Threads is a new social media platform from Instagram, also owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. The app – on mobile only for now – is the company’s Twitter competitor and will be very familiar to everyone who has used Twitter.
Thanks to its connection to Instagram, Threads has grown quickly with more than 100 million users with just a week of launching.
It’s way too early to share anything resembling “best practices” for Threads and the platform itself is still being built. Instagram has promised new features like a following feed, edit button, search, and array of familiar aspects for any social media app.
The good news is we’ve been here before. Does anyone remember Meerkat or Clubhouse? Before joining any new social media platform, you need to answer these key questions about how it fits in with your campaign’s strategy. In this post, we dig into some specific considerations for Threads in July 2023.
Cross Post From Twitter
Threads is a facsimile of Twitter so it makes sense to cross post your content between each platform. Unfortunately, there’s no way to automate that process right now. Text is the primary content type, but it also supports links, images, and video.
Adam Mosseri, who leads Instagram, said the Threads app will not “encourage” political content and further clarified that it won’t “discourage or down-rank news or politics.”
Growing Your Threads Following
The challenge of launching any new social media platform is reaching scale and achieving the network effects that make it worth joining for new users. Because Threads is connected to Instagram, they’ve made it easy for Thread users to find and follow the same accounts giving the new app a significant boost.
Before you head to Threads, be aware that it is (for now) inextricably linked to your Instagram account and while you can deactivate your Threads profile, the only way to delete a Threads account is to delete the accompanying Instagram account.
No Advertising (Yet)
Threads doesn’t offer any advertising options so all following and engagement has to happen organically for now. According to Axios’ reporting, Threads will introduce ads when the “user base reaches a critical mass.” Given Meta’s commitment to staying in the political advertising game, campaigners should expect Threads to be another platform for targeting when they do launch.
Campaigns can also work with influencers to create branded content on the app as long as they follow existing policies.
Understand the Fediverse
Instagram says it plans to make Threads “part of the fediverse, a social network of different servers operated by third parties that are connected and can communicate with each other.” This is the same technology powering Mastodon and Truth Social. This offers an interesting opportunity to address concerns about how algorithms filter content, but users should also be aware that this will make it more difficult for their content and app interactions to be deleted when they go to other servers.
Conclusion
I’m playing around with Threads personally if you want to give me a follow – mostly personal interests for now – and there’s no reason you shouldn’t check it out either. Unless your campaign already has a meaningful following on Instagram, its focus should be on the main Facebook app where 52% of voters login every day.
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