The Key To Sustainable Growth on Threads (It’s Not What You Think)!

Welcome to Issue #6 of How To Win Thriends!

T H R E A D L I N E S 📌

• Threads News 🗞️

• Tools & Tests 🛠️

• Top 3 Threads of the Week 👍

• My Best Thriends of the Week 🫶🏽

• Tip of the Week: From Me 🪡

• Tip of the Week: From a Threxpert 🧵

• Questions From The Community 🙋🏽

• Thread the Love 💓

• Account Growth 📈

• Suggestion Box 📥

Threads is expanding to more countries across Europe

TLDR:

• This was announced a couple of weeks ago, but it was made official on 14 December!

Why you should care:

• As noted in HTWT #4:

  • …launching in the EU could lead to an extra 40 million users on Threads in 2024.

• More users → more thriends!

Threads posted by Mosseri and other members of team available on fediverse platforms

TLDR:

• “The fediverse is an ensemble of social networks, which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other.

  ActivityPub, a W3C standard, is the most widely used protocol that powers the fediverse. Users on different websites can send and receive updates from others across the network.” — Wikipedia

  • There’s a cool visualisation of the many platforms of the fediverse on that Wikipedia page.

    • The most notable platform is Mastodon.

Why you should care:

• Mosseri said it best:

  • “This test is a small but meaningful step towards making Threads interoperable with other apps using ActivityPub – we’re committed to doing this so that people can find community and engage with the content most relevant to them, no matter what app they use.”

• IMO, this is huge.

  • It’ll make Threads part of a larger network, creating greater potential for our content to be seen by more people across the internet.

• Exciting times ahead!

Other updates

• Threads was gonna be called Textagram (?)

• The link referrer for Threads has been updated so that it shows l.threads.net, not l.instagram.com.

• Want to start a conversation with a smaller group? Do this.

• Donatella Versace is the self-appointed Queen of Threads — despite joining 14 hours ago (as at this time of writing) 🤔

• I screenshotted the following post from @mosseri a few days ago, but it’s not on his profile anymore 🤷🏽

  

Tool: Thriends.io

What is it?

• Okay, this isn’t strictly a Threads tool, but for obvious reasons, it was too cool not to include in this week’s issue of HTWT.

• Thriends are NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

  • Think of NFTs as unique digital cards that show who owns something online, such as art or videos.

    • (There’s a bit more to it than that, especially when it comes to Australian copyright law — but that’s a whole other can of worms 🤪)

• Thriends ‘boasts a thrilling collection of 3,000 one-of-a-kind Street Kids, generated from 290 distinct traits. Our NFTs are comprised of 11 types of traits, ranging from masks, head, eyes, earrings, mouth, clothing, pants, shoes, body, accessories and backgrounds.’

• The Thriends collection was created by @nftstreetkid.

• Thanks for letting me feature your awesome project in this issue 🙏

What this can do for you

• If you’re interested in NFTs and Threads, look no further.

  • Thriends.io is the place to go.

P.S. Thriends is just beginning! Next year, they’re launching a TT Meme Token which can currently be earned by staking your NFT.

Watch. This. Space.

Test: How long does it take me to meaningfully engage?

• I had a good chat with my thriend @lisbethgraham.co the other day.

• It was about the time commitment involved in meaningfully engaging with thriends — particularly as your account grows.

• I noted my experience: more thriends = more time it takes to meaningfully engage.

• Liz encouraged me to share more about this with the community, so here we go!

• Before we get stuck in, what on earth is ‘meaningful engagement’?

  • An easy way to define it is: reciprocating in effort.

    • i.e. If it looks like someone has put effort into their reply, I want to return that favour — and then some!

So in light of that stuff, over the past 4 days, I kept a diary of how long it took me to engage meaningfully.

NB: I posted 3 times per day (except for one day 🤷🏽) to an audience of 2,300+ thriends.

• Monday: 2 hours to reply to 100 comments

• Tuesday: 2.25 hours to reply to 122 comments

• Wednesday: 3 hours to reply to 120 comments

• Thursday: 2 hours to reply to 83 comments

What’s the point of this?

• The point is to highlight that audience building is time-consuming!

  • I signed up for this, and I love it. A lot. But it might not be for everyone.

• If you’re a few steps behind me and want to continue growing on Threads, I think it’s important for you to know what the time commitment might be.

Key Takeaways

Each post:

• Contains strong opinions and bold statements

  1. "It's time to think BIGGER for your brand."

  2. "This country and economy is horrid."

  3. "This is what pissed me off about college."

  • 👉 These statements are provocative — THEY GET THE PEOPLE GOIN’! They provoke strong reactions, positive and negative (especially #2 and #3).*

    Controversy → attention → virality.

• Addresses a common aspiration or pain point

  1. Aspiration: building a successful and profitable personal brand.

  2. Pain point: struggling financially in the current economic climate.

  3. Pain point: disconnect between academic learning and real-world application.

  • 👉 The aspiration and pain points don’t resonate with everyone. But if you can relate, you can really relate.

    It makes you feel like the author is reading your mind, and you feel compelled to share or reply as a result.

• Appeals to emotions

  1. Motivates and inspires — “get them sold to YOU”, “show up and sell a PAPERCLIP”

  2. Shares vulnerability and seeks empathy — “I literally can’t afford to live in this economy”

  3. Expresses anger and frustration — “WE NEVER APPLIED WHAT WE LEARNED”

  • 👉 These emotions are powerful motivators and encourage people who feel the same way to share them.

* There was a clear connection between opinion & age in my college post lol