On Threads, views and followers have almost nothing to do with each other

I feel like I can finally share this without being presumptuous, because most people don't understand one core fact about how Threads works.

On Threads, views and followers have almost nothing to do with each other.

It can feel disconcerting if you don't realize that and to me it also explains why so few large accounts are active on here.

I regularly get more views with under 800 followers than accounts with millions of them. It's not because I'm some Threads wizard, I see it constantly. Accounts with a few hundred or a few thousand followers pulling millions of views.

Next time you're in your feed, click on the profiles you see most. You'll probably notice the same thing. It's not a fluke, it's an explicit side effect of how the algorithm here works.

For all the things Meta does poorly, it's extremely good at spotting successful social dynamics on other networks and stealing them. That's exactly what happened here.

There's one other network where you see this same pattern. TikTok.

TikTok's algorithm runs on engagement, not follows, and that one choice shapes every aspect of the platform. Threads works the same way.

On Threads, a post does well based on its engagement patterns. Who posted it is only a minor input. That's both a blessing and a curse.

It means anyone can go viral, repeatedly. It also means you have to re-earn your spot in the feed. Every. Single. Time. There are no laurels to rest on.

There's a second thing Meta took from TikTok: keep people in their sub-culture. It's remarkable how little crossover there is between different groups on here. Your feed is mostly the topics you're already into. It feels weirdly Reddit-like even without the explicit subreddits.

Your posts mostly stay contained in a bubble. Only rarely do they break out.

Both of these dynamics shape how to do well here. If you're trying to get views, the best way to do that is to consistently post engaging content within one sub-culture.

How? The first and most obvious piece: give people a way to engage. Replies are best, but any engagement signal helps. A video to watch, images to open, a poll, a multi-post thread to read. Likes and replies are the hardest to earn, so lower the bar.

The second is to focus. You might think the takeaway so far is to just post engagement bait, but that rarely works. The algorithm isn't general, it's sub-culture specific, and over time it learns which bubbles actually find your posts engaging.

What you want is content that's consistently engaging to a specific community, and that almost never looks like bait. Bait might get you one viral hit. It won't build you an audience.

Figure out your community, then post consistently within it and learn what lands over time. Topic tags help but they're not mandatory. Focus and consistency are.

And while you're building that engagement, there's one last trick worth knowing. Posts aren't the only way to drive engagement. Sometimes the best tool you've got is replies.

Threads has one of the most robust reply sections on the internet. There's a reason "running to the replies" is a constant meme here. Some of my top performing posts of all time are replies with 100k+ views.

Especially early on, replies are one of the best ways to drive engagement and teach the algorithm your posts have an audience. As a bonus, they're also one of the best ways to build actual community. Which matters, because…

When I said views and followers are disconnected, that cuts both ways. If all you care about is that sweet, sweet dopamine then channel your inner reply guy and go wild. Your view count will climb and you'll refresh your notifications as many times a day as your thumbs can handle.

But most of the time, if you're trying to grow on here, it's not just to fill the void left by the validation you never got as a kid.

You're trying to grow with a specific goal in mind, which means building an audience and a community, not just collecting eyeballs. That's an entirely different game with its own dynamics. One I'll try to write up when I'm not 11 posts deep on a thread that should only ever have reached 5.