Threads for Brands: What You Need to Know

Our Channels team put together a brief to help brands navigate the sudden emergence of Threads by Instagram. Read on, and reach out if you’d like to discuss more.  

TLDR: Our recommendation for brands 

If you already have an Instagram account, get on Threads ASAP. Start experimenting by sharing content you would have put on Twitter, as well as any recent posts that have performed well on Instagram and other platforms. Interact with users. Threads is in a pre-advertising state, so now is a good time to start building a follower base while the playing field is a bit more even.  

Background: 

Threads by Instagram is an all-new social media platform created by Meta as a direct response to Twitter, which has been plagued with issues since its acquisition by Elon Musk this past fall. As of this morning, more than 30 million people signed up for Threads, putting it on track to become the fastest growing app of all time. To put that in perspective, Twitter currently has 250 million daily active users. Instagram has more than a billion. 

The blog post introducing the app on Instagram.com shares the company’s vision for Threads: “to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas.” A key piece of this statement is the mention of positivity, which contrasts it with what many view as a negative environment on Twitter. And, its current usage reflects this. Current interaction has been playful and friendly with many brands and personal accounts using the platform to share memes about themselves, Twitter, Threads and social media managers. 

Users have been drawn to the UX of Threads – its functional and simple layout invokes the nostalgia of “old Twitter,” with users even noting “Meta is killing Twitter, by launching old Twitter.” 

Paid opportunities are currently TBD, but we assume it will be integrated into the Meta advertising platform in the near future. The platform has hinted at other upcoming updates, including search/discovery, hashtags, a following feed, graph syncing, fediverse support and potentially messaging. 

Here’s how your brand can get started: 

How do Twitter and Threads stack up? 

Threads, of course, has eerily similar features and functionality to Twitter. Users have a main feed where they are able to see posts from other users. Posts can include links, photos and videos, and users can like, repost and reply to updates. That said, there are a few key differences: 

Want to talk more about how your brand can use Threads? Reach out!

Sources

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