Threads amassed 5 million users within its first 4 hours of launch. The app went live at 7pm EDT in the US and midnight in the UK. However, regulatory concerns mean it is not available in the EU at this time.

What actually is Threads?

Threads is a free text-based conversation app made by the brains behind Instagram and Facebook.

Meta describes Threads as: “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things – or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world.”

In other words, it’s a place to talk about the things you love with other people. How original.

How does it work?

After downloading Threads myself and taking it for a spin, I can confirm that it’s reassuringly simple to use. It features one main news feed and the classic like, share and comment functions we’re all familiar with. Meta aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here. The app looks very clean, minimalistic and unsurprisingly, exactly like Twitter. You can publish text posts, reshare (the same as a retweet on Twitter) and quote share (like quote tweeting). You can also create a series of text posts, much like Twitter threads, which does beg the question: what will threads be called on Threads? Threads squared? A spool? Yarn? Who knows…

Despite Threads being text-centric, this isn’t to say you can’t post images and videos here too – in fact, you can post videos up to 5 minutes long. However, much like Twitter, the main focus of the app is to connect with others through snappy, insightful conversation. Having said that, Thread’s character limit for text posts is 500, which is nearly double Twitter’s.

The interesting thing about Threads is that it’s directly linked to your Instagram account. In order to set up a profile on Threads, you have to log in using your existing Instagram username. So, in a way, Threads is quite literally an extension of your Instagram presence.

This could be relevant to brands if, for example, you wanted to post visually striking content across the image-orientated Instagram, and then use Threads for starting conversations with your customers, gaining feedback and engaging further within your niche.

Another interesting thing: at the tap of a button, you can connect with all your Instagram followers on Threads. There’s no need to manually find and follow all your friends. This means most people won’t be starting from scratch on the platform and, if you’re a business, you can easily connect with any of your existing, loyal followers from Instagram.

Should Twitter be worried?

Twitter currently has around 400 million active users, whereas Instagram has an eyewatering 2.35 billion. Granted, not all of these users are going to transfer over to Threads. But there’s a lot of potential here, nonetheless.

While lots of marketers have been hyping up the release of Threads, we don’t truly know if it’s going to be a success or a flop. Not yet. With apps like Clubhouse riding fast then dying hard within just a couple of years, versus TikTok giving Google a run for their money, there is a lot of potential for Threads to take the social media world by storm. But equally, it could quickly run out of steam. It’s a waiting game for now, and that makes it hard to know whether it’s worth investing into this app, or if it’s going to be a waste of your time and energy.

However, one thing that will work in Thread’s favour is the growing number of people dumping Twitter because, to be blunt, they’re fed up of Elon Musk. From bringing back controversial banned accounts, to laying off masses of Twitter staff members, to recently limiting the number of posts accounts can read in a day, Elon has made some drastic changes to Twitter since taking over the platform last year. It’s been a bumpy ride and, in all honesty, he’s rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.

As more and more accounts are leaving Twitter, presumably, these people will be looking for somewhere more refreshing to hang out. Could Threads become their new haven? It makes sense, but we will have to wait and see…

There has also been recent talk about the relentlessness of social media – the never-ending doom-scrolling that platforms like Twitter and TikTok encourage. With this in mind, I thought it was a nice touch that Threads has a ‘take a break’ function, which will remind you to leave the app after 10, 20 or 30 minutes.

Additionally, Threads has the option to completely hide any replies on your posts. This function isn’t available on Twitter and has been praised by many marketers, journalists and entrepreneurs already. For example, marketing tycoon Steven Bartlett described this as “the most overlooked feature in [Thread’s] pursuit of creating healthy / friendly conversation” and explained that “if someone abuses, scams or trolls in your replies, you can remove it from view completely”.

Should my business be using Threads?

This is a tough question. Why? Because it all comes down to context.

If Twitter is already a significant part of your business’s social media strategy, and you’re making great progress there, you could assume that you’ll do pretty well on Threads too. Particularly if you’re seeing a lot of your followers leaving Twitter amid the Elon Musk fiasco, Threads could be a great opportunity for you to connect with them elsewhere.

However, it can be dangerous to assume that something that works well on Twitter will work well on Threads too because, currently speaking, we don’t know what kind of culture is going to develop on this new platform. You could end up catering to a whole different crowd.

Equally, if you have a substantial following on Instagram, many of these users will transfer over to Threads and you could continue to craft a relationship with them here. However, you need to bear in mind that your strategy on Instagram, where reels and images take front seat, will look very different to your strategy on Threads. You can’t simply copy and paste your content from one platform to the other – and frankly, that would be pointless to do anyway.

But possibly, threads could offer a place for you to nurture relationships and focus more on gaining feedback from customers. For example, if you run a hotel, you could ask your followers ‘what are the key qualities you look for when choosing somewhere to stay?’ or ‘we’re revamping our website – does anyone have any requests?’ or ‘what are your favourite family days out in the area?’ But this is only really worth doing if you have enough followers on Threads to conduct a decent-sized survey.

The truth is, if you’re already performing well on a social media platform, you might be better focussing on that rather than trying to branch out to Threads. This is especially relevant if you’re already overworked, burnt out, and trying to balance multiple tasks as a business owner.

But on the other hand, if you have room to experiment, why not give it a go? It might be all for nothing if Threads crashes and burns within 6 months. Or, it might be the best social media decision you ever make. Where are your bets lying?

But be warned: once you’ve made a Threads account you can’t delete it without also deleting your Instagram. So, if you give Threads a go and then decide to back out of the platform, you can deactivate your account but please don’t delete it! This would wipe all of your following across Instagram too – and building that back up would be a monumental task.

If you use social media to create a lot of paid ads, Threads probably won’t be much use to you. Not for now, anyway. According to The Guardian, “Meta will not be accepting ads on Threads for this year at least.”

Final thoughts

All in all, this is an exciting time and the Mihi team will certainly be keeping a close eye on this new app. Happy threading (or not)!

Need some help growing your business via social media? Or need a hand identifying which social platforms will work best for you? Get in touch with us today.

Call us on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.

The post What we know about Threads, Meta’s new rival to Twitter appeared first on MiHiDigital.

When I say this there are some other factors that may be contributing to a higher bounce rate. For example, if a high percentage of your visitors are coming from searching for your brand, what are they seeing in search results? If they are seeing site links (a list, usually of six internal pages) take a look in your analytics and see what pages they are landing on and the corresponding bounce rates for those pages.

If many of your visitors are entering your site and landing on the contact page then it may be that existing customers are using your site to gain the contact number or email address. In this example you would expect a one page visit as they had only needed the telephone number, they got it from the contact page and therefore had a successful website visit, despite it being a single page Google bounce.

When this happens you will have plenty of people viewing the contact page, a high bounce rate for that page and in turn a pushing up of the universal bounce rate of your site.

In this case – no need to worry!

Another reason could be that you have a blog article like this one that ranks very well in Google for a specific phrase. People researching bounce rates would find this page by searching a related phrase and as they are looking for information it is possible that this article will be the only page they see as it has given them the information they need. If a blog article acts as a landing page for visitors it will often have a high bounce rate and for that reason contribute to the overall bounce rate of your site, without necessarily being a negative reflection on your overall site structuring and performance.

Google analytics can give you a wealth of information about your website but please do make sure that you are looking at all of the data when your are drawing conclusions to ensure you are getting the right information for you to improve your web performance.

For more information on how we can improve your website performance, including our Google Analytics training, please give us a call or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post What is a Google bounce rate and when is a bounce rate really a negative bounce rate? appeared first on MiHiDigital.

Different people will be looking to interact with different forms of content.  Sometimes they may be in the research phase of the decision making process and they’ll be looking for a detailed explanation of a product or a service.  Others may be looking for visual interpretation, whether it be in the form of photos, an infographic or videos for example.

So have a think – what content is on your website? Is it what your visitors are looking for and have you got the right balance?

Video Content

Do your visitors always want to read reams of words? The answer is probably a resounding no and on these occasions video can spice up your content mix.  Make sure you ideally keep them beneath three minutes in length as there is nothing worse than looking at the progress bar and seeing you are less than half way through! Make sure that the content gets to the point early and also has a call to action to maximise your chances of converting the viewer into a customer.

It is worth noting that video doesn’t have to cost the earth these days either! Please do get in touch if you are interesting in creating and using video.

Infographics

A story told through data and statistics.  This is a visual bonanza that is great for getting across those more obscure and interesting facts that your customers may otherwise not be aware of.  They are great for social sharing and can often, if distributed and handled well, create a buzz around the topic and your brand.  Remember that if you are placing it on other websites you are getting two bites of the cherry – potentially a link back to your website along with a visually engaging graphic.

Also remember to think outside of the box when selecting potential topics for an infographic.  Make sure that they are covering a topic that people are going to be interested in – it shouldn’t all be about your brand.

Blogs

The bread and butter for many a website, keep the content flowing through your blog section and make sure that you are planning time to produce your content.  Photography here can also be a great sell for all sectors – a magical sunset at a tourist destination, a perfect dessert at a restaurant or an awe inspiring visual of some paintings.  A picture as they say, portrays a thousand words!

Social Sharing

Whatever content you are producing make sure you are sharing it through the right social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Pinterest.  They offer you great possibilities to not only increase reach but also build dialogue and brand contact points.

Content is as important as ever.  If you would like to find out more about how we can help you plan, create and distribute content to build your web presence then please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

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This is Google Authorship – Google’s way of attributing an author to the content they have written.

So what is the big deal? Well, it is a big deal and the reason is because when these headshots are appearing in Google search results they are increasing click through rates by as much as 15 – 20%.

A massive impact if you are competing in a pretty tough environment for page one rankings.

You will also be benefitting by specific members of your company gaining coverage as well as the company as a whole.  If someone in your team is a specialist in a certain area and they are regularly posting content about it they are going to be positioning themselves as a specialist and potential thought leader on Google, with their headshot appearing next to their articles / blog posts.

So what are you waiting for?

To find out more about Google Authorship or how we can improve your performance on Google please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk

The post Google Authorship – what is it and how can it aid your search engine click through rates appeared first on MiHiDigital.