Need some Twitter threads ideas to help you boost engagement and expand your reach? Keep reading for 10 proven examples to help get your creative juices flowing.
P.S. Learn how to schedule X / Twitter threads with media files and X / Twitter polls with Loomly.
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What are Twitter Threads?
Twitter defines a Twitter thread as “a series of connected Tweets from one person. With a thread, you can provide additional context, an update, or an extended point by connecting multiple Tweets together.”
Why Should You Care About Twitter Threads?
Your Twitter marketing strategy may not be optimal without Twitter threads. A value-packed Twitter thread can quickly get thousands of likes and retweets, giving your brand a chance to reach a wider audience. Twitter threads can help your brand:
- Increase impressions and reach
- Gain followers
- Increase engagement
1. Increase impressions and reach
A Twitter thread helped A’Ziah King sign her first Hollywood movie. The reach that threads provide can help your brand’s marketing immensely.
A strong opening tweet of a thread would grab and hold your audience’s attention longer than a single tweet would. If you are using one-off tweets only to link to another platform (website, blog, or a sales page), your tweets are likely to have fewer impressions.
The average half-life of a tweet is 24 minutes, which means the first 24 minutes of your tweet will define its overall engagement. But with Twitter threads, the number of tweets is increased. For example, for a thread of 5 tweets, you have a 5x chance of receiving engagement. Hence, the overall time for your tweets to receive engagement increases, as well.
Additionally, you can always add new tweets to existing threads, which increases the impressions by resurfacing the tweet.
2. Gain followers
With one Twitter thread, Ciara gained 20,000 new followers, highlighting the potential of Twitter threads to increase your reach exponentially.
Y’all tryna travel in 2018? Here’s a thread on how I always find the cheapest flights.
— Ciara Johnson (@hey_ciara) January 1, 2018
With increased impressions and followers come increased brand awareness and potential customers.
3. Increase Engagement
Due to their length and content, Twitter threads allow your brand’s personality to shine, inviting more discussions. The more your audience spends time with your content, the likelier they are to engage with you.
According to research, every tweet in a thread does not receive equal engagement. After the first 2-3 tweets, the engagement drops before picking up near the end again. But even after the drop, Twitter threads generate 54% more engagement than tweets containing links.
Source: Kaggle
10 Twitter Threads Ideas to Boost Your Engagement
Now that you know the role threads can play in your marketing strategy, it’s your turn to create some engaging threads for your brand. Let’s have a look at ten ways you can take advantage of Twitter’s long-form content.
1. Create longer tweets
Twitter’s character limit expansion still might not be enough to craft a compelling story. Along with that, putting more than one idea in one tweet can confuse your audience and reduce the impact of your message.
So, if you want your audience to be excited, tell your full story with a thread.
For example, the following tweet by Andrew Wilkinson received more than 30,000 likes and 10,000 retweets with a seamless story thread:
This is a story about how I lost $10,000,000 by doing something stupid.
Ten. Million. Dollars.
Literally up in smoke. Money bonfire.
That’s enough to retire with $250,000+ in annual income.
Here’s what happened…
— Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson) March 30, 2021
This thread worked because of:
- Irresistible opening: Andrew opened the tweet by saying how he lost $10 million. The number is big enough for people to get curious to ask what the “stupid thing” was.
- Timeline: The second tweet starts in 2009 and flows logically from there. The story follows a timeline that does not confuse the readers.
- Vulnerability: Andrew discussed his mistakes in the tweet, being vulnerable, which lets the readers connect with him.
- Key Takeaways: The lessons are listed and explained at the end of the story, which provides readers with both a compelling story and valuable insights.
2. Try follow-ups
Twitter threads can help you resurface an old tweet or follow up on events. For example, you can create a thread to remind your audience about an upcoming sale or a webinar or thank them for attending a past event.
If you are hosting a giveaway, consider announcing the winner by replying to the original tweet, like Kahoot!:
It's
#FridayGiveaway
time!
Wanna win an awesome Kahoot! hat
AND shirt
?!
Write what your favorite thing about Kahoot! is below
to get a chance to #win!
Don't forget to RT!
#Competition pic.twitter.com/Bt2iUpVAs0
— Kahoot! (@Kahoot) May 31, 2019
3. Retweets (of your own or other people’s tweets)
There are around 350,000 tweets sent every minute. So, having a tweet disappear without any engagement is normal. But if you want to drive attention to a particular tweet, create a thread out of it.
As Dickie Bush, with more than 40,000 followers, says:
“Re-bring content back up to the top, just respond to it. And don’t retweet it, add a new layer of thinking to it. And it naturally just brings it back up to the top as if you just tweeted it.”
You can do this in several ways. For example, you can create a thread of your own tweets related to a central idea:
I scaled my Agency to $1M in 12 months
I reveal ALL my business secrets below
Read & follow me
MASSIVE THREAD
— TY FRANKEL (@THETYFRANKEL) April 17, 2021
Alternatively, you can curate tweets of others around a specific concept in a single thread:
These 10 threads will teach you more than reading 100 books
— Sumit Grrg (@sumitgrrg) March 27, 2021
4. Curate lists
You can use Twitter threads to curate information in one place by creating an extensive list of resources. Alternatively, you can also create a thread of quotes.
Bullet points contain bite-sized bits of easily digestible information, which is why listicles as threads are a huge success.
Webflow, for example, created a thread on #BlackHistoryMonth by curating a list of advice for designers of color:
To celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth , we’re spotlighting black designers in a field where they are underrepresented — but contribute greatly.
We asked them to share a few words of advice for current (and future) designers of color. Here’s what they had to say:
— Webflow (@webflow) February 12, 2020
5. Post step-by-step tutorials
Just like how-to blogs, tutorial tweets tend to perform well. Teach your audience something. If you already know their pain points, create something that will help them directly.
To make your thread more engaging and easy-to-understand, include relevant images or videos for every step. Visuals will keep your audience hooked and ensure they read till the last tweet.
Y’all tryna travel in 2019? After almost two years of traveling the world
Here’s a thread on how I always find the cheapest flights.
— Ciara Johnson (@hey_ciara) January 2, 2019
Ciara Johnson’s yearly travel Tweetstorms actually take Twitter by storm.
Why?
Because they’re:
- Relatable
- Actionable
- Act on her audience’s desire to travel
6. Create campaigns with threads
Not every campaign needs a separate ad. For some, a well-crafted thread is enough.
Threads allow you to create campaigns in the form of a narrative. So, make use of it as creatively as possible.
Threads also allow you to highlight the entire campaign every time you add a new tweet to the thread.
For example, Quip, a toothbrush brand, used a thread to connect to their audience by relating their products with Rihanna’s outfits:
Rihanna as quip electric toothbrushes (thread) pic.twitter.com/GnPpFQHXwe
— quip (@getquip) April 19, 2019
7. Repurpose your blog posts
Do you have a top-performing blog loved by your audience or a blog packed with valuable insights?
Such blogs make the best kind of threads. Repurpose them into tweets as they are or provide context and background information.
Take, for example, Nathan Barry’s thread repurposed from his blog:
Can you start a billion dollar blog?
In 2010 Emily Weiss, a fashion assistant at Vogue, started her own fashion blog. She bought a camera, domain, & 2 months later the site was live. Into the Gloss showcased the real-world beauty routines of fashion influencers & celebrities. pic.twitter.com/dIlqkFv2d6
— Nathan Barry (@nathanbarry) September 9, 2020
This tweet is one of his most popular tweets, with over 2500 likes.
8. Use threads in Twitter Chats
If you’re participating in a Twitter Chat, threads can help you tie your answers together in one place. Other participants won’t have to search for the next part of your answer. Hence, your answers are more likely to be read.
You can create threads in Chats just like you’d usually do – by clicking on the “+” sign or replying to your tweet.
A4. (2/2) That said, it's always worth keeping an eye on the competition. Run competitors through Semrush to see if there are any keyword gaps.#semrushchat
— Jamie Grant (@keyword_king) June 30, 2021
9. Post teasers
Do you have a launch, sale, or event coming up? You can build this up by putting out one tweet every day leading up to the release. Use Twitter threads to get your audience excited. Give previews just enough for them to come back for more.
Threads can also help you drive traffic to your blog. When publishing a new blog, instead of attaching a link in the first tweet itself, try giving a snippet of it:
- Create an attention-grabbing first tweet to draw in readers.
- Post a tweet for every subheading with a quick summary.
- Your thread should end with a call-to-action and link to your blog.
For example, Disney+, the streaming platform, launched in 2019 with a massive Twitter thread of 600 tweets. Every show under Disney+ had its own tweet, which allowed them to reach a wide audience, catering to different needs.
It. Is. Time. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to The Mandalorian, check out basically everything coming to #DisneyPlus in the U.S. on November 12.
Pre-order in the U.S. at https://t.co/wJig4STf4P today: https://t.co/tlWvp23gLF pic.twitter.com/0q3PTuaDWT
— Disney+ (@disneyplus) October 14, 2019
10. Create niche content
Your audience follows you for content. So, give them what they want by going super niche.
Take, for example, Tim Soulo, CMO of Ahrefs. He used his expertise to create a thread on a niche topic, “ROI of Content Marketing,” which helped him garner more than 1,000 likes:
Let's talk about the "ROI of Content Marketing."
Far too often us marketers get challenged with this question by our boss (or our client):
– How do I know that my investment in content will guarantee a positive return? …& how can I *MEASURE* it?
[Read more..]
— Tim Soulo
(@timsoulo) March 23, 2021
Twitter Threads in a Nutshell
By telling your full story with Twitter threads, you can increase impressions and reach, gain more followers, and boost engagement.
Try some of the ideas above to take advantage of long-form content on Twitter, and learn how to schedule your Twitter threads with Loomly here!
