It’s finally happening – Threads got me into blogging again! It’s been some time, the good old pre-Elon times, when Twitter was still my go-to tool for information, learning, and building relationships. Not only social media but a tool for real social collaboration. I started blogging and podcasting then in the domain of Human Resources, Leadership, and the impact of the Digital Transformation on our working world. If you want to know more about the massive potential that Threads has to offer you if you combine it with further creative outlets and techniques from social learning and collaboration – based on my experiences from another domain – this post might be for you!



In 2016, I began to share my ideas about the before-mentioned topics. I really had no clue how to start and how to market my content. I was working as a management consultant and trainer/coach back then and tried to find another sales channel for my services – so I did what they nowadays call social selling but I did it without any systematic approach. It was only a year later when I got in touch with approaches like "Working out loud" and later "lernOS" when I started to realize that they described what I had done for some time already. I created content that was helpful for others, however without the right generous and growth-oriented mindset. Only when I started giving without expecting anything as an immediate return and to build networks based on mutual benefits it really kicked off for me. "First give then take" became and still is one of the central mantras in the social internet world.


Now, I was not only equipped with a systematic approach to what I had tried before but I also managed to build so many helpful and rewarding relationships to people that became colleagues, partners in crime for the topics and projects we worked on, and even friends over the years. And every now and then when I met someone face to face for the first time it felt surreal and rather like we had met a couple of times before. There was an immediate bond as we had already had such a close exchange and knew so much about the other person – though we had "only" met online. A fascinating experience I made dozens of times. I learned that a trustful exchange with likeminded people has so much to offer – even if it’s just happening on the internet. For me Twitter quickly became the medium to get in touch with people, engage, discuss, and exchange relevant information. It helped me to approach interesting contacts with small steps: Linking, commenting or reposting. It's something that anyone can do and which doesn't cost anything except for some well-spent seconds of thoughtful attention. Then, in a next step, you can start creating own relevant content, be it photographs, blogs or videos. Everything is possible now also with Threads – if you use it with the right mindset.


In order to get started with social collaboration and learning you have to become visible.


The important thing to built relationships and broaden your community this is to share helpful content (with an altruistic motivation) and become visible (so that others can discover similarities and relate to you). To give an own example, I was doing this through blogging and podcasting back then. In 2017, I started one of the first German podcasts in the field of Human Relations and provided content on topics like leadership, communication, personality development on a weekly basis. Although I felt that after half a year my story was told for then so far, people found the content to be really helpful and the statistics proved that. With my blog I had reached round about 80,000 visits over the years and approximately 30,000 plays and visits for the podcast and the associated blog. But most important: I had created an archive to answer 90% of the questions I received later on just be referring to a post I had written or an episode I had recorded – this actually helped me a lot in helping others and become a relevant resource for them.

The aspects I've mentioned before are summarized in this sketch note from Tanmay Vora and elaborated on in the brilliant books from Austin Kleon. The trilogy "Steal like an Artist", "Show your work" and "Keep going" are really opening your mind for a different way of working especially for creatives. I don't want to dive in too deep into these social collaboration approaches. But if you want to learn more, be sure to check out John Stepper's Working Out Loud and Simon Dückert's lernOS approach. I also summarized my experiences with these and other approaches here (German blog post). I also interviewed both back then in my podcast:


So regardless of what your creative outlets mights be – whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or now Threads – social collaboration always applies the same principles. And I strongly believe and hope that Threads (like Twitter did before) can play an important role here. To me it’s the most flexible tool: You can share links, have discussions, and post content. It has the potential to be a central hub for communication and sharing of information from all the other channels – a real social collaboration tool.