Threads and emerging platforms: should outdoor businesses bother?

Every few months a new platform shows up and someone in a Facebook group asks: “Should I be on Threads? What about Bluesky? My competitor just joined - should I?” It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is: probably not yet, and here’s exactly why.

This isn’t a knock on any of these platforms. It’s a time budget problem. Most outdoor businesses are running lean - one or two people wearing every hat from guide to bookkeeper to social media manager. Adding a new channel has a real cost, even if the platform is free.

What threads actually is (and who’s on it)

Threads launched in July 2023 as Meta’s answer to Twitter, built directly on Instagram’s infrastructure. By August 2025, it had 400 million monthly active users. As of January 2026, it’s surpassed X in daily mobile users - 141.5 million daily users to X’s 125 million.

Those are real numbers. The platform isn’t going anywhere.

But who uses it? Threads skews toward media, culture, and brand-to-brand conversation. It’s where journalists, marketers, and creators talk shop. Engagement rates are legitimately higher than Instagram - around 4.5% on Threads vs. 1.2% on Instagram - but high engagement on a platform where your potential customers aren’t browsing is a misleading metric.

Think about your actual customer. Someone planning a rafting trip on the New River or booking a fly fishing float on the Madison River is not on Threads researching their options. They’re on Google, then Instagram, then your website. That booking path hasn’t changed.

Where platforms like bluesky and mastodon stand

Bluesky has grown fast - from 10 million users in September 2024 to 40 million registered users by November 2025. That’s impressive growth for an upstart. But registered users ≠ active users. Bluesky had roughly 12-15 million monthly active users in January 2026, and actually saw daily active user counts drop 40% year over year by late 2025.

The community there is strongly skewed toward writers, journalists, tech workers, and activists. Creative professionals exploring an alternative to X. Not your typical whitewater guest from Cincinnati.

Mastodon has around 1 million active users, fragmented across hundreds of separate servers. It’s not a marketing channel for anyone selling outdoor experiences.

BeReal peaked at 73 million users and is now down to roughly 22 million - a platform that asked people to share unfiltered, real-time moments. The concept was interesting. The user base didn’t stick around.

None of these platforms have a meaningful cluster of people booking guided outdoor experiences. That’s the only question that matters for your marketing time.

The real cost of adding a new platform

Forty-three percent of small business owners already spend six or more hours weekly on social media. That’s time pulled from guiding, customer service, and the off-season projects that actually move the needle.

Adding a new platform isn’t just creating an account. It means learning the content format and tone that works there (repurposed Instagram posts perform poorly on Threads - the formats are fundamentally different). It means creating natively, monitoring comments, and responding - replying to Threads comments boosts engagement by 42% according to analysis of 128,000 posts, which means you can’t just post and disappear. And it means eventually evaluating whether any of it drove bookings, which requires having set up tracking first.

For a solo operator or small team, that’s a genuine weekly tax. The opportunity cost is the part people underestimate. Three hours spent strengthening your Google Business Profile or publishing a trip report that targets a specific search term will, in most cases, drive more bookings than a month of consistent Threads activity. The channel with booking intent beats the channel with engagement every time.

There’s also the distraction factor. Most outfitters we talk to aren’t falling short on bookings because they’re not on Threads. They’re falling short because their Instagram presence is inconsistent, their Google presence is incomplete, or their website isn’t converting the traffic they already have. Fix those first.

When threads might actually make sense

There’s one scenario where Threads is worth low effort: you’re already active on Instagram and your account has a real following.

Threads accounts link to Instagram - same handle, your followers carry over automatically. If you’re posting on Instagram consistently and want to test whether text-based conversation works for your brand, you can cross-post selectively to Threads in minutes. That’s a different calculation than starting from scratch.

Specific use cases worth trying:

A rafting company in Colorado could share quick observations - “Upper Colorado flows hit 1,200 cfs today, perfect conditions” - that read naturally as conversational text rather than a formatted Instagram caption. That’s the tone Threads rewards. It’s also genuinely useful content for people already following you.

A fishing guide in Montana might find more value in using Threads to engage with fly fishing media accounts, local journalists, and state tourism boards. Not for booking guests directly, but for building the kind of relationships that generate press mentions and local backlinks. We’ve seen small operators land local news coverage specifically because they were active on a platform where editors happened to be.

An outfitter running seasonal trips could use Threads for behind-the-scenes updates that feel too casual for Instagram - trail conditions, equipment decisions, honest takes on what’s working or not. There’s an authenticity that plays well in a text-forward environment.

These are supplementary uses. If you’re not getting traction on Instagram and TikTok first, Threads won’t fix that. And if you try it and find the effort-to-return ratio doesn’t work after 60 days, that’s valuable information too - stop and redirect those hours.

How to evaluate any new platform before committing

Before joining anything new, run it through three questions.

First: are my potential customers actually there? Check if people are using the platform to research or plan outdoor experiences - not just scrolling passively, but posting “where should I kayak in the Ozarks?” or engaging with outfitter accounts. If you can’t find that activity with five minutes of searching, pass.

Second: what does maintaining this platform realistically cost per week? An honest number, not the optimistic one. For Threads, if you’re already on Instagram, it might be 30 minutes. For Bluesky, starting from zero, it’s realistically 2-3 hours a week to build any presence. Compare that to what else you could do with those hours.

Third: how would I know if it’s working? If you can’t define a metric - followers who’ve converted, DMs about bookings, referral traffic in Google Analytics 4 - you’ll end up just posting into the void for months without knowing whether it matters.

Most platforms fail question one for outdoor businesses right now. That’s not forever. It’s just where things stand in 2026.

What to actually do about emerging platforms

The most useful framework: don’t join a new platform until you’re posting consistently on your primary ones and you have a system that doesn’t depend entirely on you.

For most outdoor businesses, that means Instagram and TikTok (or at least one of them) plus a solid Google Business Profile. Once those are running well - consistent posts, engaged followers, bookings you can trace back to social - then it’s worth running a 60-day test on one new platform.

The content repurposing approach matters here. If you build your content from one source - a trip report, a river conditions update, a customer story - you can push short versions to multiple platforms without building separate content for each. That’s the only way adding Threads (or Lemon8, or whatever comes next) doesn’t drain your week.

Watch Lemon8, Meta’s other newer platform. It’s visually driven, content leans toward lifestyle and aesthetics, and it’s growing among younger travelers. Glamping operations, scenic lodges, and any outdoor business with strong visual identity might find traction there before it gets crowded. But even that’s a 2027 conversation for most operators.

The platforms still driving bookings

Instagram drives 29% of direct purchases across its user base. TikTok’s discovery funnel is real - people find an experience they didn’t know they wanted, then book it. Google remains the starting point for most outdoor trip searches.

If your Instagram strategy is dialed in and your TikTok marketing is producing reach, great - then experiment. If either of those is inconsistent or underperforming, that’s where your hours belong.

The outdoor businesses we see converting social traffic into bookings share a pattern: they’re excellent at one or two platforms, not mediocre at five.

Threads will matter more for outdoor businesses in a few years, once ad targeting matures and the user base broadens. For now, it’s a “watch and wait” platform for most - unless you’re running a big brand with a dedicated social team. For the outfitter with eight months of season and a one-person office: hold off, keep building what’s already working, and check back when Threads has ads and a more booking-ready audience.

Pick one platform you’re not doing consistently and fix that first. That’s where your next booking is hiding.