Here are ways you can use Snapchat in your business
Rather than reaching a mass audience, Snapchat allows you to send messages directly to your group of subscribers. Snapchat messages or ‘stories’ allow you to combine photo, video, text and audio in a unique way to interact directly with fans.
Before you start using Snapchat for business, get to know the platform by using a personal account. Snapchat has lots of great features like filters, emoji and music effects, and you should know your way around these before you start messaging on behalf of your business.
Be original when you use it. Ensure you’re posting content that’s specifically created for Snapchat and get creative. Follow a few other brands and businesses and get a feel for what they’re posting.
Once you’ve got the hang of the platform, you’re ready to examine your audience. Snapchat users tend to be younger, so if you’re looking to reach the 18 to 24 audience, you’re in luck. And once users pick up Snapchat, they get hooked – there are over one billion views of Snapchat stories daily.
Send a special offer or discount
Your Snapchat subscribers are engaging with you in a different way to fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter. They’re agreeing to receive your content directly to their phone, and you should treat them in the same way you would your mailing list subscribers. So be generous and turn them into powerful advocates for your business. A great way to do this is to develop Snapchat-only offers that they can redeem using the code or URL you provide in the message.
Access influencer networks
If you’re not prepared to invest the time to build an audience, or if you want to use Snapchat as part of a broader marketing campaign on a one-off basis, partner with an influencer. They will broadcast your sponsored content to their audience, and you’ll reap the benefits. Alternatively, have an influencer take over your account. You’ll get their creative take on your business while accessing their audience.
Broadcast from ‘behind the scenes’
Give your audience a unique point of view by using Snapchat to ‘broadcast’. Whether it’s a scene from your office, a conference or a product launch, a Snapchat story gives a unique point of view to your audience and gives them a deeper understanding of what your business is about.
Deliver ‘private’ content
Unlike other social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, where the aim is to show your content to as many people as possible, Snapchat allows you to send content directly to your subscribers. This can be a benefit if you’re looking to trial a new offer or want to reward people who are committed advocates for your brand. Making content exclusive to Snapchat creates another level of access for your audience, so the more effort you put into creating this ‘exclusive’ content, the more you’ll gain from it.
Loren is an experienced marketing professional who translates data and insights using Isentia solutions into trends and research, bringing clients closer to the benefits of audience intelligence. Loren thrives on introducing the groundbreaking ways in which data and insights can help a brand or organisation, enabling them to exceed their strategic objectives and goals.
When customers first hear your brand's name, what do they think?
Business is a money-driven sector, with revenues, profits and cash flow important considerations.
Many functions can impact on a company's ability to generate positive revenue, and your reputation is one of the most vital.
Reputation a key business concern
A recent report from professional services and advisory firm Deloitte investigates how much companies value their reputation.
The 2013 edition found damage to a reputation was the No. 1 concern for business executives. This year, Deloitte partnered with Forbes Insight to delve deeper into reputation risk.
Released in October, the 2014 Global Survey on Reputation Risk found that:
"87 per cent of executives believe reputation is more important this year than in previous years"
"88 per cent say they are explicitly focusing on reputation as a key business challenge"
Reputation closely tied to revenue and value
Reputation problems tend to have the biggest impact on revenue and brand value, according to the survey. Respondents who have experienced a negative reputation event said the areas which were affected the most included revenue (41 percent), loss of brand value (41 percent) and regulatory investigations (37 percent).
In Asia Pacific, the concern over revenue and earnings was even higher, with 56 per cent of respondents from this region naming this as most significant factor impacted by damage to their reputation.
Who is responsible for reputation risk?
Most communications professionals would be quick to put up their hand when asked who was in charge of protecting their company's reputation.
However, the Deloitte survey found that the responsibility for managing reputation risk actually falls on the shoulders of those in the executive-suite. Just over one-third (36 per cent) of respondents named the CEO as the key player, followed by the chief risk officer (21 per cent), board of directors (14 per cent) and chief financial officer (11 per cent).
What should you be keeping an eye out for?
There are unfortunately many things that could potentially damage your company's reputation the public eye. These include ethics and integrity risks (55 per cent), such as fraud and corruption. This is followed by security risks (45 per cent), like physical break-ins and cyber breaches. Finally, respondents also named product and service risks (43 per cent), including those that may impact on safety, health and the environment.
Looking to the future
Reputational risk is a growing concern across the globe, so it is not surprising that many companies are planning to increase their investment in risk management strategies.
In particular, more than three-quarters of companies in the Asia-Pacific region (78 per cent) are planning to invest more in data collection related to reputation. This includes media monitoring and surveying tools to track mentions on traditional and digital media platforms.
This report demonstrates how important it is for any business to be keeping tabs on their reputation. Receiving real-time updates and media analysis can give companies the ability to respond and manage negative reputation events before they affect the organisation as a whole.
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Blog
How Much Is Reputation Worth?
Business is a money-driven sector, with revenues, profits and cash flow important considerations. Many functions can impact on a company’s ability to generate positive revenue, and your reputation is one of the most vital.
Every stakeholder relationship is different, and managing them effectively takes more than a one-size-fits-all approach.
From campaign planning to long-term engagement, having the right tools and strategy in place can make the difference between missed connections and meaningful impact.
This guide covers:
Identifying and understanding your key stakeholders
Mapping and modelling for influence and engagement
Equipping your team to maintain and grow strategic relationships
At our Taking Back Trust panel, speakers didn’t just agree that public confidence in media, institutions and messaging is shifting. They challenged long-held assumptions about how trust is earned in the first place.
Some framed the current moment as a genuine “trust crisis”. Others saw something more layered, a redefinition of who and what audiences choose to believe. As Monica Attard OAM pointed out, trust in journalism today is shaped by whether audiences feel respected. Not spun, not lied to, not taken for a ride. When news feels ideologically loaded or out of step with what people know to be true, trust quickly erodes.
The panel made it clear that trust isn’t built through repetition. It’s forged through clarity, transparency and context. Two pillars stood out: accessibility and personal relevance. Trust is no longer just about the messenger. It’s about whether the message feels honest, and whether it meets people where they are.
Transparency isn’t optional.
The rise of polarised news and fragmented information ecosystems hasn’t just affected the public. It has reshaped how media outlets themselves think about trust. As John McDuling of Capital Brief noted, earning trust today requires more than getting the story right. It demands openness about how the story was made.
That means being transparent about where information comes from, clearly attributing sources, and acknowledging mistakes. “Correcting errors is a strength, not a weakness,” he said. Vague or thinly sourced reporting, once more easily accepted, no longer cuts through. Trust is now built through precision, accountability, and the willingness to show your work.
The medium is shifting. So is the audience.
Much of the discussion circled back to how audiences are evolving. Younger generations aren’t just consuming news differently, they’re questioning the idea of shared truth altogether. There’s a growing scepticism toward objectivity as a fixed standard. Instead, content that reflects personal experiences and values tends to resonate more.
This shift is most visible on platforms like TikTok and Reddit, which panellists noted as primary news sources for many younger users. People now engage with information on their own terms, often picking up snippets in their feed before diving deeper through Google searches or podcasts. According to Dr Lisa Portolan, this more autonomous style of consumption is changing how trust is formed, and how communication needs to adapt.
She highlighted a broader transformation in the nature of trust itself. For most of human history, trust was built locally. Institutional trust, in government, media, or politics, only became dominant in the last few centuries. Now, technology is redistributing that trust again. People are more likely to believe a peer or content creator than a traditional source. That shift, Portolan said, represents both a degradation of institutional trust and a redefinition of what trust looks like in a decentralised environment.
From a communications perspective, it also means navigating synthetic and AI-driven research with care. When organisations don’t fully understand their audiences, there’s a risk of being misled by artificial signals. The solution, as the panel noted, lies in truly knowing your audience, not just where they are, but how they decide who and what to trust.
AI is already changing the game
If there was one issue that united the panel, it was the urgency around artificial intelligence.
The conversation went beyond newsroom tools or job losses. The focus was trust. Panellists raised concerns about bias in training data, a lack of transparency from AI providers, and the risk of narrowing information loops shaped by commercial deals.
Monica Attard spoke about the dangers of closed systems, where the same sources are surfaced repeatedly, and the need to keep human values at the centre. Relying on technology alone, she said, won’t solve trust issues.
The panel returned to attribution as a key differentiator. As John McDuling noted, one way to stand apart from AI-generated content is to clearly link to original sources, especially those outside commercial LLM training sets. He wasn’t convinced AI would help build trust, at least not yet. These tools always give an answer, even when it’s wrong.
He compared the emerging response to an organic food movement. “You can trust this was generated by humans.” In a more artificial information environment, that may become the most important signal of all.
What’s next
There’s no silver bullet. But across the board, the panel pointed to consistency, transparency, and nuance as essential tools, even when messages are uncomfortable or contested.
Sometimes trust isn’t about getting everything right. It’s about showing up, being clear about your limits, and staying open to scrutiny.
Ngaire Crawford challenged common assumptions about media literacy, pointing out that the problem isn’t confined to young people. In fact, older audiences are often more vulnerable to misinformation because they struggle to navigate the digital information environments around them. The challenge, she said, is not just media literacy, but informational literacy, knowing how to critically assess and access trustworthy content.
From a communications perspective, that calls for vigilance. People want to feel in control of the information they consume. They want to research for themselves, but often can’t find what they need. That gap creates space for misinformation to thrive, and it raises new questions about how information will be surfaced by AI.
The answer? Over-communicate. Provide written sources, supporting detail, and longer-form content where possible. It’s not just about the message or the sound bite. It’s about making sure people have access to the information they need to come to their own conclusions.
The fragile currency of trust: what the panel unpacked
At our Taking Back Trust panel, speakers didn’t just agree that public confidence in media, institutions and messaging is shifting. They challenged long-held assumptions about how trust is earned in the first place. Some framed the current moment as a genuine “trust crisis”. Others saw something more layered, a redefinition of who and what audiences […]
Across the communications landscape, teams are being asked to do more with less, while staying aligned, responsive and compliant in the face of complex and often shifting stakeholder demands. In that environment, how we track, report and manage our relationships really matters.
In too many organisations, relationship management is still built around tools designed for customer sales. CRM systems, built for structured pipelines and linear user journeys, have long been the default for managing contact databases. They work well for sales and customer service functions. But for communications professionals managing journalists, political offices, internal leaders and external advocates, these tools often fall short.
Stakeholder relationships don’t follow a straight line. They change depending on context, shaped by policy shifts, public sentiment, media narratives or crisis response. A stakeholder may be supportive one week and critical the next. They often hold more than one role, and their influence doesn’t fit neatly into a funnel or metric.
Managing these relationships requires more than contact management. It requires context. The ability to see not just who you spoke to, but why, and what happened next. Communications teams need shared visibility across issues and departments. As reporting expectations grow, that information must be searchable, secure and aligned with wider organisational goals.
What’s often missing is infrastructure. Without the right systems, strategic relationship management becomes fragmented or reactive. Sometimes it becomes invisible altogether.
This is where Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) enters the conversation. Not as a new acronym, but as a different way of thinking about influence.
At Isentia, we’ve seen how a purpose-built SRM platform can help communications teams navigate complexity more confidently. Ours offers a secure, centralised space to log and track every interaction, whether it’s a media enquiry, a ministerial meeting, or a community update, and link it to your team’s broader communications activity.
The aim isn’t to automate relationships. It’s to make them easier to manage, measure and maintain. It’s about creating internal coordination before the external message goes out.
Because in today’s communications environment, stakeholder engagement is not just a support function. It is a strategic capability.
Across the communications landscape, teams are being asked to do more with less, while staying aligned, responsive and compliant in the face of complex and often shifting stakeholder demands. In that environment, how we track, report and manage our relationships really matters. In too many organisations, relationship management is still built around tools designed for […]
