The very best way to grow your Snapchat following and keep them engaged is by posting quality content every single day. Quality content can be almost anything as long as it’s entertaining or educational.

For example you could post tips like “5 Ways to Be More Productive in the Morning”, or you could post a tutorial like “3 Steps to Setting Up Your New Widget”. You could also post product reviews like “An Unboxing of the Newest Best Phone” or a giveaway for your fans.

You could even simply post behind the scenes snaps of your office if your colleagues often do funny or educational things.

Here are some snaps from the Foundr office where I spend my days

The only really bad thing you can do is ignore your Snapchat or post really boring updates.

Boring snaps will likely lead to a loss of followers after you put in hard work to get them, so it’s best to have a content calendar for keeping your snaps (and the rest of your social media) exciting and consistent.

Now let’s dive into the really good stuff: how to grow your Snapchat following.

1. Invite an Influencer to Takeover Your Account for a Day

When Louis Vuitton wanted to get more views on their LVLive account they tapped Jim Chapman to takeover their Snapchat for a day.

Jim was voted GQ’s Best Dressed Man in 2015, a poll that was open to fans. It’s not surprising that Jim won as he has over 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube and over 2 million followers on Instagram and Twitter. He is a quintessential social media influencer.

Inviting influencers to take over your account is a great way to increase your follower account quickly – but keep in mind that it won’t be free.

Most influencers charge steep rates for the use of the audience, which they’ve carefully curated over the months and years. Each influencer knows that taking on too many brand deals will annoy their audience and may cost them followers, so they’re careful about who they work with and most offer a limited number of openings for partnerships/sponsorships.

For example, it’s not unheard of for a popular influencer like Jim Chapman to charge $5,000 or more for a single social media update mentioning a brand. Also keep in mind you won’t be reaching out directly to big influencers like Jim, who have millions of followers. Similar to famous movie and TV stars, you’ll need to reach out to their management.

For example Jim is managed by an agency called Gleam Futures. On the Gleam website you’ll find many other influencers you can also select to work with, based on who your target audience is.

2.  Work with an Influencer on a Shout Out

If tens of thousands of dollars is outside of your budget for an influencer takeover campaign, you can always ask about an influencer shout out.

During a takeover campaign, an influencer manages your Snapchat account for an entire day, but with a Shout Out the influencer simply mentions you once on their own social media account.

If you have a truly awesome product to sell, you can often get an influencer to shout you out by sending them a free product in packaging that will catch their eye. Remember influencers get many, many boxes with free product a day so you need to do something to your box to make it stand out.

Then, you can increase your chances of getting a free shout out even more if you personalize the product. For example, if you’re a beauty brand sending a free bottle of perfume, you could engage the name of the influencer on the bottle.

If you’re not interest in the long-game (in which you wait and see if an influencer mentions you), you can reach out to the person or their management and ask about sponsored Snapchat shoutouts.

In a shout out, the influencer will mention you/your company/your products and will then tell their followers to follow you.

For instance, here’s an example of beauty influencer Estee LaLonde giving a shout out to cosmetics brand Tatcha.

From a really good influencer, a shout out like this can cost a couple to a few thousand dollars. If you don’t have that kind of cash to splash, it’s best to try your hand at the long game.

Make your package stand out, include a really nice note and also a detailed description of your product and its benefits – that’s the formula for getting a free shoutout from a reputable influencer.

3. Cross-Promote Yourself

Snapchat came out after Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram were already established. That means your followings on those other social networks are probably higher than Snapchat, simply because you’ve had longer to collect them.

Take a page out of popular social media influencer playlists and cross-promote your own channels.

For example, here, YouTuber Amelia Liana, is promoting her new video to her Snapchat followers:

And here popular YouTuber, Shane Dawson, is promoting his Snapchat account to his 8 million+ YouTube viewers:

In fact Shane keeps his Snapchat handle up for the duration of most of his videos to grow his follower base. Then on Snapchat each day he posts an update to let his followers know when his new YouTube video goes up.

What a great cycle of cross-promotion.

And of course, he also creates other snaps throughout the day to keep his fans entertained otherwise they would never watch his Snapchat.

Don’t be afraid of a little shameless self promotion. As long as you’re providing value the majority of the time, you won’t lose any of your audience due to a little bit of self-promotion.

Try to keep an 80/20 or 90/10 balance, where 80 or 90% of your posts are educational/entertaining and just 10-20% are self promotional in nature.

Getting Started

The first thing to do is open a Snapchat account if you haven’t already done so. I know it can be intimidating to open a new account with zero followers, but if you already have a following on other social media channels (and you’re providing value), you’ll be able to move some of them over to Snapchat.

If you have a Snapchat account and want to grow your following, it’s time to get networking to find someone to do a takeover or shout out for you. You may have to shell out some cash, but if you’re really nice they might do it for free. Just be sure to offer something in return like a free product (or many free products).

Article Written by Jonathan Chan of Social Media Today