Instagram Threads: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly One Year Later

Andréa Jones (00:00):
Let's talk about Threads. It has been one year since the birth of Meta's latest platform Threads, and in this podcast episode, I want to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Should you jump on it as a business owner, should you encourage your clients to be on there as a marketer? Let's get into it all. You are listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andréa Jones,

(00:36):
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(01:19):
Hi. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the pod. I feel like I haven't done a solo episode in a while. I don't know, maybe that's just how I'm feeling today, but I am invigorated because the Threads has me snatched.

(01:33):
I'm loving it over there. It's a beautiful community. I feel like as a marketer, I'm proud of the fact that I got in on the ground floor. I was there day one with my profile, but I want to cover in this episode what's changed over the past year and how you can approach this as a business owner because the vibe on Threads is very much let's hang out and be besties when in reality being besties doesn't pay the bills. Okay, so how do we use this as business owner? How do we thrive on there? What's working, what's not? I'm going to get into it all today, but I want to start off with something that Threads did really interestingly that no other app has done so far, which is they celebrated their one year birthday very uniquely. So if you don't know Threads, one year birthday was in July, so we're just a month past that and they gave every user who posted about it, a little birthday hat on their profile picture, and this caused people to talk more about the platform.

(02:38):
Shortly after that, they reached 200 million users, and I can't help but notice the correlation between tapping into the gamification of celebrating their birthday and the increase in their user base. And when they first launched, they launched within a couple months, they had a hundred million users. So in the past year to be able to double that is extraordinary. There's no other social app that has done this in this way. Now, Threads is part of the Meta Family and Threads was birthed as a direct competitor to Twitter. So I know that there's a lot happening into why this app has been successful. The timing of it all Threads is rising as Twitter is downfall. And yes, I know it's called X, I still struggle with the name because X to me sounds like a porn site and it'll forever be Twitter in my heart. But the downfall of X, formerly known as Twitter, the rise of a community text-based platform like Threads and the fact that it's owned by Meta.

(03:39):
So they were able to leverage Instagram and make it really easy for people to sign up to Threads by just using their Instagram account all worked in their favor. So let's start with the good of why I think Threads could be a good choice for you as a business owner. The first reason is that Threads fosters personal connections. So the very nature of the app is that you're in community. On the app, there's kind of like a dressed down version of yourself. So if we think of LinkedIn as buttoned up business casual, your suit, your tie, your professional Instagram is still dressed up, but maybe in more of a late night way, maybe you're in the evening gown Threads to me feels like you're in your sweats, you've got your ponytail. Or if you're like me, your wig is off, your sleeping cap is on, you're ready, right?

(04:42):
Threads feels like that. It feels relaxed, it feels approachable. And as someone who really enjoys social media, I feel like I don't have to put it on to be in Threads. I can just share my little thoughts and people are ready and waiting to connect. There are a few people who are doing this really well on Threads as big brands. I think of the calm app that comes to mind. So Calm is a meditation app, and one of the things that they're doing on Threads that I love is it feels like a person sitting next to you in a cubicle like your positive friend is giving you little quips throughout the day to help you get through your day. It's a very personality forward way to approach this casual platform. And it works for them because the whole goal of the app is to bring calm.

(05:34):
So they're bringing calm through their text-based posts that feels very casual and very approachable. So for example, they posted a recent thread that says, Hey friend, please stop beating yourself up for that thing. You're beating yourself up about you deserve kindness and forgiveness. And that sort of post just feels like a friend giving you some advice. Yes. Are they a meditation app? Yes. Are they looking for app downloads? Of course. But this play is a brand awareness play that doesn't really rely on saying, go download my app. Go download my app, go download my Lap app. Instead, they're playing into being there when they need you to be and then leaning into your curiosity as a human and going, we know Calm, they're here for us. Let's go download the app and experience their product. Okay, so the first thing that's working for Threads is the personal connections.

(06:31):
The second thing is that there are no ads. I don't care what people say about ads, and I recognize as a platform, we need ads to survive, otherwise we'd have to pay as the people using the app, we'd have to pay to be able to experience their product. I get it, I get ads. And the fact that the feed is ad-free right now feels like a brush of fresh air. It feels like I felt this past weekend when we went and walked for hours with the kids, we were out and about in the hot sun and I got an iced tea. Oh, that first sip of iced tea felt so refreshing on a hot day. That's how Threads feels right now. It's calm, it's refreshing to have a feed that isn't cluttered with ads. And I think this is important as business owners because when we then try to create content that feels like an ad, it can be dismissed.

(07:29):
It's almost like when we were back in the day when we fast forward through ads on TiVo. It feels like that though. Now YouTube is making us watch the ads. So we're back to the point where we're forest fed ads. Now Threads feels like a respite from that, and that is one of the things that's mad about the ads. So we'll talk about that in a sec. Okay. The third thing that I love about Threads is that the content feels unprocessed. There is a certain charm into these less polished, these casual, real-time posts that feel like you just rolled out of bed and you thought of it and you're posting it. It feels like you're in a giant group chat with your friends. And this level of authenticity is also refreshing right now. When we think about marketers like myself and some of you listening, we tend to ruin things.

(08:20):
We notice people are paying attention. We notice where they're paying attention, and then we show up and we're like, Hey, we know you're just hanging out here, but can you also buy my thing? And so the refreshing piece of Threads right now is the charming nature of having posts that don't feel like you're being sold to. Okay, we all know there's businesses on here, they're selling, we get that and it doesn't feel like they're selling to us. Wendy's is doing a great example of this, so the OGs will know this, but Wendy's had a time on Twitter formerly known as Twitter back in the day. So did brands like Taco Bell where they had this sarcastic self-aware situational humor to their posts that brought more awareness to the brand, and Wendy's is bringing that to Threads. One of the posts I recently like said, nugs, sorry, in a world full of regular nugs be a saucy nug or I don't really care LOL.

(09:26):
So it feels like yes, Wendy's is talking about nuggets and specifically they're sassy nuggets, but it also feels less like they're trying to sell something and more like they're just trying to be funny. I will mention this in the ugly side of this type of marketing as well because it can be challenging, but right now as a consumer, a person on Threads, it is incredibly enjoyable to see brands that are familiar to me show up and show their less polished side. The last thing that I love about Threads, it's really good right now, is their algorithm. It feels like tiktoks algorithm with a twist of course. So tiktoks algorithm is constantly searching and trying to match your interests with the content on the app, and it starts from a blank page with some of the top content on the app, and then based on your behavior, it'll start delivering more content to you.

(10:23):
Threads feels a lot like that except they have way more information on you, good or bad. Meta owns Threads and they have come out and said that they're using data from Facebook, from Instagram to help you with delivering content on Threads. So it feels like they're delivering content to me based on my 10, 15 year history on these apps. And so the feed to me actually feels quite curated right from the beginning. Yes, I did import my Instagram followers, but that was a year ago and I think only one 10th of them came over. So I would say maybe a thousand people came over. The rest have been through networking and engaging on Threads and through teaching the algorithm the kind of content that I want to consume. And so for me, the algorithm is absolutely fantastic. I am loving every second of it, can't get enough of it.

(11:22):
It feels very curated to me. And also what I like about Threads is that they have a for you feed, but then they also have a following feed and you can do feeds based on certain topics. So if anyone's familiar with the tweet deck back in the day, you used to be able to set up different feeds based on your preferences. You can do that with the desktop version of Threads, which is just beautiful. As someone who prefers using desktop for a lot of these things, it feels very beautiful to me. Have different feeds for the different ways that I use Threads. So their algorithm is working over time. It feels curated. They give you the option of doing your following feed where you can see things in sequence from the people you follow. Though I still stick with the algorithmic feed because it delivers the content that I want to see.

(12:17):
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(12:59):
Alright, so that's the good things about Threads. Let's get into the bad thing about Threads is that they're really struggling. They're really struggling with time content. I know that they are algorithm based. I know that they're delivering content to the community, not just based on who they follow, but based on who they interact with. However, when major world events happen, and we've had several happen in the past couple of weeks, Threads could not keep up. Okay, Threads could not keep up. I ended up going to Twitter and logging in for the first time in almost a year to get some of the real time updates and to see what was going on. Specifically, this was for President Trump's former President Trump's assassination attempt. I went to Threads, I didn't see anything, and it was about two hours after it happened. Then I went to X, formerly known as Twitter, and immediately saw some things.

(13:55):
So I know Meta isn't a fan of news, and if it can't win against a platform like X, formerly known as Twitter for real-Time News, it's always going to be one step behind. And so they're still working out the balance between having an algorithm that is preference based and having an algorithm that recognizes when major world events happen. I also think that they have a larger focus. Meta as a company has a larger focus on positive news versus negative news, whereas X, formerly known as Twitter, especially run by Elon Musk, seems to stir the pot. It seems like they really want to mess things up for our mental health sake. And Meta is not trying to do that at all. So I think that can be good and bad. Now also the bad it's owned by Meta and we know how in the news Meta is with privacy and trust issues.

(15:03):
And for a lot of people and brands, this could be a big deal breaker. Meta has been making a lot of changes in the past four years, but prior to that, they would sell our data to other companies and those companies would use our data to market more things to us. Now, Meta says that they're not doing that any longer. However, we don't know. We don't know. We go off of their word. They're constantly being investigated for this, that and the other thing. So if you have challenges or hesitations about how your data is being used, I can almost guarantee you that Meta is using Threads as a training ground for something. And my guess would be their new Meta AI product. If this is like the button down, dress down version of how people think, behave, interact, they're using that data to do other things.

(15:59):
And they've already said as much that they're using the things that we post on Threads to deliver more customized ad experiences to us on Instagram and Facebook. So there you have it. Next bad thing is their algorithm quirks. As much as I love their algorithm, if you actually want to find something intentionally, it's almost impossible. Their search functionality is terrible, especially after experiencing something as nuance as TikTok. TikTok search is actually quite amazing and I thoroughly enjoy it. And even Instagram searching for something, you have different parameters. You can search different posts, you can search hashtags, you can search usernames. Threads is just one search box. You put it in and it just gives you the most popular thing, not the most relevant thing. So for example, I was searching for someone's name and I typed their first name, last name, but their business name is their last name.

(16:58):
Tell me why Threads couldn't figure that out. We both follow each other, but Threads couldn't figure out who I was trying to search for. And it was a frustrating user experience because I had to try to think of that person's username, which is their last name for the business to try to find their account. Not a good user experience at all. All right, lastly, let's get into the ugly. We talked about the good, we talked about the bad. Now let's talk about the ugly. The Threads now has scheduling, and I know that this is good for the most part. We want to be able to pre-schedule our posts. We want to be able to work ahead a little bit. However, what happens naturally as human beings and business owners is that the second that we start scheduling our posts, we start overthinking them. And when we start overthinking them, they come a little bit more planned and a little bit more structured.

(17:53):
So I started off by saying the casual nature of Threads makes it charming. It's why threats is charming and we lose that charm when it feels like we're being advertised or when it feels like someone bulk uploaded a bunch of old tweets into Threads. It's just not the vibe on the platform. And scheduling still is very convenient for a lot of people, especially for those of us who run our clients through the platform and we're managing our clients. Scheduling can be great. However, this is part of the downside of Threads, is that the biggest way to get value out of Threads is through networking in the community. It's not your posts, it's other people's posts. Okay? So it's actually commenting, liking, I almost said retweeting, but it's like quote posting, oh, come on, we've got to say retweeting, right? I think that's forever in our lexicon.

(18:55):
Quote-tweeting, taking a post, resharing it with your thoughts on top. This is the nature of the platform. And if it feels like someone's throwing stuff at the wall and not actually getting a sense of what's in the room, getting a feel for what's in the room, it can be very challenging for those pre-scheduled posts to survive. And most of your energy on Threads needs to be on community building, not on posting. I also think Threads is not for everyone. If you have a personality driven brand, whether you are a personal entity, like you are a speaker, you're a course creator, you're a podcaster, great, or whether your brand has a strong personality like calm, Wendy's great. Those work really well. If you have a brand that's neutral, or if you have content that's neutral, that kind of content isn't working as well right now, you need to have a perspective and the perspective kind of needs to be global.

(19:56):
So one of the downsides, biggest downside of Threads right now is there are some niches and some industries that just don't work well on Threads. Specifically my local communities, local communities, local brands may find it very challenging on Threads because of its algorithm and it's global appeal. So for instance, my husband owns the Fort Erie radio here locally where I live in Fort Erie. And yes, we do have a Fort Erie. I keep saying we like, I own it, it's his company. But y'all know I give him my little thoughts. Yes, there's a Threads account for Fort Erie Radio, but it's crickets because Fort Erie people, first of all, they're not on Threads, and second of all, nobody cares about a local radio station on a site that has global appeal. Now, there are brands that are doing this well, there's a Channel four, I'm just looking it up now.

(20:49):
It's called Channel four in the UK. They are a local tv, but I don't know, I actually don't even know what they do, but I follow them because their posts have me tickled. So for instance, they posted this last year, very pleased to have our Threads, social media strategy described as unhinged and baffling in all company meetings today. So it feels very much like the social media manager who's writing the account is being a little cheeky, but I didn't even click on the website. It says channel four, so I'm assuming it is just a channel on tv. I don't even know what this is, and yet I follow them and I enjoy their posts. So as far as driving brand awareness for this particular company, it's a local based company. I'm assuming you have to be in the look, I'm guessing, based on their language.

(21:46):
They're in the UK somewhere. I actually don't even know. And so that's part of the challenge with being a local brand is some of this. We don't know who you are as a local company because of the way that Threads is positioned as a global entity. I do think in the future this will be alleviated with their addition of tags. So they have their own version of tagging. You can only do one hashtag, so to speak, per post. And I think you can find local community there. I have also been connected with a ton of Canadian content creators who I wouldn't have found previously by them simply saying, Hey, if you're in Canada, I'd love to follow you. And so I've connected to people that way, but it'll be interesting to see how the Threads algorithm matures to be able to help us find our local community as well.

(22:39):
I'll also say this, have you ever heard the phrase the second mouse gets the cheese? It's a little grim and it's how I feel about new marketing avenues. One of the downsides of it being new is that as a brand, you don't know what you're getting into. You don't know if it's a trap. You don't dunno if you're going to dump a ton of time, energy, and money into it. So if you have a social media platform that is working for you currently and you're limited on time, I don't recommend starting on Threads. I have seen some really great results on Threads, and I'll talk about that in a sec. But for a lot of people, it's going to take a lot of time to start seeing results on here. And if you don't have the time to spend on here, you may want to skip it.

(23:29):
And if you're finding yourself frustrated by other platforms, lack of visibility, you are struggling to be heard Threads. Is it for you, ma'am? Yes, sir. Them Threads, is it for you? Okay. I have booked speaking gigs through Threads. I've sold products through Threads. I've had people sign fill out my wait list form for services from Threads. I've had podcast interviews booked through Threads in the short amount of time that I've been on Threads. I haven't seen this much immediate success on a social platform before. Do I spend a lot of time on here? Yes, because I'm studying it and I'm testing a lot, and also I spend a lot of time on the other platforms as well. I'm looking at you TikTok, and I haven't seen as much direct success as I have on Threads, and I'm truly, truly enjoying the platform. So if you want to learn more about Threads on how to use it, I am hosting a free workshop inside of my community.

(24:31):
You don't have to pay extra if you're already a Savvy Social School member, which is amazing. It's included in your membership where I'll be breaking down how to use Threads for business. How exactly do you set up your profile? What do you post on Threads? How do you build community? How do you make sure that it actually is converting? What are we tracking here to make sure that this is working for you and all of the above. I'm covering that in a workshop inside of my community at the Savvy Social School. Come on in and join us. If you have a question, DM me on Instagram. I'm at onlinedrea, I will answer your question there. But I'm really excited to teach this workshop and show you not just what I've done for myself, but what I've seen others do for themselves as well. So join me then. But that's been everything for this podcast episode. I'll be back at you soon with a new episode. I appreciate you sticking with me. That's all for today. Bye.