Last week I excitedly wrote about a social media event I was holding called SnapchaNt. Having already established a solid Snapchat account for Coastal Carolina University I wanted to bolster it up a few notches. Before we started marketing this past Friday’s event we had 304 followers and for each snap we added to our story we received around 150 views.

I was a little nervous on how SnapchaNt would go.

The premise of SnapchaNt was simple. On March 27 we would shut down all of our other social media outlets and communicate with our audience solely through Snapchat. Because our family of social media networks would be absent of content for the day, we would make up for it on Snapchat by snapping interesting images/video all day long.

I didn’t know exactly how SnapchaNt would go. It is definitely not beyond me to create an event that turns out to be a dud. I didn’t know if I would receive a backlash from the folks whose only social media consumption is viewing Facebook from a desktop. Sure we already had 300 people following us but was that the cap? Did any more students out there really want to connect with us on Snapchat?

Although my fears were legitimate, they never materialized. The minute we started to promote SnapchaNt early this past week we had a steady stream of users adding us. By the day of the event, the steady stream had turned into a ferocious stream. Early Friday morning it became apparent that campus was on board with our Snapchat push. Between my intern Jada and myself, we added about 50 images to our Snapchat story. The only hiccup was about mid-afternoon when for whatever reason some Snaps wouldn’t upload to the story.

We sent out fun Snaps but we also sent out informative Snaps.

A couple really cool things happened. First, I ran a few contests where I would send a Snap out inviting our student body to visit my office for a free promo item. That morning I greeted numerous students who walked through the door for a complimentary prize. Second, also through a Snap, I asked students to send us #CCU-related Snaps. Once again, we received a heavy response.

Just a few of the Snaps we received from our audience.

Of course the best thing of all was the tremendous growth our account profited from. At the end of the day Friday, our account had grown from 304 followers at the start of the week to a whopping 851 followers. Better yet, the majority of our Snaps added to our story received well over 600 views.

As you can see from these numbers, SnapchaNt was a huge success.

I would recommend that all universities have a presence on Snapchat. From there, I would definitely encourage that one day be set aside to devote completely to Snapchat in some sort of fun way. I don’t get to say this with all of my events, but SnapchaNt was a massive success. Don’t Blink.