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These 3 Elements Will Make Your Posts Go Viral
What's better: quoting or reposting?
Lennox Saint
November 24, 2023
Welcome to Issue #3 of How To Win Thriends!
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.
TLDR:
Joe Biden (@POTUS) and Kamala Harris (@VP), among others, joined Threads on 21/11/23.
Why you should care:
He’s one of the most powerful men in the world. And he’s just joined Threads.
I think this sends a great message that people should start taking the platform more seriously.
(Here’s another example)
TLDR:
Jacki Pimentel, Meta marketing director, recently noted:
“The content that’s working is conversation starters. We see a lot more engagement on Threads on content that’s a conversation starter. We are prompting people to respond, and we want people to respond.”
Why you should care:
This reaffirms what we saw in last week’s issue from @mosseri.
It’s all about the conversations!!!
If the head of Instagram and the head of marketing at Meta are giving the exact same advice about growing an audience on Threads, I think it’d be wise for us to listen 😂
Other updates
Please note this addendum to last week’s issue regarding The Formula For Crafting An Appealing Bio 🙏
Some users have started noticing a feature that lets you share from Facebook to Threads.
The ‘Views’ count feature is rolling out to more users. It looks like there are still a handful who don’t have access to it yet.
Threads was a good place to get breaking news updates about the OpenAI/Sam Altman fiasco over the weekend.
Tool: Threaditor
What is it?
You know how you occasionally see the odd post that uses a different font? Ever wondered how they did it?
Chances are, they used Threaditor.
Threaditor lets you ‘draft, organise and beautify your posts with powerful formatting and automation tools.’
What this can do for you
The previous sentence says it all. Threaditor lets you:
draft posts
organise your posts with titles and tags
beautify your posts with different fonts and formatting styles.
As noted in the screenshot, my favourite feature is the ability to draft a thread post and see the character count for each post in the thread, rather than the overall total.
Before, I had to copy and paste my draft from, well… Drafts… and then cut down the characters within Threads.
No more!
This feature is also great because it lets me see what my Thread post will actually look like, while I’m writing it.
Many thanks to @zaccomode for creating a simple and effective way to organise our posts 👏
If you’d like to try Threaditor, you can create a free account here!
Test: quoting vs reposting — what’s better?
Shoutout to Jorge Caballero (AKA @datadrivenmd) for this one!
Jorge conducted an experiment to figure out whether quoting or reposting is best for reach (eyeballs) and engagement (likes and replies).
Jorge concluded here that:
‘… there's a tradeoff between reach and engagement. If all you want is eyeballs on the post, then QT works better than RT. If you want eyeballs and engagement, then RT is better than QT.’
Key Takeaways
Each post:
Addresses gender issues
1: ‘To all the men in this room, if a woman tells you…’
2: ‘MEN HOLD ONTO WOMEN THEY DON’T WANT A RELATIONSHIP WITH!!’
3: ‘…all these girlie support threads and sisterhood posts…’
Uses strong and emotional language
1: ‘…there is no way we will ever understand this…’
2: ‘milk you’, ‘can’t get more selfish’, ‘STOP LETTING MEN DRAIN YOUR SPIRIT’
3: ‘… being a man can feel incredibly isolating.’
Shares an anecdote
1: doctor giving advice to his male medical student.
2: seeing a post about how International Men’s Day was barely mentioned.
3: a man emotionally abusing a woman.
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Key Takeaways
Notice how each post doesn’t include any of the three elements that make the Top 3 posts great: gender issues, strong and emotional language, and anecdotes.
I’ve also noticed the following trend in polls: they seem to be a useful research tool but are pretty bad in terms of engagement.
