Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has shared in-depth insights into the factors that drive engagement on threads.
Through extensive research and data analysis, the firm has identified key elements that significantly influence user interaction and engagement on its platforms.
Three key elements include:
- Social bonds: Data shows stronger social ties contribute significantly to the engagement on threads. Relationships built over time through meaningful interactions have a large influence on the engagement.
- Post characteristics: Another revelation is that certain post characteristics, such as visual content forms (photos, videos) and length of post text, play a major role in driving engagement.
- Topic interest: The topic of discussion is another key driver. Personal or meaningful topics gain more attention and engagement as compared to generic themes.
Jacki Pimentel, marketing director at Meta, said: “The content that’s working is conversation starters. We see a lot more engagement on Threads on content that’s a conversation starter. We are prompting people to respond, and we want people to respond.”
Conversation prompts invite users to share their own thoughts and perspectives on a topic, have been a common engagement tactic on every social app.
According to Harvard Business Review, studies have shown that the content that best drives emotional response, particularly in regards to inspiring comments, is material that prompts high-arousal emotions, such as anger, fear, and happiness.
When these these emotional triggers are hit, your content is much more likely to go viral, which is what social algorithms incentivise by feeding into engagement.
Meta doesn’t want Threads to go down that path, which could also be an element to consider, in that Meta could be actively looking to lessen the impact of certain elements in order to encourage a different type of in-stream engagement.
