Oscars.

As those TV commercials for medications say, ask your social media consultant if Snapchat is right for you.