Believe it or not, there was a time when views on Snapchat Stories were social currency. While many Snapchat users still want to see if their best friend(s) or crush is viewing their story, it is no longer the arms race to the top to see who can get the most views. Those days are long gone. When Instagram launched Stories in August 2016, it was the beginning of the end for the Snapchat Story view count mattering.
To get more views on Snapchat, there a number of Guerrilla marketing methods that can help users get more followers. The best way to get more followers is to make sure you have a public account with a bitmoji. Snapchat acquired Bitmoji in March 2016. Just like how Google gives treatment for YouTube it would make sense that Snapchat would give more impressions to those that are using their other products such as Bitmoji.
Another way to get more views is to post your Snapchat name or QR code on websites with keywords related to what you post about on your stories or Snapchat. If you are a golfer, post your Snapchat name on golf message boards and websites like Hacker’s Paradise and r/golf. This will help the Google algorithm better understand what your Snapchat is all about. When people Google “best Snapchat golf accounts” they will find out.
This is all predicated on the fact that people actually want to find other creators on Snapchat. As discussed in many of our Snapchat articles, the Snap company did very little to encourage users to go public or share publicly. It was a very private app from the outset and this has been the main reason many users do not care about getting more views on their Snapchat stories.
The major problem with the Snapchat Story view race was the fact that no one could see how many views you were actually getting. It was not publicly displayed the way it is today on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Because it was not publicly displayed, the only way for a Snapchat user to “explain” they were popular was to take a screenshot of their dashboard and show it to their followers. This was incredibly braggadocious and not organic in any way. “Hey look, my stories are getting more views than yours.”
On Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, users don’t have to tell anyone else how popular they are. Other users can simply look at the view count on their Reels or videos. In our opinion, this was a huge mistake on Snapchat’s part. If you look at the stock price of Meta (owner of Instagram) and Google (owner of YouTube), it is straight up and to the right. Snapchat has not been able to give shareholders any return. In fact, in the last five (5) years the Snap stock is down 86% while Meta is up 177% and Google is up 268%.
Is it as simple as publicly displaying the follower count and view count for videos. Basically, yes. We live in a very superficial world that people deem popularity and success on how many views a video gets and how many followers/subscribers the creator has. None of this was available on Snapchat for the first decade of existence on the app. They have backtracked and tried to allow creators to have a public profile with some very weird public stats, but it is too little, too late.