etition with Twitter (X.com), Instagram: tying the threads together

The sudden appearance of the event was unexpected.

It behaved like Twitter. It acted like Twitter. It promised to be more friendly than Twitter.

Meta’s Threads was Meta’s suddenly unveiled Twitter competitor, linked to Meta’s Instagram, and intended to win hearts, minds, and engagement from Twitter users who were dismayed at Elon Musk disrupting the long-established town square of Internet. The disruption isn’t over, but Twitter doesn’t know what it used to be.

Threads reached 100 million members in a matter of days. This is a remarkable achievement, but it’s made even more impressive by the ease at which Instagram users (and there are two billion) can join. Recent reports have stated that the number and amount of time spent using the app has dramatically declined .

What does Threads mean to marketers? It’s still not available for advertising. However, given Meta’s capabilities, this will surely change soon. Influencers and brands rushed to claim the new social territory. The big names began to appear, from Netflix, Wendy’s, and Nike, to Kim Kardashian, and Jennifer Lopez.

Brands engage early on Threads

Are they getting engagement, though? Reports suggest that Threads is a more effective platform for brands than Twitter. In July, the website Planet conducted a comparison of 30 leading brands on Twitter with Threads. They looked at interactions such as followers, likes and responses.

87% of brands analysed generated 8x more likes in Threads than they did on Twitter. The majority of comparisons were based on identical posts. Threads posts also received more replies, with five brands receiving more comments than Twitter.

The question is whether the early success of the report will continue to be a success, given the recent decline in active usage.

Picking Up the Threads

What should organizations and brands that have not yet adopted Threads do? We spoke with two executives who are already dealing with these questions from clients — Krishna Subramanian is the co-founder and CEO of Captiv8, an intelligence platform that focuses on social media, and Bob Lynch is the founder and CEO SponsorUnited, which offers a tech platform to support sponsorship.

Subramanian said, “I believe brands should create content specifically for Threads.” Subramanian said, “I don’t believe you can simply take Instagram content and post it on Threads. “You can’t take anything from Twitter and transfer it to Threads because the audience on this platform expects different things.”

Brands are able to find an audience on Threads almost immediately because their Instagram audience can be easily transferred over. It can be difficult to gain traction with most social media launches because they start from scratch. Subramanian wondered, “Why wouldn’t a platform launch a rival — maybe YouTube launches its own version or Twitter or Threads to transfer their users?” Subramanian mused, “Maybe it isn’t 50% of the market; perhaps 10% will be enough to generate engagement and impact.”

Dig deep: Why social media marketing is important

Subramanian believes that brands and influencers can “microblog” using the new platform, as it allows for a larger character count (500 instead of 280). Threads are a great way to get a lot of traffic on Twitter. You can have multiple tweets stacked up in a row that have educational or inspirational content, or that tell s hort form story. I believe we will also see that.”

Subramanian said that Threads has been very active for Brands since the beginning. It’s partly because they already have an audience. Now that you have your audience, figure out what to do with them.

Sponsors invest in influencers, celebrities and teams. SponsorUnited Lynch said that sponsors spend on influencers, celebrities, teams, events and media entities. He said that Instagram is “obviously extremely visual”. There is less text to wade through in order to find ideas and thoughts, rather than endorsements. Videos and images are very effective in the entertainment and sports space. It is also more authentic to include brands than plain text. For example, a picture of Rihanna on tour or a photo of a car an athlete sits in.

Lynch sees Threads so far as a lighter Twitter. “A little more entertaining, a little fresher, more engaging. I can see it affecting some Instagram engagement, and Twitter as well.

Disconnect between Instagram and Threads

It is possible that the close relationship between Instagram Threads and Instagram helped Threads to take off like a rocket. Many users quickly realized that the platforms offered very different experiences. Instagram allows users to post longer messages than Twitter, but the main focus is on visual content, such as images and videos. Although it is possible to upload images and videos onto Threads, this experience is primarily text-based.

It’s not always a good idea to import Instagram accounts that you follow to Threads. Who wants to read a bunch of text from an account that you follow for images of their holiday destinations, or snapshots of their last night’s meal? You might be interested in following accounts on Threads that you follow on Twitter because they provide news analysis and commentary on current events. They are harder to find.

Lynch finds the content on Threads to be a hybrid. It feels like Twitter and Instagram merged. It’s more video and text, but not what I would call the Twitter environment. “From a marketer’s perspective, I think it will be very interesting to see if this platform will be better for advertising purposes.”

Threads does not deliver advertising yet, but it is still valuable for brands to have entities promote their brand partnerships. The WNBA held an all-star match and already included their brand partners on their posts. This ability of these individuals — whether they are a team, an influencer or a brand — to monetize their posts by including brands is incredibly important for the economy. At this point, Threads has no interest in such a thing. “I’m sure that they’ll figure it out.”

Dig deep: Marketing with Threads: What You Need to Know

Brands must experiment

Jamie Gilpin is the CMO of social media management platform Sprout Social. He told us that consumers are looking for content blends on their social media platforms. We’ve seen it in Threads’ early impressive numbers as well as in TikTok ‘s announcement for text posts.

Short-form videos remain popular. Gilpin said that “it is clear” that consumers are still interested in text-based content on all platforms.

It’s still too early to tell how many different types of content Threads offers. For this user at least, Threads is almost identical to Twitter or Twitter as reimagined through a bunch Instagram accounts. But brands must get started. To build an effective and well-rounded strategy, Gilipin said, “brands need to experiment with these new features and platforms, differentiate their content, and analyze what resonates most with their audiences.”

The post Competing With Twitter (X.com), and Instagram: Tie the Threads Together appeared initially on MarTech.