WTF is Threads? 🧵

Author

Ty Morton
July 06, 2023

Welcome to Agent After Hours Weekly T.E.C.H., where we talk about the following:

🤖 [T]echnology: My Kids are on YouTube...
🎓 [E]ducation/Entertainment: Growing a Business is Hard Work
💪 [C]oaching: Posting Consistently is the Key
📹 [H]ow To: Navigate Instagram Threads

[T]echnology:

 My wife and I were reluctant to let them for numerous reasons, but they put in the work and met all of the goals we gave them as a prerequisite. It’s been amazing to watch them learn to film and edit.❤️ I’ve shown them a few tricks over the past few days, but they’ve honestly learned most of it through trial and error. 👏

Here’s where things get interesting.

I told them I would share their latest video on my social media accounts.

When I shared the YouTube link directly to Facebook, I got ZERO engagement. 🙄

The Facebook algorithm HATES YouTube links because it’s a competitor and they want to keep your eyeballs on Facebook. I already knew this but didn’t post the video directly to Facebook because their goal is to drive traffic to YouTube and we’re letting them on social media otherwise. I also didn’t realize it was this uncompromising. 😟

After about an hour, I deleted that post and reposted a thumbnail of the video and said “Link is in the comments.”

Magic. ✨✨

Just like that, they had 100+ new views and their channel quickly grew to 25 subscribers.

So the next time you want to share a video on Facebook. Either upload it natively to FB or follow the above workaround. 👍

Entertainment/Education:

Following the above theme, I don’t want my kids to obsess over views and followers. ❌

That’s not the goal.

The goal is for them to learn new skills and have fun! They’re still kids, after all. 🤷

Part of this life lesson is that growing a brand or a business is hard work. I think it was eye-opening to them that they didn’t have thousands of followers after their first video. This also became a lesson in humility. 😌

I stumbled upon the video above, which perfectly put into perspective what I was trying to instill in them. I obviously muted a portion of the video for their little ears, but sometimes they (all of us) need to hear it from someone other than Dad.

[C]oaching:

Sometimes this email just flows…

We’ve shared our stats on our Agent After Hours social media journey.

Here are the latest stats: ⬇️⬇️⬇️

As you can see, posting consistently is the key.

We’re not doing anything different besides recycling some of our older content using Vidyo.ai because why wouldn’t you get the most out of it? But we’re also not killing 💀💀 ourselves by guaranteeing 1x post per day or anything like that.

Taking that approach will lead to subpar content, which leads to subpar results.

Stay consistent, but stay authentic. ✌️

Not only will you burn yourself out if you’re just posting just to check a box that you did, but your audience will also see right through your lack of authenticity. 👀

Be thoughtful as to who your audience is, but also don’t discount the fact that you are the expert. Don’t assume your average viewer has a clue what PMI is…explain the nuances of what you do at a 5th-grade level.

[H]ow To:

With ANOTHER new app to download and learn, I’m sure you are cringing in your seat. Can we all just mutually agree to have one platform instead of several? 🤞 I’m not sure Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would agree to that.

Let’s take a second and walk through this platform.

First, to get a Threads account you will need to download the Threads app. Yes, this is a part of Instagram, and yes, you still need to download another app. 🙄

Second, Threads will ask you if you want to link your information from your Instagram account. I would recommend saying yes to make this process easier and to provide consistency to both accounts. 👍

Third, Threads will ask you if you would like to follow everyone you follow on Instagram. Again, to make this whole process easier just say yes.

Okay, welcome to Threads! 👋

Right off the bat, if you have Twitter, you will see similarities. All the buttons are similar to what we have seen on many apps before. There is a home, search, create a new thread, activity and profile button.

Something you will notice scrolling on your home feed, is that you might not be following half the people on your feed. 😕 This is where Instagram took after TikTok’s “for you page”. Threads is going to monitor your activity and start pushing content onto your homepage that they believe you will interact with, regardless if you follow them.

This will probably annoy some people, but it has worked for TikTok.

Luckily, Threads has already announced that they will be releasing a “following” page specifically for people you follow. 👏

Another interesting thing to mention is there is no way to see what topics are trending. If you have used Twitter before, I’m sure you have stumbled across their trending page which lists the top thirty trending topics. I’m almost positive Threads will adapt this to their platform in some way. 👍

Will this put Twitter out of business? Only time will time.

 -Ty Morton