Benefits of Snapchat verification

Once a simple, fun way to communicate using photos and videos, Snapchat is now a valuable marketing tool for companies and influencers alike. The platform is particularly important for brands looking to target young audiences, as Snapchat is most popular among the younger generations – an estimated 90% of Snapchat users are aged between 13 and 24.
To make the most out of your Snapchat campaigns, it’s strongly recommended that you verify your account and make it into the Official Stories section. But how is it done and why is it worth your time and resources?

How Snapchat verification works
Let’s start by quickly defining what is meant by Snapchat verification. This process is somewhat different to other social media. On Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, it’s possible to achieve a ‘verified’ status through applying for verification. A successful verification results in a checkmark badge next to your username, indicating that the account is the official channel for the brand.
Snapchat, meanwhile, doesn’t grant a verified status on an application basis. Rather, the platform’s staff decide which accounts are popular or important enough to merit the emoji next to the username that identifies verified accounts.

Why it’s worth it
As far as direct, technical benefits of verification go, the primary consequence is that your snaps will appear under the Official Stories header when people search for your username. This decreases the risk that someone looking for your account accidentally ends up on another profile with a similar username. It also grants your stories a quality similar to promoted content – they’ll appear on top of the search results. As we all know, most internet users are much more likely to click on the top results than to keep scrolling – if that wasn’t the case, SEO and page ranking wouldn’t be a thing.
There are several indirect benefits of getting verified that stem from belonging to the platform’s elite. Usually, Snapchat verification is reserved for celebrities and large brands. It follows, therefore, that a verified emoji next to your username will immediately indicate that your brand is noteworthy, trendy, and worth following. Verification will increase your standing in the context of the platform, placing you in the same category as top-level influencers and celebrities.
On all social media platforms, the primary function of a verified badge is to prevent copyright infringement and imposters from imitating the official brand. Therefore, having the verified emoji suggests to viewers that your brand is important and original enough to require a safeguard against fraud, trolls, and impersonation.
The overall result of the above is that the level of authority of your Snapchat brand will be increased. The interest that the official emoji is likely to raise is also going to positively influence the number of your followers and views of your posts, as most social media users are always looking for new trends and won’t pass up on checking out a verified account they haven’t seen before.
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How to get verified
As we’ve already mentioned, typically Snapchat users do their best to make their snaps as popular as possible and hope to get noticed. The usual requirement is to achieve 50,000 views on a story to qualify for the gold star.
As the owners of most branded accounts will already know, 50,000 views on a single story is a tall order. Using traditional means, it’s possible to achieve this milestone with a lot of work and a bit of luck. Assuming none of your snaps unexpectedly go viral, you’ll need to put considerable effort into creating quality content and engaging with your audience. Following other users in your niche and interacting with them and their followers and communicating directly with your own audience will help you to grow your popularity on the platform. In addition, you’ll likely need to your other outlets – especially social media – to drive traffic to your Snapchat and gradually build up a large enough following to warrant verification.
However, there are several ways to speed up the process. A degree of popularity on the platform will be required either way, but a professional PR agency can help you to make sure that your account gets verified quicker and with less effort. If Snapchat is an important part of your branding, it’s well worth getting in touch and getting a gold star as soon as possible. 

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