This has been bothering me for awhile. I’m such a killjoy but the sheer amount of accounts on Threads who have decided that their strategy is to be as “unhinged” as possible is getting insane.

I know where it started. I just am surprised at how many accounts duplicated the strategy with very little thought. It’s like they were like, “Hmmmm… that sounds like fun. Let’s do that.”

And sure it’s fun. It probably feels good to a social media manager to break out of the normal strategy and just go nuts. Maybe a part of me wishes I could do it as well. But when it’s the same thing as every other brand is doing on a network, it stops being effective and has no chance of making you stand out.

How it started

I have no real way of knowing where the unhinged strategy really started, but I have a very good idea. It was the Beyond Meat account. They went all in on Threads before many brands had even wrapped their heads around what the network was. And it worked.

What I loved about it was that it actually seemed to have some real thought behind it. It looked at the audience that would likely be on Threads first and created content for them. That audience was social media managers trying to get a feel for the network so their brands could start posting.

If you look at the unhinged-ness of the account, it’s all about social media managers. Their frustrations are heavily shared in a funny way. I’m more likely to see a social media manager share their content from Threads than a vegan or vegetarian. So they are reaching out to an audience they have never focused on and that audience is sharing their content to their networks. It’s a great idea that may well result in actual sales in a bit of a roundabout way.

Then the copies came

So they were targeting social media managers, which means all these social media managers saw the fun this one brand was having. They wanted in.

What they never considered was that Beyond Meat may have had an actual strategy that led to the unhinged behavior on Threads. They just saw these posts, saw they were successful and duplicated the types of posts. There was no thought about their particular audience and whether they wanted this kind of content from them. And in most cases, there is no thought towards who is reading this content. It’s just being unhinged to be unhinged.

Not to mention, there is too much of it on Threads at this point. I couldn’t even tell you which is which, and I for sure am not sharing much of Beyond Meat’s content anymore. It’s just becoming one big blob of content that my eyes bounce off of and onto something that is actually relatable or helpful. I’m 90% sure I’m not alone here.

What you should do instead

Threads is no different than any other social network. You need to create a plan before you do anything.

Take a look at the audience. It tends to be more tech savvy group. Does that sound at all like your community? If it does, dig deeper and see what is being said about your space on Threads. Maybe it’s something worth contributing to or maybe there’s nothing there. And just because nothing is there yet, it doesn’t mean that your community members aren’t there. It just means they’re not talking about your space… yet. So you might want to check to see if some of your key community members have accounts and if they are active accounts.

If you have done that work and realize it’s time to go on, get to know the network personally. There is no bigger turn off than a brand posting with no real idea what the “rules” are for the network. So get to know the culture and what kinds of content does do well. I know I’ve seen story and discussion content soaring many times, and many brands have much more of that than they realize.

And then from here, make a plan to have your findings all in one place with actions you can start with. Does it have to be an overly specific plan for three months? In this case, I wouldn’t go that far. I’d brainstorm some ideas based on content that I can reuse and see how it does. Experiment is such a huge part of social media and you’ll have to risk failure to find out what works on a new network. And this is why it’s especially time consuming to join a new network. It requires doing real-time results of experiments and adjusting future plans to include what you have learned. It simply takes more time than if you were creating content for a network that you are already established on.

In the end though, if all you get from this post is that it’s time to retire the unhinged persona on Threads, I will be happy. I am so so so so so so so over seeing my timeline filled with this, and I’d love to see something new that wows me.

Are you seeing anything on Threads that is wowing you?