Snapchat stories Vs Instagram stories

  • Author: Akshita Wadhwa
  • |
  • Updated Date : February 21, 2022

Always contemplating as to which social media platform you should be more active on when it comes to updating your daily live steam stories?

Well yes, the confusion is more likely between Instagram and Snapchat.

Snapchat is, of course, the big daddy behind this concept. It introduced the idea of stories and took live streaming photos and videos to an all new level. However, Instagram decides to steal the show by raising the bar with its all new feature that is more or less like Snapchat, but yet has gained higher popularity due to its expansive user base. The introduction of Instagram stories turned out to be a direct competitor to Snapchat. Shockingly, ever since Instagram stories was introduced, it has completely slowed down the growth of Snapchat by 82%.

Stories for Marketers

Although both the apps pretty much do the same thing, which is sharing daily life moments of users in a time frame of 24 hours, it still has a huge difference with the demographics. As a marketer, if you are targeting teens and a younger audience, then Snapchat is just what you need. However, if you’re looking to target a good mix of audience, be it parents or youngsters, then you can’t get any better with Marketing on Instagram. Instagram is just the platform one would like to be at if they’re looking to grow their brand with a good balance of followers and influencers.

When it comes to running campaigns and marketing on these platforms, Instagram seems to have the upper hand as marketers can run trailer campaigns for as short as 24 hours on Instagram stories. They can later scrutinise the analytics of that campaign and track its performance to determine its success. If it is a failure, the advantage is that the story will disappear in 24 hours and there would be no trace of the campaign in the future. But if the campaign has loads of engagement and is a success, it could then be carried forward full swing as a series of post-uploads in the account. This is unfortunately not possible on Snapchat, as the app is known to have a time frame of 24 hours for the life of the photo or image. Even when it comes to texting on either of these platforms, Instagram allows you to go back and forth to review conversations. Whereas on Snapchat, your conversation disappears the moment you’re done viewing it unless one decides to save every exchange shared manually.

Latest Features of Snapchat stories

Snapchat was the first to initiate all the cool features. One of the biggest trademarks is the Bitmoji which allows every user to create his/her animated self, from the facial features to the clothing. Bitmoji helps in personalising Snapchat accounts. You get to have a range of emojis with the character created. Apart from the Bitmoji, the Maps have been the talk of the town, where in you can see the location of your friends. This feature even allows you to turn into ghost mode through which no one else can locate you in the world. However, you can still be able to view their location based on privacy. Another new feature on Snapchat is the Scissors tool that allows you to cut and create your own stickers with images clicked. These stickers are then added to the keyboard sticker options which could be used at any point of time. Discover is another interesting feature that shares content with viewers in image and video format. It is commonly known as the Snapchats Blog section in which users get to learn and discover various content.

Snapchat Emoji's

Snapchat Map

Latest Features of Instagram stores

Despite Instagram being known for cloning most of Snapchat’s features, they still manage to have their own special reasons for which they have much more users. One of the cool features that Snapchat hasn’t yet managed to acquire is the Live video feature that allows users to go live and notify friends once a live video is active. Another fun feature on Instagram is that you can check in at literally any location while uploading a story. This is a much-advanced feature when compared to Snapchat’s location feature where you can only use the inbuilt location filters and not create your own location.

The stickers on Instagram are also by far much more advanced when compared to Snapchat’s where in you can customise your Hashtag sticker. This sticker helps in building brand awareness for marketers who run their business on Instagram as you can hashtag the brand’s name. Additionally, tagging doesn’t stop with post uploads. You can now tag your friends and brands on your Instagram Stories to improve your brand’s visibility. It doesn’t just end with that. Boomerang – another superb feature offered by Instagram – has taken the social media world by storm. This spectacular video feature plays a short clip back and forth and is a huge hit amongst teens and youngsters. The video can be uploaded to your story or saved in your gallery for future posts.

Instagram Hashtag Stories

Instagram Live

Which platform must you choose?

It’s very evident that although Snapchat is the master mind behind “The Story”, Instagram slowly and steadily manages to beat the competition. However, Instagram is known to copy Snapchat with its various face filters, emoji’s, doodling and many other features. The latest cool updates and features by Instagram adds more weight to the fact that Instagram doesn’t copy Snapchat but builds on it. Additionally, Snapchat has a daily user base of 150 million, in contrast to Instagram’s 400 million users, making Instagram a far more popular app.  In India as well, the usage of Instagram is far more than Snapchat due to the full-time advertising facilities on Instagram. This is also because of the popularity of Facebook in India which is known to be a premium market. In India, the popularity of Snapchat is being witnessed only by Bollywood Celebrities users and the teen generation.

What is your take on Stories? Are you more of an Instagram or Snapchat User?

Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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