A quick thought on social proof in an ephemeral digital age

From a brand point of view, Snapchat is basically neutralizing social proof and the need for having large follower numbers and lots of heralded ‘engagement’. On Snapchat you can’t see how many followers a brand account has, or how many of them engage with the content. In theory, this is great for brands as they don’t have to focus on building followers and encouraging fluffy interactions such as Likes to legitimize their content.

With organic reach being so low on Facebook for example, it doesn’t really matter how many followers you have these days anyway, you still have to pay to reach them. On Snapchat, brands are freed from the pissing contest of building follower numbers. With a push for scalable advertising on the platform underway, this should play to Snapchat’s advantage. Hopefully this approach might cause brands to focus more on how well the content itself is meeting it’s business objectives rather than other vanity metrics.