The odd ghost outline logo of Snapchat is starting to turn up everywhere, but Snapchat is still not on the social media radar of most independent retailers.  Since the company is a rising star in this field, it is probably a good idea to know something about it. If nothing else, this will help raise your cool quotient.

The first thing you need to know is that the logo is named Ghostface Chillah (based on Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan), chosen to represent the “There, then gone” nature of the photo sending service.  In case you are really out of it, the Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop group from New York, and Ghostface Killah was the stage name of rapper Dennis Coles.

Snapchat was the brainchild of a group of Stanford University students back in 2011, and one of the principal concepts behind the app is that pictures and messages are only available for a short time before they become inaccessible.  Although there is now some publicly offered content such as sports and music events, it is primarily used for private messaging.

As you might imagine, the multimedia messages sent using the program are referred to as “snaps,” and these can be made up of a photo or a short video. Filters and effects can be added, including city or site specific graphics accessed through a feature called Geostickers.  Although the ideas is that snaps are ephemeral, they can now be saved to a private storage area via Memories.

Bloomberg Technology reported last year that Snapchat now surpasses Twitter in terms of daily usage, with 150 million people using it every day.  That doesn’t mean that it is urgent that you start using Snapchat to promote your store.  However you might want to start using it yourself to get more familiar with the concept.  Once you have an account, you can follow a few companies such as Sephora and Wet Seal to see how they use the app.  So far it’s mostly large retailers that are making use of this platform — but if you are trying to appeal to millennials, this might be the year that you start creating snaps of your own.  Check out Michelle Brammer’s article for Forbes.com entitled How Can Small Businesses Use Snapchat? for some helpful ideas to get you started.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder 

I’m on vacation next week (hooray!), so there will not be a Specialty Shop Retailing blog on Monday.