Benjamin Kapelushnik, aka Benjamin Kickz, is someone that is often featured on DJ Khaled’s Snapchat story in 2015. If you follow DJ Khaled, you will often see Ben being asked, “How’s business?” His response is almost always, “Boomin!”
With DJ Khaled being huge in the fashion world, it makes sense that younger entrepreneur Ben has both a personal and professional relationship with one of the most popular Snapchat sensations. From the outset of Snapchat making stories public, DJ Khaled has been one of the most influential users of the Snapchat app. While he did not create the definition of “influencer”, he was definitely one of the early adopters of stories on Snapchat.
Since Snapchat Stories came out in October 2013, it has been an arms race for all social media platforms to offer users a way to share their everyday activities without them remaining permanent. Instagram released stories on August August 2nd, 2016 and Facebook followed by releasing stories on March 28, 2017. Of course, TikTok created a buzz by allowing users to lip sync to music, when the app was music.ly. This transformed into a way to tell short stories with 10 second videos.
What has been interesting about the evolution of stories on social media is how businesses have used them. Almost every business that is successful on social media has adopted some type of video content strategy. Whether it is on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels or Facebook Videos, there are ways to reach an audience algorithmically. There are thousands of businesses that have less followers than they get views on short videos. Some accounts we have tracked average about 250,000 views per video but have less than 50,000 followers. This is unheard of, in terms of reach.
Whether you are a real estate lawyer in Texas or a dermatology office in Clearwater, Florida, there are opportunities to reach a broader audience with stories or short form videos. DJ Khaled set the standard on Snapchat by videoing himself getting lost on a jetski just off Miami Beach. This gave Dr. Miami the idea to use Snapchat to get more customers and the rest is history.