X vs Instagram vs Threads: The Social Breakdown
Twitter has undergone significant changes since Elon Musk bought the platform for a staggering $44 billion. The little blue bird is no longer, verification is the order of the day, and sadly, Twitter is no longer: so we’re reintroducing X!
Meta has also undergone its fair share of changes, with the introduction of collaborative posts on Instagram and of course, the launch of their direct competitor to X, Threads. Read on for Interactive Schools’ breakdown of these platforms, and our recommendations on how schools can use them.
Overview
X defines itself as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages”.
X posts are limited to:
280-characters (unless using an X Premium account which raises the limit to 4000)
4 pieces of media
Videos of up to 140-seconds long
Content is very easily shared within X, simply by using the Retweet functionality. This allows schools’ marketers to share stories written by teachers for current families, in order to repurpose them for prospective families. Marketers should use this functionality wisely, as this is how schools should be curating the best-of-the-best from a variety of departments within the School.
On a monthly basis, as many as 259.4 million users are using the platform, an increase of roughly 30 million since Musk took over.
Instagram is defined as a “free photo and video platform, where users can share with their followers or with a selected group of friends”.
Instagram comes with:
A relatively whopping character limit of 2,200 (but is truncated at 125 characters).
A limit of up to 10 images and/or videos (up to 60 minutes per video) in a carousel format
Unfortunately, there is not such a simple method of sharing content within Instagram. While there is no Retweet or Share button, Marketers can share teachers’ stories into their Story (the 24-hour disappearing stories, curated around the Profile Image), and then organise those individual posts into more permanent Highlights. These could identify individual Year or Grade groups, subjects or Departments - in order to make it easy for prospective families to find what is most relevant to them.
Instagram also has 2.989 billion monthly active users, which is more than 1000%+ that of the user base on X!
Threads is the youngest player here, following its release in July 2023. It defines itself as a platform “built by the Instagram team, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations”.
Threads has:
A character limit of 500
A limit of a combination of 10 images and/or videos (up to 5-minutes long)
While this makes the network a happy middle-ground in terms of both text and media, there are some key functionalities missing, such as curatable #Hashtags, and ultimately, no API, meaning this is not yet the ideal network for schools’ stories.
As of September 2023, there are more than 130 million Threads users, 70 million of those signing up in the first 48 hours! It is viewed as a direct competitor to X, with Elon Musk even threatening to take Meta to court. Since the initial excitement, however, the user base has fallen to roughly 20% of all users remaining active.
What makes a good post?
At Interactive Schools, we’re finding that stories shared to Threads or X are very similar due to the limited character count and the ease of sharing timely, accurate content. Stories shared to Instagram are far more visually-focussed and we would expect those posts to take a little longer to be crafted.
Looking at the functionalities of these networks helps us to understand the focal point.
On X and Threads, users can post stories without media, indicating that the words are the most important element of the story. On Instagram, however, users can post stories containing only media and no words, highlighting the emphasis placed on visual media.
For this reason, it is important that a story shared on X or Threads is driven by the written element of the story, while on Instagram engaging media should be used to grab and sustain users’ attention.
The perfect story, however, is a combination of text and media: any story shared to social media should provide evidence of a school living into its values, mission and ethos.
If a picture paints a thousand words - imagine the word-count of a 140-second video! But even the most beautiful image requires context, for audiences to understand ‘who is doing what, and for what purpose?’.
Tagging
Now, how to add that context? Our #HashtagStrategy looks at the three elements that make each school unique: People, Place and Purpose. The use of #Hashtags is not only vital for curating content, but also for explaining what audiences are seeing or reading. Appropriate tagging also makes content discoverable by people searching for those areas of interest. For instance, a story about a lesson on Shakespeare should include #Shakespeare, so that social media users interested in Shakespeare may be able to see how your school educates children on that subject.
On an Interactive Schools website, the user experience of visitors is greatly improved by the accurate use of #BrandedHashtags, as stories integrated on the website will provide ‘related stories’ based on the #Hashtags included in the post they click on.
Features
Instagram offers a variety of features that will help you share your #SchoolStories. It has a ‘Stories’ functionality, which allows for curation and provides a workaround for the lack of a feed sharing function. It’s also possible to organise them into ‘buckets’ known as ‘Highlights’ which appear at the top of an Instagram page. Instagram Stories expire after 24 hours, but once added to a Highlight they sit on a profile until removed.
Branded Instagram Highlights on Sherborne Qatar’s profile
Functionalities available on X often seem limiting, but in fact these limitations are beneficial for concise storytelling. The non-editable posts and media are a great indicator of authenticity, and the limitation of 280 characters significantly reduces the time it takes to tell a story!
Functionalities available to X Premium users are detractors from school storytelling. We don’t believe that teachers should be marketers, so to find a ‘Blue Tick’ on the Maths account of your school would identify them as investors in recognition rather than authentic storytellers. It’s certainly true that you can’t buy authenticity!
Due to the relative youth of the platform, Threads is lacking features. Unlike Instagram and X, Threads do not yet provide an API meaning stories shared to that network cannot yet integrate with websites. The lack of clickable #Hashtags means that content cannot even be curated on the network.
Threads is extremely similar to Twitter in terms of the ability to make short text posts with the option to include media. However it misses features such as hashtags, polls, tagging in media, DMs (direct messages) and more. It is a young platform that still has time to evolve but at its present state it is not something schools should prioritise.
So, which Platform?
If teachers are keen to tell stories, we recommend they do so from an X account without verification. Timely, accurate storytelling is what we love to see from schools, so the more illustrations of children enjoying a valuable educational experience, the better!
For those in Visual Subjects (such as the creative arts, design technology or textiles), Instagram may be the right platform given its emphasis on imagery and media. Media comes first on Instagram, further highlighting this emphasis, so it’s important that the media tells a good story in itself.
As soon as Threads releases its API and allows for curatable content through #Hashtagging, it is likely to surpass X in its ability to share timely stories. Watch this space: Threads is coming!