Cinnabon also turns Threads text posts into content for its other channels, particularly Facebook, Gregus said. Cinnamon roll-related memes are also a large part of the brand’s Threads content and are often repurposed across Facebook and Instagram, she said. But Cinnabon also leverages Threads as a space for content that may not fit its more curated Instagram feed and wouldn’t resonate with its Facebook audience—such as a meme revealing the social media manager of the Cinnabon Threads account is, in fact, a cinnamon roll with an iPhone.
“What we’re finding is the more you participate [on Threads], the more reach you get,” though the inner workings of the Threads algorithm are still ambiguous, VaynerMedia’s Miaritis said. “We’re seeing brands with small, small follower bases that get, on average, small amounts of attention or reach, suddenly getting a lot of reach every few times they post … [Threads] presents, in a non-paid environment, the opportunity to get enormous reach.”
Along with the murkiness of its algorithm, social media teams have limited visibility into Threads data beyond the number of impressions across their content and vanity metrics such as likes, comments and shares. Meta announced in June that it had opened the Threads application programming interface (API) to all developers, which may soon offer brands more insight into their audience demographics on the platform, among other information.
For Cinnabon, the brand’s interactions with consumers on Threads are its primary measure of success, Gregus said. “With social, there’s so many things that you can’t ever track. Not to be cheesy, but something like the joy someone gets when a brand responds to them—that doesn’t necessarily translate to impressions or engagement, but that can build that relationship that makes them care about the brand as more than just a brand that they want to buy something from … On text-based platforms, it’s all about people responding back to you.”