Tag Your Way to Success: The Ultimate Guide to Growing on Threads

Welcome to Issue #5 of How To Win Thriends!

You can now tag a topic in a post 🫶

TLDR:

• From @threads and @mosseri's announcements:

  • You can only tag one topic per post.

    • Make sure you select the topic that best represents your post!

  • Topics appear in blue.

    • Tap the blue text to see more discussions.

    • The ones that appear at the top are ‘the most relevant, recent and engaging posts.’

  • You can tag a phrase.

    • i.e. multiple words with spaces

  • You can include special characters.

    • e.g. !$% — yes, even a # 🤯

Why you should care:

• The land of kangaroos — where yours truly is based* — got early access to tags a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve been able to test them out!

• Initial thoughts? A bit buggy, but overall I love how they’ve been designed.

  • I can’t add a tag in the 5-minute editing window after posting.

  • After tapping the # button and typing my tag, the text can occasionally glitch and not accurately present what I’ve typed.

  • I can’t add a tag in the middle of my post.

    • e.g. if I wanted to tag the word ‘add’ in the previous sentence, I’d have to delete the words ‘a tag in the middle of my post', tag ‘add’ then paste or rewrite the remaining words.

• Despite those minor bugs, you should care about the update because:

  • Tags will make it much easier to connect with people who are interested in similar topics.

    • (Remember that ^ We’re going ham with tags for my tip of the week below 😜)

  • The one tag/post limit is less of a mindfuck for people like us.

    • We can simply integrate a tag in a post that we’ve already written.

    • This feels more organic than trying to engagement hack our content by thinking of the optimal number of hashtags to include at the bottom of a post.

*In case you were wondering, yes, I ride a kangaroo to work.

Other updates

• Posts with embedded tags display a small # icon on the bottom right.

• Threads is working on a profile preview card

• Threads Trending Topics icons spotted in the wild.

• Threads look set to launch in EU on Dec 14th(?)

Tool: Threads Bookmarker

What is it?

• The title says it all!

• I can’t begin to tell you how many posts I’ve screenshotted on Threads because I loved them so much…

  • I thought screenshotting was the only way to save them.

  • I WAS WRONG!

• Threads Bookmarker lets you easily save your favourite posts and comments in one place.

• I like having this dedicated place for my faves because it means I don’t have to sift through my photos library anymore 😂

• If you’d like to use Threads Bookmarker (100% free), check out this walkthrough/demo.

What this can do for you

• In summary, Threads Bookmarker allows you to:

  • Save your favourite posts and comments

  • Easily retrieve them for later

    [my personal fave ⬇️]

  • Consolidate the things you learn on Threads in one place!

    • imo, this makes it easier to socialise and learn through the platform.

Huge shoutout to @madyanalj for creating Threads Bookmarker!

P.S. It also has a dark mode 🙊

Test: Links deprioritized on the “For You” page

• @dimitrymak did a great experiment.

• He asked his thriends to:

  • ‘Close the app, open it, scroll through your feed for about 20–30 posts. Comment in this thread with how many posts you saw with links.’

• At the time of writing, the post has 35 replies.

• TLDR?

  • Most people seem to see 0-3 posts with links in every 30.

• What does this mean?

  • In Dimitry’s own words:

    • “I still truly believe links here are deprioritized and meta would never just come out and say it because that would drive all the brands away.”

      • “Just a friendly reminder:

        • “downgraded” typically implies a decrease in overall quality or rank, while “deprioritized” specifically points to a reduction in priority.”

• Summary (from a different but related post): “For now, sharing a link in the main thread is a recipe for not getting eyeballs. I recommend sharing the link to your site as a sub-thread and not on the main post.”

• Thanks for this one Dimitry! 🙏

Key Takeaways

Each post:

• Addresses a specific audience

  1. Threaders who are frustrated with the platform’s ‘slow’ updates.

  2. Neurodivergents

  3. Threaders seeking engagement

  • 👉 These posts resonate with a smaller but more engaged group of people. This increases their virality within each group.

• Offers a unique perspective

  1. Provides useful info from a software engineer’s perspective about 2-week sprints — promotes trust and transparency.

  2. Explains the motivation behind neurospicies oversharing — promotes empathy and understanding.

  3. Offers a bold and direct opinion — promotes discussion and debate.

  • 👉 These perspectives are unique and valuable because they’re not readily available elsewhere!

• Highlights a relatable issue

  1. Concerns about how Threads is developing as a platform.

  2. Feeling misunderstood as a neurospicy.

  3. The pressure to present a perfect online persona.

  • 👉 Relatability is HUGE. The degree to which you can relate to an issue is highly correlated to the likelihood of you engaging with a post about said issue. In other words, if you experience the issue, you’ll probs engage.