#288: Threads: Is it Worth Your Time?
In this episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I welcome back social media expert, Lauren Litt, to discuss Threads, a social media platform connected to Instagram but operating as a separate app, and whether it’s worth your time.
Threads has been creating quite a buzz in the social media world. Lauren, who is bullish on its potential, believes that engagement is key to leveraging this platform. She encourages those who haven’t yet explored Threads to do so, despite concerns about a drop in engagement. As she rightly points out, the platform is still in its infancy, and users are figuring out how to use it effectively.
We explore the potential of Threads for creating meaningful connections and engagement as a business owner, blogger, content creator, or influencer. Lauren shares examples of how people are effectively using Threads, emphasizing the importance of providing value and building a community.
We also discuss the concept of “push” versus “pull” marketing and how Threads shouldn’t be used for the hard sell. Lauren shares her three-step engagement strategy for Threads and highlights the importance of being authentic and connecting with real people. We conclude by encouraging listeners to embrace serendipity and put themselves out there to attract new opportunities.
Table of Contents
Show Notes:
- MiloTreeCart
- Personality Quiz: What Digital Product Should I Create?
- MiloTree Pop-Up App
- Lil Shameless Plug
- Join My Blogger Genius Email List
- Catch My Party
- Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
- MiloTreeCart Affiliate Program
- All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes
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Our Experiences with Threads
Lauren and I shared our experiences with Threads. She acknowledges the potential of Threads to create a unique community and connect with others in a more conversational way, reminiscent of the early days of Twitter.
Effective Use of Threads: Two Examples
Lauren shared two examples of how people are using Threads effectively. The first involves experts sharing their “aha” moments, providing valuable insights in a concise and impactful way. The second involves using prompts to initiate discussions and engage with the community. Lauren also mentioned the success she had in polling her audience for feedback, which helped inform a new service she launched.
Visibility and Engagement on Threads
We discussed the visibility of Threads and whether they are only seen by followers or if they can be shared beyond one’s network. Lauren explained that currently, everything is being shared to everyone, but there may be some curation happening based on engagement in the future. She also mentioned that while photos and links can be added to threads, the hard sell approach is not recommended. Instead, it’s important to focus on building authority and trust with the audience.
The Concept of Push vs Pull Marketing
Lauren compared the push marketing of the past, where content was pushed to the viewer, to the pull marketing of today, where content needs to pull people in and make them want to be a part of it before any selling can happen. In this pull marketing approach, about 80% of the content should be focused on giving value and building a community, while only 20% should be about selling.
Cross-Pollination Between Threads and Instagram
Lauren discussed the cross-pollination between Threads and Instagram. While it is clunky and not seamless, she mentioned that it is possible to share a thread on Instagram, which can attract people to join Threads and engage with the content.
Lauren’s Strategy for Engaging on Social Media Platforms
Lauren broke down her three-step process for engaging on social media platforms: review, respond, and reach out. She recommends spending about five minutes a day on each phase of the strategy. However, she acknowledges that the time spent can vary depending on the number of followers and engagements. She emphasizes the importance of being a human on social media platforms and connecting with real people, rather than just using them as a megaphone.
Embracing Serendipity
Lauren and I discussed the importance of putting yourself out there and embracing serendipity in order to make new connections and opportunities. We encourage listeners to step out of their comfort zones and interact with a diverse range of people, rather than sticking to a specific clique or group.
Inspired by our conversation, I decided to try out Lauren’s strategy of spending five minutes a day on Threads to see what serendipitous opportunities come my way. It’s a grand experiment, and I’m excited to see what the universe brings back to me.
Other related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes you’ll enjoy:
- Crush Social Media Anxiety and Build a Thriving Online Presence with Lauren Litt
- How to Build a Successful Influencer Brand with KariAnne Wood
- Get Paid What You’re Worth and Grow a 6-Figure Biz with Kathleen Celmins
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Podcast Transcript
Lauren Litt Interview Part 2
Intro (00:00:04) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie (00:00:11) – Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie. I started my blogging and entrepreneurial journey in 2009 when my husband and I created Catch My Party. In fact, if you need back to school ideas and printables, head over there.
Next, we built our pop-up app called MiloTree. That so many of you use to grow your social media followers and email subscribers. That’s where we came up with this idea of creating tech. That is easy.
Since then, we have rolled out MiloTreeCart, which is our payment tool for you creators, bloggers, coaches, online entrepreneurs to sell easy digital products.
People have reached out to me to tell me how much they’re enjoying the insights that I’m sharing as I’m watching people make money using MiloTreeCart to sell digital products. So, I have an insight to share. And this is to get close to the sale, get close to the money.
What I mean by that is focus much more on getting that first sale than on building out a very robust product. This is why I am not a fan of you going off and spending six months creating a course. Do something down and dirty and see if people want it.
Because if you can get one sale, I’m seeing this over and over again. You can get ten sales and if you can get ten sales, you can get 100 sales. And if you’ve got one product that works, it is so much easier to come up with the idea for the next one, the more expensive one.
Your job is to be thinking money. Who will buy from you? You are much better off finding that one sale, than posting on Instagram to try to grow your followers.
So create that one easy digital download, test it, see if people will buy it. If they don’t, no problem. Create another one. Create a coaching package. Go befriend these potential customers in Facebook groups, in DMS on Instagram.
To summarize, get close to the sale, get close to the money, get close to the people who want to buy from you and MiloTreeCart is the best tool to use to put this all into action.
For today’s episode, I have my friend Lauren Litt from Lil Shameless Plug back on the show. She’s the social media expert I had on just a couple of weeks ago where she shared how little you honestly have to do in order to grow your business using social media. She laid out her whole strategy.
I’ll be linking to that episode in the show notes. But guess what? There’s a new platform out there called Threads, and this is from Meta, the people who brought you Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.
It’s connected to Instagram, but it’s a separate app that you need to download from the App store. But you do log in with your Instagram credentials and it looks a lot like Twitter. So, the focus is really text based, although you can add links and photos.
However, it is trying to foster conversation. Now it just launched two weeks ago and so I reached out to Lauren and I said, “Would you come back on the show to talk about Threads? Because I don’t know how to think about it.”
She said she’d be excited to and she had a whole host of ideas. She is really bullish on it. I thought that was interesting and in fact, after recording this episode, she has inspired me to start dipping my toes into Threads and she gives a whole strategy on what to post, how often to post, what to do on Threads and how it all connects to Instagram.
If you want the most cutting edge thoughts on Threads, I think you’re going to really like this episode. So without further delay, here is my interview with Lauren Litt.
Lauren, welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. Thank you so much for having me back so quickly. We have big news. I was emailing you because your last episode just went live and I wanted to say, “Hey, it’s live, it’s great.”
And as I was doing it, Threads just launched on the scene and I don’t quite understand it. I don’t know what it’s good for. And I said to you, “Hey, would you come back to talk about Threads?” And you’re like, “I’d love to.”
I have all these insights and ideas about it. So here we are, part two. And by the way, if anybody has missed part one, I’ve gotten so much great feedback on it because I think you took the fear out of social media. You did for me.
In fact, I’ve been re-energized after re-listening to the episode. First I want to say thank you and welcome. Second, I want to just hear very briefly again who you are, just to remind everybody. And third, I’m excited for you to share your insights on Threads.
Lauren Litt (00:05:25) – I just want to say to you, because I believe in engagement over everything and you are one of the people I follow on social media and seeing you show up so authentically, seeing your lives.
I don’t remember what it was about, you did a deep dive on a blogger, a food blogger, and showed how they did this.
So much to learn. Excellent job in aligning yourself with your purpose, putting that content out there. It’s so valuable. I’m super excited to be following you there. And this is what everybody can do.
Jillian Leslie (00:06:01) – And it was interesting. I had this realization which I talk about all the time. It’s we’ve got to get out of ourselves. Like nobody cares about me. You care about what I can do for you.
And I realized that even though I say this all the time, I say it to my daughter. This is like my mantra. I was caught up in myself and feeling insecure and feeling like, oh, does anybody care? And oh no, what if my hair looks bad? Just all of those voices.
And then I was like, screw it, I’m just going to do it. So, I’ve been going live on Instagram sharing insights on blogging and digital products. By the way, if you want to see what I’m doing, follow me at MiloTree and then you reaching out to me, you go like, “I loved it.”
It made me feel like I could do this. And something about understanding I’m seeing myself through that same lens of I’m inside me and I’m being so critical. I was able to go, “No, no, no.” My job is to help you, like, get out of me and just put out, hopefully, some useful information. So thank you.
Lauren Litt (00:07:11) – Big billboard, shining letters. You get all the gold stars. You’re doing an incredible job.
Jillian Leslie (00:07:16) – Oh, thank you. Just briefly, who are you again? And let’s talk about this new thing called Threads.
Lauren Litt (00:07:25) – My name is Lauren Lauren Litt, and my company is a Lil Shameless Plug. And we love helping people who don’t like social media but know they need it for their business.
And the reason why I think this is important for me to share with you. One, if you don’t like social media, come on over. But two, that’s the lens we’re going to be looking at Threads today.
If you feel like you’ve missed the boat or you feel like this is overwhelming, Jillian, you shared that so many of your people are like, “My head’s going to explode if I have to try one more thing.”
This is the Threads episode for you because I’m going to talk to you about what it’s currently at, what the opportunities are and how to do our little engagement strategy, our review and reach out specifically on Threads so you can engage if you want to.
Jillian Leslie (00:08:12) – I was saying I feel like Threads is like Facebook back in the day when even your aunt wasn’t on it yet because it was still the cool platform. But it was like, “Hey, check out my pizza.” Hey, look, we’re taking a night stroll. Hey, what’s the best restaurant in Austin for, that kind of thing? It was just kind of folksy almost. In hindsight, at the time, it was so revolutionary. But today it seems kind of throwback.
Lauren Litt (00:08:45) – It’s very community based and in fact, I’ve seen a lot of content on there being like marketers do not fix this up for us. Do not come in here and start using this algorithm.
And in fact, as of this moment, I think we’re only 14 days into Threads right now. There is no real algorithm yet. They don’t even know what this platform is going to be. We are part of the evolution of this coming out.
So, I love that it is that community connection advice, kind of space that it’s a really low bar to be in at the moment.
Jillian Leslie (00:09:23) – Do you feel, though like people get it, are going to stick around? Because I’ve also seen some doomsday stuff like, oh my God, all these people signed up and on day six, day seven, all of a sudden engagement is dropping. And that ultimately people are going to abandon this.
What is your vibe about that? Because I don’t want to be on a platform that people leave.
Lauren Litt (00:09:51) – So, let’s address the FOMO and the “great explosion of growth that happened on threats.” It is not too late to get your Threads open and available. If you go to my Instagram, I created a quick little reel to show you exactly how to do that. If you feel it all overwhelmed.
Jillian Leslie (00:10:09) – What’s your Instagram?
Lauren Litt (00:10:11) – Say at launch? Little bit. The reason why we had such an “explosion of growth on Instagram.” And I’m using those quotes because if you have Instagram, you have a Threads account, you all. That’s why there was that huge explosion of growth.
It’s not like it was a brand new platform and you had to open it and download it and figure it out, it’s just there. It’s just a plus one. So that’s why we had this big explosion of growth. And that is also why we’ve seen this drop in engagement immediately. Because it was so easy to get on and people don’t really know how to use it yet.
So they’re like, okay, I’m all here, but I don’t know if I’m going to stay here. I don’t know what’s going on.
Jillian Leslie (00:10:57) – That’s me. That’s me. I’m to keep checking it out, but I’m so busy and I’m on all these other platforms and I have all this work to do that it falls in my priority. I’m like, Oh, shoot, I haven’t checked it in a while.
Lauren Litt (00:11:12) – And I think that we don’t know what this platform is going to be. They don’t even know what this platform is going to be yet. I was sharing with Jillian before we started recording.
To me, this is like when I went to high school, I had the beautiful opportunity that I was the first graduate, which meant my class of. However, a couple hundred students got to create what the school was.
We got to figure out what our community was, what our vibe was, what our cheers were for the grizzly. We got to, in the drama department, set up what type of theater we wanted and how often we wanted to do shows and all of that kind of stuff.
And one of the things that we put together, a fall show written by students is still happening today. 20 plus years later. That’s the opportunity we have on Threads is to create the community that we want. So, that I think is really exciting. I miss Twitter.
Back in the day, Twitter was my favorite thing because it was such a low bar to connect with someone.
Jillian Leslie (00:12:17) – Yes. I just remember putting out we were working on Catch My Party when I needed something obscure. And I just put it on Twitter and somebody responded and we became friends and we’re friends to this day.
It was so weird because it didn’t feel icky. It didn’t. It felt like, “Oh, let’s be friends.” And that’s not possible today.
Lauren Litt (00:12:45) – Even on Instagram, we have to position ourselves a little bit as an expert and there’s this bar between direct communication. You leave a comment, then I have to respond to that comment. And it’s all positioned top down.
Whereas Twitter and Threads, it’s a conversation. It’s an ongoing conversation that we just get to jump into. And even though someone was the initial starter in Twitter and Threads the same, you’re reposting things but you’re just a part of it.
It’s not like this is my post and all of the conversations happen underneath this. So, I’m very excited about that aspect of Threads.
Jillian Leslie (00:13:25) – Give me two examples of Threads you have seen where you’re like, “Ooh, this is cool.” Besides I’m just seeing stuff like I have three, I’m on vacation or Hey, what’s the best fitness tracker. So where have you seen it go? Oh, this is interesting.
Lauren Litt (00:13:44) – Here are the three top ways. I’m loving people using Threads two weeks in. The number one is experts sharing their aha moments. So sharing like. Never know. I’m trying to think, Oh, so one of the things I could share on Threads today is.
Did you know you don’t have to post every single day on social media in order to get great results. That could be a bombshell for some people. So that’s a mini aha moment for someone.
Jillian Leslie (00:14:21) – Short and you want it short. You want it short and to the point.
Lauren Litt (00:14:25) – Yes. A little aha moment. If you’re a blogger, if you are not measuring your flour, you’re not baking. That could be an aha moment for someone.
Jillian Leslie (00:14:36) – So, I could say, get out of yourself. Focus on serving your audience.
Lauren Litt (00:14:42) – Yes.
Jillian Leslie (00:14:43) – Nobody cares about you.
Lauren Litt (00:14:44) – Yeah, nobody cares about you. Focus on your audience. It’s a great Thread to start.
Jillian Leslie (00:14:49) – I’m going to put that up after this.
Lauren Litt (00:14:51) – I’ll comment back on it. The second piece that I really like that people are doing is prompts for discussion. I shared one right before we jumped on this podcast today.
I said, “Hey, I’m getting ready to go on with MiloTreeCart. We’re going to be recording a podcast. What are your favorite parts of Threads right now?” And then I saw someone else do this, so I did it. I’ll start in the comments and then in the comments I wrote my favorite thing about Threads.
Jillian Leslie (00:15:21) – Did, what did you.write?
Lauren Litt (00:15:22) – Community. It’s that conversation that we get to just jump in and really connect. After this, in a day or two, I’m going to go back and check and we’ll be able to read. Has anyone responded to it? Does anybody have comments?
We can then have a conversation around what Threads is and what we want it to be. So, that second one is prompts, starting the prompt for a conversation.
Since we already talked about my high school, when you would sit down in your English class and there would be the prompt written for the day and you would have to write three paragraphs.
Did you all have to do that? We did. We did. It’s like that. Like, these are the prompt thoughts. And again that’s positioning yourself as a thought leader. When we’re doing these things.
The third thing that I’m loving, it’s similar to prompts, but a little bit different. Pull your audience. I did this with great success. I’m launching or I’ve launched as of this podcast coming out a new service.
And so I asked everybody, what’s your biggest block on social media? I asked on Instagram. I got people’s honest responses about I don’t have the time or I’m really worried about giving too much content?
And I you know, I’m a mom and I just feel out of touch and I don’t know how to do these things. So getting that feedback from my audience of what they’re looking for helped inform the service I created.
So that and I’ve seen other people do this really well as well. When I’m watching people who are getting the engagement and getting what seems like, “instant followers,” which by the way, you do have instant followers.
If you join, there’s a quick little button that you just follow everybody you’re already following. So nobody’s stressed about anything.
Jillian Leslie (00:17:13) – Question for you. Is my Thread only being seen by my followers? Or is it getting shared beyond my little universe?
Lauren Litt (00:17:28) – Yes, Right now everything is one single giant algorithm and everything is being shared to everyone. Even in the short time in the two weeks that this has been available, I’m seeing a little bit more curation to my feed.
People that I’ve actually engaged with and responded to or liked their stuff. I’m seeing their posts more frequently, but as of right now, everything’s going out to everyone and they don’t even really know. I have to look at my notes here. There’s no real algorithm yet.
You can’t even search for content yet. You can only search for creators. So if you in your bio, you have to say I’m about this and then you’ll show up if someone’s looking for social media. But if I’m writing about social media and it’s not in my bio, I won’t show up.
So it’s a wild West right now you literally have unlimited potential on threads.
Jillian Leslie (00:18:27) – Can I add links? I know there are no photos.
Lauren Litt (00:18:33) – There are photos.
Jillian Leslie (00:18:34) – There are photos. Really?
Lauren Litt (00:18:37) – Yes. You can add links. You can add photos, you can add gifs. I believe you can add links. I don’t know if they’re clickable. I haven’t tried to use one yet. Let’s try. Should we try?
I wanted to see MiloTree. Here we go. I am sharing the link. I have Threads open. I’m creating a thread. Great convo with @MiloTree. I can tag people, so I’m tagging you on Threads. So when you log in, you’ll see that and then I’m going to paste.
Jillian Leslie – Oh, you can. Oh, that’s great.
Lauren Litt – Check this out.
Jillian Leslie (00:19:30) – Awesome. Oh, that’s great for our listeners.
Lauren Litt (00:19:32) – I’m showing that you can and it has a beautiful little clickable link in it. Marketers don’t talk about this.
Jillian Leslie (00:19:41) – So let’s talk about this. Tell me. We are all, let’s say little business owners. So, it’s not so right now.
Usually, I tell you, if you’re a business owner or you’re a blogger, you’re a marketer. But we’re going to now pretend we are not marketers. However, we do want to increase our authority. We ultimately want to, which means grow our businesses and make more money.
Talk to me about how you would be coaching somebody whose goal or goals for all of us is to make more money. But you’re telling me I can’t be out there going, “Hey, I got a new course.” “Hey, I got a new product.” “Hey, buy the lipstick that I think is great. Here’s the affiliate link.” That is like a no no.
Lauren Litt (00:20:34) – The hard sell is a no. The hard sell is an absolute no as of right now on Threads. And really the hard sell is no across the board.
Jillian Leslie (00:20:46) – I was going to say, you can’t do that on Facebook and think you’re going to get sales. You have to do it in a get my download, get on my email list, let me sell to you that way.
Build like and trust. Maybe on TikTok you could sell makeup or some sort of funky who knows what. But it does feel like you can’t just go buy this and then people do.
Lauren Litt (00:21:15) – And this goes to the marketing rule of push versus pull marketing. Did we talk about this before? Don’t remember. I like to think of when we were children, you had to actually get up off the couch and turn the channel on the TV. There wasn’t even a clicker.
You had to get up and move to do it. And because we had one solo thing that was entertaining us, push marketing was the marketing of the day. I like to think of the old Colgate commercials. It’s like Colgate’s great. And it was just someone standing there smiling.
And now a Colgate commercial is this cute young woman getting out of bed and she just has this lovely fresh aura and she goes and she brushes her teeth and possibilities, it’s just like, yes, that’s how I want to feel. And then at the bottom, it says, Colgate.
You’re like, “Right, Oh, I want that. I want to be pulled into that world. I’m aspiring to that.” So, we live in a pull marketing society, which means when we’re looking at our content, we need to be pulling people in to want to be a part of us and then we can sell them.
And really statistically, we look at 80% content is a give the part of the pole and 20% is the take. Now buy this from me. So, Threads as of right now, we want to think of it as 100% pull.
What I’m seeing really work because it is connected with Instagram so tightly is people creating community and conversations and then using their Instagram to do the hard sell. Does that make sense?
Jillian Leslie (00:22:56) – And is there a way because I haven’t even explored this, if let’s say I’m responding to a Thread of yours, can I quickly click over to your Instagram?
I know how to go from my Instagram to my Threads or how to get there connected, but is it like, “Hey, I want to connect with you now on Instagram?” Are people on Threads saying, “Go follow me on Instagram?” Is there this cross-pollination or is it like silos?
Lauren Litt (00:23:30) – It’s both. I’m like, we’re so new. I’ve got Alex Elle, who is the author of How We Heal. She’s someone I follow on Instagram. I’m also now following her on Threads. I clicked onto her profile.
I can’t get over to her Instagram from here, but I don’t like how we do that. I know that when I’m following her she’s sharing her kind of a ha moments and thoughts and then she’s referring to content from her Instagram. So, then I can go over to her Instagram to get more in depth.
It’s creepy. It’s clunky is what I’ll tell you all but the reverse of you’ve probably seen the cool looking posts where it’s a white background with the Thread going through it. When you share a Thread to Instagram, people are able to see that and know that you’re on Threads and then go to your Thread I believe.
Jillian Leslie (00:24:28) – Oh, interesting. I can post my Thread to Instagram is what you’re telling me.
Lauren Litt (00:24:33) – Yes. I love it for a couple reasons. It’s fast content, you know it is you. It looks like they’ve made jokes cool or sharing it.
It’s this kind of social proof that how cool am I on a different platform and it’s just really easy because it’s these short thoughts, it’s distilling a vision and a I’m using it for my social media intentions of the week right now to just get the thoughts out there and move them and push it along.
So, it’s working from Threads to Instagram, but not necessarily Instagram to Threads.
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And now back to the show.
Jillian Leslie – Here’s the thing that you’re saying that I think is powerful. Instagram, one of the negatives that I hear about Instagram is that it’s like high school. Everybody looks great.
You feel inadequate. You’re never as cool as the cool kids. They look like they’re having just such a better life than you’re having the best life.
Lauren Litt (00:26:00) – Yeah. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie (00:26:02) – And it feels like a little mean girl sometimes. Not that I get mean comments, but it doesn’t feel inclusive like a big warm hug.
It feels a little bit like to play the game, I was joking about this on another podcast where you totally know this image of the high school version of today’s female entrepreneur influencer. And she maybe is just casually in a window sill wearing a fedora.
Lauren Litt (00:26:31) – Yes. Yes.
Jillian Leslie (00:26:32) – And she looks awesome, like she woke up this way. And you know that her Stripe account is just cranking with money every day.
Lauren Litt (00:26:41) – Hundreds of thousands.
Jillian Leslie (00:26:43) – Just by waking up and putting on the fedora. And it’s like that. And the truth is, at least in my life, it looks nothing like that. So, to play that game and look like that person where it’s so effortless and it’s all in peach colors, peach and gold, with the sun streaming in through the window.
Lauren Litt (00:27:02) – Yes.
Jillian Leslie – And I’ve got my coffee, I’ve got my morning coffee. You’re getting your coffee.
Lauren Litt (00:27:08) – And looking out into the world.
Jillian Leslie (00:27:09) – Yes. And all the possibility while I’m making money like the money. My point is that has always felt inauthentic to me. I totally get tripped up by it going, my life doesn’t look like this, so it makes this distance.
And that’s why when you came on my podcast and you’re like, “Just do it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, what am I doing?” Like, go do it. But what you’re saying to me is Threads has a lower bar, and so it could just be amusing.
And then I got to go to Canva and I got to edit. I do the whole thing and it’s like, “Oh, that feels like such a headache to me.” And it doesn’t. And it does feel somewhat inauthentic. So, therefore you’re saying, “No, no, no, this is another way to just put it out there.”
Lauren Litt (00:28:03) – It’s so easy. The thing is, they’ve built it to be simple. They’ve built it. We know the reason they built it is there’s a void in the market. Twitter is falling. It’s disappearing. We don’t know if it’ll be here next year where all of those people are going to go?
Well, they’re offering up this. And Twitter way back in the day was conversation. It was just 140 characters and that’s all you got.
And so, it’s not even though we don’t have that character limitation and I don’t even know what the character limitation is, the people are going into it with the mindset of I’m not going to be showing photos, I’m not going to be creating this visual thing.
It’s about the conversation, not about the optics. To your point.
Jillian Leslie (00:28:56) – You’re inspiring me because the optics kind of and again, it’s not like it totally trips me up, but just enough that there’s friction.
Lauren Litt (00:29:06) – It’s a barrier to entry for sure.
Jillian Leslie (00:29:09) -Yes. But it’s not huge. And it’s like, “Oh, I need to go into therapy to talk this through.” It’s like a little bit of friction. And I think that, to be honest, that’s why people have really loved TikTok, because TikTok is rougher.
It’s more just like you in the face, talking about God knows what. And so, that felt like a lower barrier to entry of I can be weird. My daughter shares TikToks with me that she has saved. And I would say she’ll be like, “Oh, this is so funny.”
And to be honest with you, it’s just weird. There’s just weirdness all over and it’s not styled and it’s just like some strange person doing something weird. And so therefore, I think the barrier to entry into TikTok has been much lower and therefore has attracted weird, but also it’s been easier.
Jillian Leslie (00:30:01) – Again, Instagram means beautiful and artificial to me.
Lauren Litt (00:30:11) – I totally understand. And that’s also why I have kept my Instagram kind of dirty. I’ll say, I want people to see you can have success and you don’t have to have those things.
I don’t have to have the pretty whatever, but Threads, you just get on there and everybody looks like everybody else. Like there’s very little as of this point personalization other than your words. So, that to me is exciting because we’re really just trading thoughts.
We’re in this thought community and sharing conversations. I’ve said that multiple times, but I really feel like that’s where it’s going to be going and I’m excited for the possibility of it.
Jillian Leslie (00:30:57) – That is very inspiring. For you out there listening to this. Chances are you’re an expert in something. Even go to ChatGPT and go write me ten Threads on my expertise. You don’t even have to necessarily be starting from zero.
And just post them or write me a poll so that I can pull my audience on topics like that. You’ve just totally inspired me. Like, seriously, we’re getting on this call and I’m like, “Oh, I haven’t checked Threads in like three days and it’s just falling into the background.
And I hope that you have insights that would inspire me. And I will tell you that you do. You definitely are inspiring me. When you said I’m excited about it in your email back to me, I’m like, “Really? She’s excited about it.” That’s so fascinating.
Lauren Litt (00:31:55) – Also I believe in the slow burn of everything. There’s no answer to success. There just isn’t. And if someone is saying, I have the quick answer to success, they are lying to you. Run the other way.
With Threads, we’re all learning about it. I’m checking it every other day. I’m definitely not checking it every day, but I am following my review, respond, reach out strategy that works on every other platform on this to get in community and understand what’s happening there and making sure I’m adding value.
Jillian Leslie (00:32:36) – Go through your strategy again in light of Threads.
Lauren Litt (00:32:42) – Great. So I created what I call my daily fix, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. T is going to stand for Threads now. From Threads. Goodbye Twitter. But it’s a three step process: review, respond, reach out.
On Threads, what this means is review. When I open the app, I’m going to my profile and I’m going there first because I want to see what is the last thing I said on this app. I’m not going on there every day.
I need to know where I am in the story of myself on Threads. So, I’m checking it out, I’m checking Threads and I’m checking replies because if anybody has responded to something, I said, “Oh, so I had just responded to someone and now it looks like they’ve responded back to me.”
So great. That’s a review. Where are you at? What is the current standing of your conversations?
The second part is respond. And as of right now, again, we’re a baby baby platform. A lot of people when you’re starting out have very few people that are on there so you can see who has liked your content. You can see who has followed you.
So, if you go into those two spaces, check out people who are following you that you aren’t following. These might be people that you want to connect with. Check out people who’ve liked your content. Is there someone there who you don’t know?
Go look at their profile and see what that is about. Even tag them and be like, “Hey, Jillian, thank you so much for liking this. This is such a wild platform. Let’s go.” Just those likes and follows. See who’s doing that. If someone has commented on your stuff, comment back.
So that’s respond. We’re dealing with the people who are already engaging with our content. The third phase is reach out. That’s where you’re going to go into the very long feed. Right now it is the wild West of algorithms.
If you hit the little home button, we’re all seeing just the vomit of Threads. Everybody is in this thing. Just go ahead and take a look at something. If you like something, give it a like if you want to repost it, repost it.
If you want to repost it with a comment, repost it with your comment by engaging with content that you are not already engaged with, you’re starting to teach it what you want to see. Even have a full algorithm yet you will.
I’m already seeing more of certain things like inspiring thought leader stuff in my feed than I was at the very beginning.
Jillian Leslie (00:35:14) – Where does posting my own Thread come into this formula?
Lauren Litt (00:35:20) – It doesn’t. The review, respond, reach out is all about just engaging. Right now we want to be posting every day as well, but I don’t like to have that be part of my engagement strategy because maybe I don’t have a thought.
And people are always like, I don’t want to share my coffee. Who cares what I’m eating? If that’s the thought in your mind, be like, I don’t need to share today, but I can engage in other people’s. For me, the content that I am currently sharing are those three pieces.
It’s aha moments, which for me looks like my social media intention for the week. It’s this bright bulb thought that I have that is going to focus the way I am on social media, so I’m sharing that you can share a question.
Or you can prompt people about a discussion like, “Hey, I’m choosing a new lipstick. Does anybody have a great brand?” These are the threads that we can share.
Jillian Leslie (00:36:17) – That’s it. So, back to your engagement strategy. Give me like how many minutes for each piece of this?
Lauren Litt (00:36:26) – I believe that once you know where all the buttons are. Five minutes a day is enough.
Jillian Leslie (00:36:32) – Five minutes a day for all?
Lauren Litt (00:36:35) – Three or five minutes for all three. Because we’re checking in. I currently have 124 followers on here. I don’t have a lot of people responding or replying yet. That’s like maybe 30s checking in on that.
The review or the respond phase, that’s maybe a minute or two. You know as much as I want and then the reach out phase, I’m giving it about three minutes. Now you can do longer if you want to give 30 minutes to this, you can.
I just don’t know that we need to, especially at this growth phase where we don’t really know what this platform is going to be yet. It is going to evolve. It is going to change. We are all going to be a part of the process. Yeah, even just a little bit.
And that’s my strategy for all platforms. Even if you can just do a regular engagement check in every day, you’re going to get more out of the platform than if you’re just posting and ghosting.
Jillian Leslie (00:37:31) – I think that is so good. I think that speaks to my whole thing of get out of yourself. It’s like give or engage or all we want as people, I think is to be seen.
When you have a child, for example, they will get up to the top of the jungle gym and be like, Mom, I’ve spoken to other parents. It’s just like, look at me. Look at me. People want to be acknowledged. They want to be recognized. And if you can know that, you can use that as a superpower. That it isn’t just me.
And what I’m saying to the world and not that there isn’t value in that, but what you’re saying is invert it and give to the community, connect with real people.
Go, you’re a real person and you’re a real person. And I see you. I see you. And then here’s what I’m adding versus I’m going to use this as a way to stand at the top of the play structure and go, look at me, look at me. So I think that back in the beginning, social media just felt like a big megaphone.
Lauren Litt (00:38:44) – Yes.
Jillian Leslie (00:38:46) – And you’re saying, no, reverse that.
Lauren Litt (00:38:51) – I’m saying reverse it because I see so much more people forget it’s a social platform. I don’t need to remind people to post. You’re already worried about what your next post is going to be.
I need to remind you to be a human. And when you be a human on these platforms, that’s where you actually connect and bring in the right people and find your clients and sell your lipstick. That’s where the magic happens.
Jillian Leslie (00:39:15) – It’s funny. I did an Instagram live, by the way. I just want to selfishly ask you, what do you think of Instagram live? Should people be doing them?
Lauren Litt (00:39:24) – I’m obsessed. Yes, absolutely. I think I like to have it as part of my weekly habit. However often you can do a live in a regular fashion is how often you should be doing it. If that’s once a month, fantastic, fantastic.
Lives on any platform are really powerful because the algorithms are going to push your content to the top of the feed and they’re going to let everybody know that you’re live on Instagram. That’s the only piece of content that everybody who follows you gets a notification like, “Hey, Jillian’s live now will you wait?”
Jillian Leslie (00:39:56) – But it won’t go beyond my followers.
Lauren Litt (00:40:01) – It will if you get engagement, if things are happening, it will go beyond your followers. All content will go beyond your followers if it’s good content and engaged because the platforms are selfish. They want people to stay on the platform and engage with the content so they can sell them shit.
Jillian Leslie (00:40:17) – Even stories.
Lauren Litt (00:40:18) – Even stories. Even everything. Even everything.
Jillian Leslie (00:40:21) – Here’s my thing. I decided one day I would go live on Instagram and a couple people showed up live and I was talking about memberships and somebody said, “I have a membership.”
And I said, “Cool. What kind of member?” I’m just like, “Hey, Amanda, what kind of membership?” And she’s texting back and saying, “I have a crafting membership.” And I said, “That’s awesome.” And I guess on my podcast, I hadn’t had somebody with a membership.
And I go, “Would you come on my podcast?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” And so I said, “Great. During the live email me and we’ll set this up.” Low and behold, she came on my podcast. We’ve become friends.
She bought MiloTreeCart to then move her membership from whatever she was using to MiloTreeCart. She’s a huge evangelist. She’s somebody I reach out to all the time and it was all because of some random Instagram live I did.
Lauren Litt (00:41:27) – And that I was saying.
Jillian Leslie (00:41:30) – It was so kind of like, I don’t know, Serendipitous.
Lauren Litt (00:41:35) – People are thinking, okay, I need clients. I need clients. I need clients. Yes. But also you’re going to have connections that are going to improve your business in your reach in ways you don’t even know.
I just had a bunch of people follow me and one of them responded, “Yeah, I don’t really want to be on your newsletter list. I’m here looking for business connections.” And I was like, “Great.” She’s like, “Would you want to jump in a coffee chat? Let’s talk about our businesses.”
And I was like, “Yes, let’s do that.” So be open. You don’t know what is on the other end and what someone might have to offer or what someone might need. You just don’t know.
Jillian Leslie (00:42:13) – I was having coffee with a friend yesterday and she’s a mom friend and we had met pre-pandemic and we were both talking about that. It’s been harder to make friends post-pandemic because everybody’s in their own little bubble.
So she said, I have decided that any time anybody reaches out or her husband met somebody and said, “You should meet my wife,” and normally she’d be like, “I don’t know.” Her husband goes, “You should have coffee with this person.”
And she said, I normally would go, “What? You’re setting me up like a playdate with some random person.” And they both made a deal, though the husband and the wife decided no, because we want more interesting people in our lives.
We want what’s the cost of a coffee? And who knows where this will lead? And I think that I’m going to talk about this more on my podcast, that idea of serendipity, but putting yourself in the path of luck or the path of making that connection.
The only way you do that is by opening yourself up, which is what I think you’re saying, versus I know if I send this many emails I’ll get this level of response or I have these calculations. Instead, what you’re saying is put yourself out there to attract random luck to you.
Lauren Litt (00:43:38) – Yes, the definition of luck when preparation meets opportunity.
Jillian Leslie (00:43:42) – Opportunity?
Lauren Litt (00:43:44) – Yes. And I’m a little woo woo. I really believe that social media is this shout into the universe of what you want. And when you lean into that, it is so surprising what comes back at you.
Whoever’s read The Alchemist, it’s like when you’re on that path, when you’re opening yourself to the dream, you’ll be like, Oh, wow. Now this person, I didn’t even know I had this connection and they want me to do this. And now Jillian’s going to have me back on her podcast.
We didn’t even know that was happening. So, all of this is possible, but you do have to put yourself out there and it’s one baby step at a time.
Jillian Leslie (00:44:22) – So Threads, I think the theme of this episode is Threads, it enables you to put yourself out there more easily and in a little bit more of a random way because of the fact that the algorithm is still uncertain and who knows who’s going to see your stuff.
So you don’t have to feel like, “Oh, my feet are just filled with all of these beautiful girl CEOs who it feels like high school.” Oh, I could be meeting the nerdy kid who has something to teach me or some connection, or I can hang out with the theater kids and the jocks and somebody in my AP calculus class.
Lauren Litt (00:45:06) – Cool. Totally. That is exactly. We’re in high school, but there’s no more clicks. There’s no more clicks. And here we are.
Jillian Leslie (00:45:13) – I think that’s so powerful. I really do. Well, you have so inspired me. Literally.
I’m going to get off with you and go put a Thread up so anybody who wants to follow me, I’m at MiloTree and I’m going to do this and I will try your strategy of five minutes a day just to see what serendipity, what I call it, strings of the universe. What I can pull to me that I don’t know is coming.
Lauren Litt (00:45:43) – Yes, because it’s a grand experiment at this point. It’s a truly grand experiment. Nobody knows.
Jillian Leslie (00:45:49) – I love that. Lauren, if people want to follow you to learn more about what you do, where should they go?
Lauren Litt (00:45:58) – Come and find me on Instagram @lauren.litt. Right now I have just launched the most fun quiz. It is my social hoppy cocktail quiz that is in my bio.
Go ahead and click the link, grab the quiz, let me know which cocktail you get because I created all of them and no alcohol is required. It is a non-alcoholic cocktail that you’re going to be getting.
Jillian Leslie (00:46:21) – Lauren, as we move forward and this evolves, will you come back on the show to do a part three?
Lauren Litt (00:46:29) – Yes, let’s do it. I bet you in about three months we’re going to see actual Threads coming together. We’re going to have a spool of Threads that we can actually talk about.
Jillian Leslie (00:46:42) – I love that. I look forward to that. And I just have to say thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Lauren Litt (00:46:50) – Thank you for having me. It’s always so fun to chat with you.
Jillian Leslie (00:46:53) – I hope you guys like this episode. Lauren is one of my all time favorite guests and I love the positive spin she puts on Threads. So yes, I am now posting on Threads. I would love you to follow me. I will follow you back. I’m at MiloTree super simple. See what I’m doing.
I will be watching what you are doing and if you are ready to turn on a new income stream, definitely go to milotreecart.com. Check out MiloTreeCart because it is built for non techies and I am just guessing that that is you.
We are selling it to our founding members right now for a lifetime deal. This is just a limited time. We’re then going to go to a monthly subscription, but you can buy it now for $349. You pay for it one time and you own it forever.
In fact, I have a three month payment plan. If that’s interesting to you, just email me at jillian@milotree.com and I will send you the link.
And right now, as a bonus, if you purchase, I will get on a one hour coaching onboarding call where I will personally help you set up your first digital product for success. I get to see what is working and I will share all of that with you.
If you have any questions, reach out to me at jillian@milotree.com. But seriously, think about this as a way to futureproof your business. I am watching people have tremendous success and I wish that for you as well. And I will see you here again next week.
