The Rise of Instagram Threads & Its Impact on Marketers
by Rudi Leung, Founder & Director of Hungry Digital
Instagram Threads is a new text-based social network app by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. It has unique features and advantages for marketers, advertisers, and advertising professionals. Here are some reasons to use this new platform and how to leverage it for your next marketing campaigns:
What is Instagram Threads and How Does It Work?
Threads is integrated with Instagram. You can use your Instagram account to log in to Threads, follow the same accounts, and share your Threads posts to your Instagram stories or as links. This makes it easy to cross-promote your content and reach your existing audience.
Threads allows you to create text-based posts with links, photos, carousels, or videos. This gives you more flexibility and creativity to express your ideas and showcase your products or services. You can also use hashtags, mentions, and emojis to make your posts more engaging and discoverable.
How to Use Threads to Cross-Promote Your Content and Reach Your Existing Audience
Threads is connected with Instagram. You can share your content across both platforms and reach more people with less effort. Here are some ways to do that:
Share your Threads posts to your Instagram stories. This will encourage your Instagram followers to join the conversation on Threads. You can also add interactive elements to your stories to make them more fun and engaging.
Share links to your Threads posts on other platforms. This will drive traffic to your Threads posts from other sources such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or email newsletters. You can also use short URLs or QR codes to make it easier for people to access your posts.
Follow and interact with the same accounts on both platforms. This will help you build relationships and collaborations with them.
How to Create Engaging and Creative Posts on Threads with Links, Photos, Carousels, and Videos
Threads allows you to create rich and diverse posts with different types of media. This means that you can showcase your products or services in various ways and appeal to different preferences and tastes. Here are some tips on how to create engaging and creative posts on Threads:
Use links to direct people to more information or details about your products or services, or invite them to take action such as sign up, buy, or download something.
Use photos to show off your products or services visually, highlighting their features, benefits, or quality or showing how customers can use or enjoy them.
Use carousels to display multiple photos or videos in one post, showcasing different aspects, angles, or variations of your products or services or telling a story or a sequence of events related to them.
Use videos to demonstrate your products or services in action, showing how they work, perform, or solve a problem for customers.
How to Foster Positive and Respectful Conversations on Threads with Tools and Guidelines
Threads is designed to be a space for sharing what matters without being distracted by negativity or toxicity. It has tools and guidelines that help users have productive and civil conversations on the app. Here are some of them:
Control who can mention or reply to you by adjusting your settings in the app. You can also mute or block specific accounts if you don't want them to contact you at all.
Add hidden words to filter out unwanted replies by using the hidden words feature in the app. This will automatically hide any responses that contain those words from your view.
Report or block abusive accounts that violate the app's Community Guidelines by using the report or block buttons in the app.
How to Expand Your Reach and Control Your Data with the ActivityPub Protocol
Threads is planning to support the ActivityPub protocol, which means that Threads will soon be compatible with other open and interoperable social networks that use the same protocol, such as Mastodon and WordPress. This will allow you to do the following:
Reach new audiences and communities by following and interacting with users from other social networks that use the ActivityPub protocol and vice versa.
Control your data and privacy by choosing where it is stored and who can access it using different servers or instances that use the ActivityPub protocol.
How to Experiment and Innovate on Threads with New Features and Improvements
Threads is still in its early stages of development, meaning there are many opportunities for experimentation and innovation. Meta is working to quickly add new features and improvements to the app based on user feedback and demand. Some of the areas they are working on include:
Search and discovery functions
Tools and resources for creators
Direct messaging between users
Branded content tools
As an early adopter of Threads, you can have a competitive edge over other marketers who are still waiting for the app to mature. You can also provide feedback and suggestions to Meta on improving the app for your needs and goals.
Conclusion
Instagram Threads is a promising new platform that offers many benefits for marketers who want to connect and engage with their audience in a new way. You can download the app and start exploring it yourself.
For more tips and best practices, you can check out some of the resources below: