Last year Jen Betts, the president of Pivotal Public Relations, a Los Angeles–based lifestyle PR firm, went back to school—Snapchat school, to be specific. “It was a free class offered by a third party as part of Social Media Week,” she says.
She was moved to hit the books, as it were, because of a shift in client asks that began about a year ago. Instead of enlisting Betts’s firm to help them get mentions in celebrity tabloids, clients wanted Snapchat impressions. And that required a very different approach.
“They were asking for Snapchat monetization and participation at events,” she says. “I took the class to perfect my usage of all the different features”—and ultimately to make her clients’ stories more engaging.
For more on Snapchat, watch this Fortune video:
Betts has embraced her new skills, but they have made her job trickier. Because Snapchat content is ephemeral, Betts has to hound “influencers” (whom brands pay to snap on their behalf) to publish more photos and videos to fulfill their contracts. She also has to pay for analytics from a third party because Snapchat doesn’t provide them.
It’s all a part of keeping up with her customers, Betts says. “Their views on Snapchat were higher than on Instagram. I was like, ‘I have to get on this. I have to figure out what’s going on.’ ”
This article is part of the Future of Work article from Fortune’s July 1, 2016 issue. Click here to see the entire package.
