My goal in this episode is to let you know what Threads is, the high level of how to navigate it, and to give you an analysis as to how this might or might not fit into your social media outreach. Threads is the fastest growing social media app in history with almost 80 million active users in the first two days. By the end of the fourth day we are watching it head towards 100 million which is an unheard of growth rate. It looks like Threads has broken free of the gravitational pull that keeps new apps flopping on the ground. But the last thing any of us needs is another social media app to divide our limited attention even further. So, if I do my job right here, by the end of the episode you should have a good idea as to whether it is worth your time to get caught up in this platform. New social media platforms are not worth jumping into because they are new or even because it has been successful in gaining the critical mass necessary to be a viable platform. I will encourage you to try it, but then to make a strategic decision as to whether the platform serves you enough to peel off time and resources to add it to your list of outreaches you support. As I present this episode, explain what the app is, and give my early analysis, I want you to consider whether Threads sounds like a better fit for you or whether it will provide you with an opportunity you do not have now. Because, like every other platform, success on Threads will require regular attention to maintain your account and grow. So, if you already have a full outreach load, you should not be asking “would a presence on Threads be good for me”, but, more of, “what would a presence on Threads replace and serve me better”. Diluting your efforts by adding platforms is not sustainable. Treat your productive time as the most valuable resource you have and guard it jealously.

Now, before we move on, I need to set the stage. Threads is very new. It is all of four days old at the time of this writing. I am using past experiences evaluating social media strategy combined with what I am seeing in the new community after being on Threads since, literally, the first minute of official release. But note that this is a new land and it will grow in ways we can’t predict right now. Everything that I am sharing with you as far as advice is done so with the idea that my listener would like help understanding a new platform and learning enough to feel confident starting on Threads. No one knows what the vibe will ultimately be and we will all be figuring that out together as it organically manifests. The value I bring is that I am going to be keeping daily attention towards it and will report how things develop here on the podcast and on my Niche Content Creator Threads account. So, whenever you feel it is time for you to try this out you know where you can go to get the latest in what strategy is appropriate for the platform.

With that framing of this episode, let’s explore this new opportunity.

What is Threads?

From a high level, Threads is meant to be a conversational app. Although it does support both images and video, the primary post is text based. And it is not a blog. You are limited to 500 characters per post. This is an app designed for quick thoughts to toss out into the digital ether to spark conversations.

For those of you who are familiar with Twitter you know the approach well. Threads is considered in direct competition with Twitter because it is the same format. But there are some interesting twists in how Threads has been launched that have already made it a different beast than Twitter.

For Instagram Users: What is the Conversational Format?

But, let’s just step back and you ask yourself if this format works for you. If you have been on Twitter you know exactly whether this format works for you or not so let me help the listeners that are not on Twitter. Meta populated Threads with Instagram users so not everyone is familiar with Twitter. Twitter has not been a solid platform for many niche interests that found a welcoming home on Instagram. So we need to bring the Instagrammer, YouTuber, or TikToker up to speed. Threads will be a good place for you if you have thoughts you want to share. The thoughts can be philosophical, educational, or humorous. Short form video or long form video up to five minutes can be posted, but that is more of a TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube post. While you can do pretty much whatever you want on this app I would caution you against deciding you are just going to port over the approach that works on other apps. If you are going to open up and spend time maintaining another account I would suggest you embrace the atmosphere and audience on that app. It is a valuable use of time to learn the differences in each of these apps you are on. They can’t all be considered the same thing. Also, be sure to read the room. There is a palatable backlash against certain social media conditions. The three things that a general consensus has frowned upon in this first week are nastiness, short form video, and trends. You can tell there has been a significant grassroots resentment building against these things and that is coming out in Threads. And, it is valid. The people coming to Threads are looking for something different than Twitter and Instagram or else they would have stayed where they were.

Just spending some time on the app will give you an idea of the atmosphere, but I will give you an example that might illustrate the differences. I have an account which services my niche, chameleons. On Threads I have posted that I intend to be at a trade show this weekend and asked who will be showing up. I posted a picture of a very blue chameleon and asked, “Is this even real”. Where on Instagram I would post these things with images or video I would not expect that much conversation. I would expect most of the viewers to look at it and move on. But on threads, I am opening the door and expecting people to give short answers to which I will respond back. So, this is what I mean by it being conversational as opposed to being a presentation. You are not up on the stage with the microphone like you are with Instagram, TikTok or Youtube. You are mingling at a party striking up conversations. And, if you are not replying back you won’t get much future interaction. There is a like function and the typical follower count so you can collect digital hearts and names if that fulfills you but the object of this platform is to be interesting in a conversational way. And that is how you will grow.

For Twitter Users: Why is Threads different?

Now, some of you may have tried Twitter and decided it was just not your thing. I am in that boat. Every couple years I promise I am going to work my Twitter accounts and build that following. And after a week or two I decide this is garbage and give up until a couple years after when I try again. Twitter is difficult for two reasons. The first is that it is established and very busy. You will have to fight very hard to get attention and get into the flow to gain followers. And that is only if people from your niche community are already on there. For my chameleon account, for example, it was an uphill battle because there really isn’t a strong reptile keeping community on Twitter. So who was I trying to speak to? Sure I could have scraped together a following. Maybe I could have built the community myself. But what kind of return on investment would that be when I could just hang out on Instagram and have a hungry audience? So if the reason Twitter never became a prominent outreach for you was because of the difficulties finding an audience, Threads may now offer you another chance at the conversational format.

Creating Communities on Threads

The challenge any start-up app is going to face is that you need a critical mass of people who are interested in talking about a certain subject to be on your app or people won’t come. Kind of a catch 22. Nobody wants to come until people are already there. Example, me and a handful of people from my niche community tried to establish a frontier base on the social media app Vero. And it felt like settling a colony across the ocean. We started enthusiastic, but it fizzled when we didn’t reach critical mass. So, what hope does the new social media app, Threads, have? Turns out they solved this problem by hooking it to Instagram. So if you go to your Instagram profile and tap the account hamburger, those are the three lines in the upper right hand corner, the second line in the drop down menu says Threads. You tap that and you get a magic ticket. Tap the ticket and it sends you to download the Threads app. Once on Threads it asks if you want to download your Instagram settings. Agree and it populates your profile and then it asks if you want to follow everyone you follow on Instagram. You have two choices. Say no and you start from ground zero. A fresh slate. I did that on one of my accounts and I am not happy with the result. Yay, fresh slate – which is exactly why starting a new social media account is so frustrating. I suggest you say yes and you can retain your community! I did that with my other two accounts and am much happier!

But, back to the whole idea of porting over your followers. This is a completely genius move because, within 48 hours they ported over entire niche communities. The community is there and it is already hooked together and can hit the ground running. I have had more engagement in the last 36 hours in Threads than I have in weeks on Twitter. Nobody wants to leave their friends and be transferred to a new school. But Threads transferred all your friends over too. And it works very well! Usually, when joining a new social media app, you feel like you have to get a roadmap and figure out where to go.  If you decide to try out Threads you will be dropped right into the middle of the party with people you know.

There are two very interesting aspects of this

1. The initial advantages of being early aren’t as pronounced. The reason why there is this sense of FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, is that in every social media app start, early adopters had a hometown advantage in gaining followers while the competition was lower. But with people choosing to follow who they already follow on Instagram, you already have an audience waiting for you. Presumably all your IG followers chose to continue following you and so you have your community essentially reserved for you even if you show up fashionably late. Of course, this advantage is in place only if you came from Instagram or have a sizable following there to bring over. Otherwise, I am afraid the same hustle to grow is needed as with other apps.
2. You will soon get a wake up call as to how many of your followers are real. If you have been on Instagram any length of time you figure out that your follower number is made up of inactive accounts, bots, fake accounts, and maybe a handful of real people that actually care about what you are posting. It will take a little bit of time for all the fake accounts to switch over. Granted, the EU isn’t on Threads yet. And this test really just measures how many of your followers have come to Threads and chose to have their community follow them. So the number is filtered down a bit. But, it will give you a magnitude! And I think many of us will be sobered by the number. My numbers were slashed significantly for my long term account, but I actually like that. I have been going against the trends and instead of working hard to grow my follower number I have been putting almost all my effort into taking care of the active followers I already have. So, I would suggest not being sad about your follower number being only a shadow of what it was on Instagram. Take this as an opportunity to enjoy knowing how many real people you have. Yes, it is absolutely worth engaging in growth strategies, but I suggest spending at least as much time taking care of the audience you already have. I have enjoyed increased satisfaction with my online efforts with this mindset.

A second chance for those who hate Reels

Threads might be the perfect opportunity for you if you have struggled with playing the short form video game. Many of us have had a rough time translating our outreach into short form format. We may have had a tough time getting a foothold on Tik Tok because of this, but we were forced in a do or die fight when Instagram decided it would be the next TikTok and forced all of us image posters to do short form video. Well, they didn’t force you to do short form video. You had the full option of sitting in the corner and watching your account stagnate if you didn’t want to do TikToks on instagram. So, let none of us get too quick to forget that we are all just numbers to these social media platforms. But, if that was you and you never got terribly comfortable with Reels or TikTok then this is an opportunity to use your words. You can use images and videos, but the words come first on Threads. So, maybe you are not that good at videos or catching the latest trends, but can you weave a conversation or narrative? If your product or strength is in the visual realm then you won’t be leaving Instagram, Tik Tok, or YouTube as the place for your main efforts, but if you have a little extra bandwidth in your day you could consider establishing a basic Threads account and see if it gains traction.

So what do I post?

Say you jump on (and I will tell you how to do that soon) what kind of things should you post on Threads? I am writing this on the fourth day from launch. And it literally feels like a party on the app. Meta essentially took a conversation based app and dumped a bunch of Instagrammers that are used to visual communication and were death marched into making Reels. So most the people on Threads had no idea what to post or how to do this. And so we have had an opening where no one had a strategy. Everyone is just posting whatever they feel like –  and it has been refreshing. Dare I say, it has been fun. All the features aren’t in place yet, the search bar does accounts only, there is hardly an algorithm implemented. And it has that feel of complete freedom. Eventually things will settle down. Already you have the Instagram gurus giving advice as to how to succeed on a platform that no one is succeeding on or telling you how to leverage Threads for your business. Please note this is a perfect picture of how much people care about knowing what they are talking about before telling you they are an expert. Sure we can make guesses, but right now, Threads is a new experience.

For your first post you can write a quick intro to who you are and what you do. Add a photo to the post and send it away. Then start sharing what you are doing day to day in your particular niche. “I just love the wood grain in these cuckoo clocks.” “Has anyone spilled coffee on your white yarn? Maybe I should do more and sell it on Etsy”. Or else be philosophical. We already have social media apps to be on stage and be the entertainer. Threads gives us the opportunity to be more real and share simple thoughts that don’t require pulling out Canva, Photoshop, or some video editor.

So you have the chance to do things with zero preparation or planning.

The Threads Backlash and the future

It is interesting to note that there is already a backlash growing against the social media staples. The community is tired of the gurus and the exhausting quest for the latest trend and the constant churning out of short form video. And, at least at this early point, those things seem out of place on threads. I can’t say what tomorrow, next week, or next month will bring. When you have a platform like this there isn’t a whole lot of control you have over what culture grows from it. Instagram will try to guide it, but even they are under no illusions that they can control it. It is truly a force of its own. So we can’t tell where it will go. I can only share where it is right now and where it looks like it is going. But we will definitely be revisiting the status of Threads in six months and see where it has grown.

At the very least it is fascinating to watch this in real time. In this digital realm, a community of almost 100 million people just appeared and are now interacting. Where this goes will be quite the show.

How to mentally approach Threads

Let’s talk about how to use Threads. Use Threads differently from what you have been doing other places. Don’t just treat it as another platform you are copy and pasting your content to. Yes, you can do that between Reels, TikTok and Youtube shorts because those are basically the same thing. They were meant to be the same thing – for better or for worse (but that is a different topic). But don’t just paste the same stuff you are doing on Instagram. Give a different side of you. It remains to be seen how things will settle in, but I am using Threads like an even more spontaneous form of Instagram stories where I just fire off a thought without any ceremony or preparation. So I am giving a more casual side of me. I am treating my threads audience like I would a closer friend. Obviously this is public so I am not saying I am sharing the results of my latest physical exam, but for every story or reel I post on Instagram, there are ten thoughts that don’t make it to the image selection phase or search for trending sounds. I now can just write those ten thoughts as different posts in Threads as they come to me. No fuss. Will that become the thing that resonates with this new community? To be determined, but I can guarantee it will be different than what we are posting on Instagram because we don’t need a new app to repeat what we are doing already.  Threads better offer a different experience or else we are not going to bother. We are already under enough pressure with all these different social media platforms that we are not looking for a new one to add to the list. Twitter users may be grateful for a replacement where they can do the same thing they were doing there, but Instagram users aren’t looking for a replacement. And since the majority of the new users are from Instagram you can see how that in itself is going to dictate where this goes. We could have all gone onto Twitter if conversational text is what we wanted. Threads needs to give a different experience from both Instagram and Twitter. So approach it like that and find a different side of you to share on Threads.

Of course, if you felt like you didn’t fit on Instagram and were struggling to keep up with Reels and trends this might be your time to shine! I know I did not go willingly into being a Reels poster, but now I don’t usually bother with anything else when I am on Instagram. Perhaps a number of us will find we can go back to what we were comfortable with before. I do not know if we can ever go back. We shall see.

While Threads will still have that addictive quality to it where hours can evaporate, it is a different kind than with Reels or Tik Tok. With reels you turn your brain off and soak up entertainment. It becomes a passive activity. With Threads you will have to read the posts and every post is going to invite interaction. So the doom scroll we know so well and we donate hours of what should be sleep time to is not going to be the same thing here. You have to stop and read each post. So, as a content creator, take advantage of that. How can you use that? Don’t waste it by regurgitating your reels on Threads.

Try not to try so hard

And then there will the inevitable drive to figure out how to grow your follower number on Threads and try to start conversations for the sake of engagement. That is what the app is all about, right? Well, we can tell when someone is trying to get our engagement to juice their numbers, but doesn’t really care about the experience.

That is when you enter into social media guru mode and you ask questions you really don’t care about just to get engagement and rack up your numbers. I can smell those a mile away

What are you doing this weekend?

What is your favorite movie quote?

Nice questions to ask on a first date, but how many of you want to spend your time answering a question you know they don’t care about and won’t read if it is more than ten replies down. The only people that get responses to questions like that are ones that have fan followers who just want to try and get attention from the celebrity or guru or have their name show up on the post in hopes to get followers themselves. I mean, yes, that is the game and if its works for you then have at it, but if you are a Niche Content Creator, then you probably have a mission in what you do. I am no where near a social media prophet that will tell you what will work with your one niche out of the million niches out there, but being authentic means not posting to fill space and a daily quota. It means being mindful of what you post and making it relevant. How do you do that? I say make it personal and something you care about.

The weekend quote? How about “After a long week doing more social media than I should I am faced with a weekend where I can rest and try not to feel like the world is going on without me! What are your plans for this weekend? Social Media blackout or more Threads?” Obviously, share how ever much you are comfortable and is appropriate for the audience you are gathering. But that question shows you are invested in the post and your readers will take note.

Threads Features

Okay, here are your specs and features. Pretty simple really. Each post can be 500 characters so no long winded essays! You can post video up to five minutes and any sized image. People are already experimenting with how to make the most of the ten image per post capacity and when tapped, the ten images will flow together like carousels on Instagram do. So there may be some fun you can have there.

Pressing the pen and paper icon in the middle of your icon bar allows you to put together a post. Very similar to Instagram so this process should come naturally. You do have some tools to avoid the trolls if they become annoying. For every post you can allow anyone to respond (that is default) or else you can restrict it to just people you follow or else just whomever is mentioned in the post.

When you view posts, by pressing the home icon, you will be given a feed where there are people you follow and people the very light algorithm is wondering if you will like.

On each post you have the options of replying with a comment, liking it, reposting it to your home feed, or else quoting it which means reposting it to your feed, but allowing you to make a comment of your own on it.

The heart is to like the post, the speech bubble is to comment, the two arrows chasing each other are to repost or quote, and the paper airplane shares it to your Instagram story, Instagram main feed, or even to your Twitter account. I like that they made a special button to allow you to repost to your Twitter account. Nothing like poking the bear, right?

And, for the inevitable trolls, you can block or mute profiles. Blocking wipes them off your digital existence while mute allows you to show that you are still following them, but you don’t see any of their stuff on your feed. Like that crazy uncle where you have to keep up appearances for the family’s sake, but you really don’t want to hear about lizard people controlling the government day in and day out.

Those features will get your through your experimentation period. There are other features and this is a dynamic situation. Expect to see more and more capabilities pop up every day. The app was launched bare bones and they are actively building the full feature set. I will keep track of what is going on and announce it on the Niche Content Creator Threads account so traipse on down to there and subscribe to that account.

There are two features that are painfully missing for me. The first is the ability to edit your posts. Leave out a word or misspell something and it is permanent unless you delete the post and write it again.

And, if you have multiple accounts, switching between them is a pain because you have to log out and then log back in under the different account. They at least make it easy to pick between the accounts. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and Threads, has promised this is on the list so I’ll just be patient.

How to Grow on Threads

Finally, how do you grow on Threads? Like every other social media app, you grow your following by being part of the action. Comment on other people’s posts with thoughtful and meaningful replies. That gets you noticed by the person posting and the people reading the replies. I know the first inclination is to show off your expertise in your replies, but that generally is annoying and turns people off. Be genuine, be respectful, and be positive. Be the type of person that a stranger scrolling by would say, hey, I’d like more of that in my life.

Conclusion.

So where does that leave us? We are left with an amazing social media experiment that we can watch develop in real time. Threads has been released in a manner and with the timing that it is being populated by shell shocked, battle weary veterans of this format limping in from Twitter and bright eyed innocents from Instagram that are trying to figure out this new posting strategy. What happens when you mix those two demographics together? Well, no one knows. The team at Instagram is keen on doing their best to ensure it does not become the toxic environment that is found on Twitter, but there is only so much you can do. Social Media sites have a life of their own. You can guide them and try to control them, but that sometimes just makes the unruly mob more rebellious. But I can tell you, after the first few days, that there seems to be a strong will among the people to resist toxicity. I see threads being reposted all over saying not to engage with the hate posts. Just do not engage and block them. So there is a real appetite from the people coming from Twitter to not allow this app to slide into what they came from. I would like to be optimistic and believe that we can do this. At least in the short term. When people forget how bad it can be that is when the cycle starts again. I think we have some time before that happens.

I suggest you get yourself an account and try it out. If it is not your thing, then no harm done. If you have been struggling to keep up with trends and reels and tiktoks, then this might be the app that changes your social media experience. As I said, I will be doing a daily post on the Niche Content Creator Threads account on a fact, trick, or tip on how to use Threads integrated in with the standard niche content creation posts. Case in point, I have struggled to really fire up the Niche content Creator account on Instagram. It was difficult to represent the material I want to present in the visual format. But the format presented by Threads is perfect! So, I will be spending the bulk of Niche content Creator time here on Threads. Between Chameleon Academy, Reptile Entrepreneur, and Niche Content Creator outreach, they all have different primary platforms based on how I like sharing that niche material. And Threads, for me, has nicely filled a need and has given me a better platform for some of the ways I want to share. And that is the analysis I’d like you to do. Don’t be on five different platforms because they are popular. Figure out your style and be on the two or three platforms that will allow you to be insanely good at what you do.

Thank you for being here with me. This is an exciting time to be involved with content creation and I look forward to strategically integrating Threads into my digital portfolio. Please drop on by my account on Threads, pickup your daily tip, and let me now what you think of everything that is going on. This is Bill Strand signing off, and I will see you next time.