Cynopsis Digital, a sister pub of Cablefax, ran a webinar this week focused on how brands can use Snapchat—one of the most exciting and fastest growing platforms—to connect with younger audiences. It was mainly for advertisers, but there were many takeaways applicable to the broader video ecosystem as a whole.

First off, Snapchat is not actually a social platform, said Kerry Perse, US Director for social media agency OMD Word. It calls itself a platform that connects people on a 1-to-1 basis. And the interactions are very, very frequent. We’re talking 22 times a day on average—and scale is increasing. There were 150 million snaps a day in June 2013. That number has increased to 350 million today.

User behavior on the platform is “a bit like a party,” in the sense that they post photos constantly throughout the day, Perse said. “It’s essentially telling a story… and a way to connect with friends over and over again.”

According to Reed Berglund, CEO/Co-founder of fullbottle, a marketing technology platform specializing in social video, the platform creates a very unique opportunity for brands because it’s essentially “appointment watching.” For instance, Snapchat’s “Our Story” feature curates the best snaps from users surrounding a specific, designated event. So users can watch an entire series of snaps about, say, a music festival—but it’s only around for 24 hours. That presents an opportunity for advertisers to create video within that curated story and be a part of a must-see event.

Snapchat’s users are of the hard-to-reach millennial set. But brands need to focus on what’s engaging to the audience first, and then create a branded version of that, noted Alan Bearch, Co-Founder of social content creation agency McBeard. The key, aesthetically, is to aim for “perfect imperfection.” Trying to simply rough it up enough is not the way to go. Brands need to find the right voice, the right aesthetic and the right pace when deploying content.

For the webinar in full, go here.

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