Do you need a Threads brand strategy? Should you rush out and sign your brand up for Threads the second you’re done reading this article? Maybe not you personally… though testing the Threads waters could be a great 20% project for someone on the team.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
What is Threads?
Threads is Meta’s answer to Twitter. With all the madness going down at Twitter HQ (assuming Twitter still has an HQ), it’s a particularly well-timed answer. Of course, that timing is no coincidence.
Threads is basically a text-first iteration of Instagram. From the Threads launch press release of July 5, 2023:
“Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests – including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond.”
In just five days, Threads hit 100M signups. Signups are very different from active users — the truest measure of a platform or service — but any way you slice it, 100 million is a lot.
Threads is not the only contender for the text-first social crown; Mastodon, Bluesky, Post and others each offer a different take. And all struggle with the age-old chicken <> egg problem. With 100M signups and counting — and an easy path for Instagram users to get started on Threads — the platform looks to have critical mass.
Do you need a Threads brand strategy? With Threads passing 1 million signups in 1 hour and 100 million in five days... probably. Via Statista
In just five days, Threads hit 100M signups. Signups are very different from active users — the truest measure of a platform or service — but any way you slice it, 100 million is a lot.
Threads is not the only contender for the text-first social crown; Mastodon, Bluesky, Post and others each offer a different take. And all struggle with the age-old chicken <> egg problem. With 100M signups and counting — and an easy path for Instagram users to get started on Threads — the platform looks to have critical mass.
For marketers, Threads is a rare blue ocean opportunity. Will it always be that way? No. Will Threads stand the test of time? Unclear. With Meta behind it though, we can at least be confident it won’t fail for lack of funding.
Making Threads an Instagram initiative as opposed to a Facebook one was a smart choice. Both Instagram and Facebook are Meta platforms but where the former has a mostly positive reputation the latter… well, not so much.
How to Create a Brand Threads Page
Brands that jump into the Threads frey can get a first-mover advantage. The risk is low, and the extra work required is negligible.
The beauty of Threads is that you don’t have to know what to post, because at this point, no one really does. Currently, Threads is a lot of inside baseball; while Threads doesn’t have a “trending topics” page or hashtags (or ads or bots… yet), it’s pretty clear that the #1 topic for discussion on Threads is Threads.
The most popular Threads content strategy seems to be talking about your nascent Threads content strategy.
That will change, of course. The point is, Threads is in the “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks” phase. That’s a potential opportunity for brands willing to give it a go, create their Threads brand page, and see how Threads might fit into their overall content and community strategy.
Assuming you have an Instagram account for your brand, getting started on Threads is as simple as grabbing Threads for Android or iOS and signing in. Threads makes it easy to follow and be followed by your Instagram community. In other words, if you’re active on Instagram, you’ve got a great head start on Threads.
Downsides of Thread for Brands
As it stands, Threads represents a low risk, unknown reward scenario for brands.
How Threads will deal with content moderation, brand safety, paid boosting, etc. remains a question mark. That said, this is Meta, progenitor of Facebook, the company that scaled Instagram to near ubiquity. It feels a bit like the Wild West right now, but it’s not.
Perhaps the biggest downside of Threads for marketers is that none of the social media management tools (Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Hey Orca!, Loomly, etc. etc.) support it. Posting and interacting on Threads is a manual, mobile-only process and will remain such for the immediately foreseeable future.
Find Your Threads Brand Strategy
Despite the fact that brands can’t currently manage Threads content with their chosen social media management tool — or even in a desktop app — the best case for brands to try Threads is that it’s really not a ton of extra work.
To start out, marketers can pretty well apply their Twitter strategy 1:1 on Threads.
For most brands, Twitter isn’t a primary social network, it’s an “also” platform. So if you’re sharing blog posts, news, and insights on Twitter, doing the same on Threads represents an incremental effort.
Assuming Threads sticks around — and we all know someone who hopes it doesn’t — brands that get in early will be ahead of the game.
For brands considering Threads, it really comes down to this: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Oh, and if you want to watch us figure out Threads as we go, follow BENlabs on Threads.
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