Destination Marketers Head to Threads as Twitter Alternative

Destination marketing organizations are rushing to join Meta’s Threads: Destination Toronto, Visit Orlando, Visit Utah, Myrtle Beach, Fort Myers and many others have already signed up for the direct competitor to Twitter.

Because Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, these destinations have been able to grow their audiences quickly. Users login to Threads with their Instagram accounts and automatically follow the same people they follow on Instagram.

“We’re at about 10,000 right now. I would say a good 80% of that happened over the weekend,” said Paula Port, Destination Toronto‘s vice president of marketing. Visit Orlando has over 32,000 followers.

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users worldwide, according to Insider Intelligence.

So far, posting activity on Threads by these groups is uneven. Some haven’t posted anything while others like Visit Orlando have been posting daily.

Threads doesn’t offer advertising at the moment, according to the Wall Street Journal. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok are the top spenders on social media advertising.

Destinations have been devoting fewer resources to Twitter. A new problem for Twitter has been the new blue check verification process, which requires a subscription. “We just kind of gone back and forth on what’s the value that we’re seeing there and it seems very unpredictable,” said  Utah Office of Tourism Director of Marketing and Communication Ben Cook.

Destinations haven’t developed a strategy for marketing on Threads. Destination Toronto hasn’t posted much and is reusing the text-based strategy and repurposing content it uses for Twitter. Utah is experimenting with a more humorous voice.

“There is not a huge lift and we’re not going to put a lot of time into developing a huge strategy until we just sort of see where it goes,” said Cook. Audience engagement on the platform looks good so far, he said.

What strategies destinations come up with for Threads depends on the platform’s evolution.

 “It feels like it wants to be Twitter, but everyone from Instagram is there,” Port said. “Is Threads going to reduce our need for that news-driven content or is it going to be more like Instagram, which is more curated and has more of a visual aesthetic?”

Meta has not made Threads available in most European countries but hopes to in the near future, Tech Crunch reported.

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