Snapchat’s not just for teenagers anymore — make room for Hillary Clinton, who just joined the social messaging app on Monday morning, according to a tweet posted to her official account.
Clinton’s first Snapchat story, posted Monday morning, featured a photo of a sign that featured an old photo of Clinton with the words “Yaaas, Hillary!” and the caption read: “Hello, Snapchat.”
Snapchat has seen rapid growth among younger audiences — according to analytics firm ComScore, 71% of Snapchat’s U.S. users are between the ages of 18-34, and 45% of their users are between 18-24. For presidential candidates, Snapchat is increasingly becoming an important platform for connecting with millennial voters – many of whom could be voting for the first time in 2016.
So far on the Democratic side, Clinton is the second candidate to set up an account on Snapchat – Martin O’Malley was first, joining Snapchat prior to his campaign launch to tease his announcement. On the Republican side, more candidates are experimenting with Snapchat – but that may be in part because the Republican presidential field is much more crowded than the Democratic side. Republicans who have established Snapchat accounts include Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker.
It’s not Clinton’s first foray into experimenting with Snapchat. During her campaign kickoff rally in New York in June, though the campaign had no official account on Snapchat at the time, Clinton’s campaign partnered with Snapchat to make use of its “Live Story” product, showcasing a collection of various Snapchat users’ Snaps from the event. Jeb Bush also used the Live Story feature to showcase user photos from his campaign launch in June in Miami, Florida.
The Clinton campaign has been gradually ramping up their social media efforts to include many new and emerging platforms, establishing profiles for Clinton on Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and now Snapchat. Clinton also recently hosted her first Facebook Q&A, answering questions from voters on Facebook.
Nisha Chittal