With Snapchat recently adding Promoted Places as a promotional option on the Snap Map, it may be worth familiarizing yourself with how the app ranks the content that it highlights to each user on the map display, which could help to improve your exposure to users.
Snap provides detailed explainers for all of its surfaces, and how it ranks content for each, including various pointers that could improve your understanding.
For the Snap Map, Snap provides three key notes:
- Snapchat uses human moderation to decide what content is eligible to appear on Snap Map. “Our automoderation tools are trained to detect and exclude and/or remove content in violation of our terms. Human moderators are trained to do the same, for example when content is reported on the Map or escalated for human review by our automoderation tools. We have also put in place technical controls to limit user content from more sensitive places such as schools, hospitals and adult venues appearing on the Map.”
- Snapchat uses related Snaps from nearby locations to provide context for map listings. “For example, if someone uploads a Snap of them eating a hamburger, we may tag it as such so it can show up with other food content or may be associated with a hamburger restaurant.” This is also overseen by human moderators.
- Snap Map displays info based on recency, and based on your activity: “For example, when you view City Stories in London, you’ll be more likely to see Stories that were recently posted in London. In contrast, if you check out events or popular places on the Map, the content is shown in chronological order, meaning you will see the most recent content last.” Place Stories, meanwhile, are ranked based on how many people have Favorited each post. Snap will also highlight places to you that your friends have recently visited by showing you their Snaps that have been tagged with Places.
So, if you want to maximize your Snap Map listing, this is how Snap decides what to show each user, which could help to guide your thinking on how to optimize for this content.
I mean, it’s largely not something that you can influence, at least in terms of content ranking and display, as it’s based on a range of variable factors. But if you did want to improve the presentation of content displayed for your shop’s listing, you could ask people to engage with posts in your Place Story, and/or tag their Snaps with the location.
And again, with Snap recently rolling out Promoted Places, that could be an additional promotional consideration.
Snapchat says that more than 350 million Snapchatters use the Snap Map every month, so it also has relatively large audience reach.
Interesting notes either way.
