The BlueSky logo.
If you don’t work in the always-on opportunity-seeking worlds of Public Relations, Social Media, Marketing, Media or Politics, you may have heard of BlueSky by now but not have properly looked at it yet.
In brief, it’s one of the newest social media platforms, backed partly by Twitter-co-founder Jack Dorsey, which has seen explosive growth during and since the US Presidential Election.
Why? Because a lot of users of X (formerly Twitter), don’t like how Elon Musk has used his control of it (including to support Donald Trump’s re-election) and what it’s allowed others to post on it – including disinformation, hate speech, fraud content and pornography.
So millions of users of X have either stopped posting or deactivated their accounts, or both, and switched the content they would have posted on X to other platforms which they feel are an ethical alternative.
Threads
Some have migrated, in a movement being referred to as the “Xodus” or “X-odus”, to Meta’s newest platform Threads, which was created “to offer a text-based social media platform that combines Instagram’s community-building capabilities with writing features”, including external links – links in Instagram posts don’t work but you can add them to Stories and your bio. It allowed Instagram users to open their account on Threads from there and automatically follow the people they follow on Instagram if and when they open a Threads account.
As a result, Threads has more than 275m Monthly Active Users (MAU) and said on 26/11/24 “Threads has accrued over 35 million signups so far in November and is “going on three months with more than a million signups a day.”
But latest data from SimilarWeb (at the time of writing) shows, although there are more people signed up to Threads, they’re less active on a weekly and daily basis than BlueSky – which is of more interest to you if you’re seeing its users as an audience for your business or organisation.
BlueSky
Many of those moving their activity from X have gone instead to BlueSky. As a result, it’s seen explosive growth in users and activity in the past two weeks.
At the time of writing, it’s already passed 22m Users (see the number now here) and more than 500k Daily Active Users (DAU) in the UK. BlueSky is also getting three times the daily active use of Threads in the US (roughly equal globally) but BlueSky has just passed Threads on Daily website Visits worldwide.
Should you join the Xodus?
So should you join the Xodus?
Two questions to ask on this – one ethical, the other utilitarian.
The ethical and moral question is – is continued use of X in line with your personal or organisation’s values?
The utilitarian questions are:
- How much engagement is your account getting (this matters more than how many followers you have because it leads to the things you want to happen)? Compare them by engagement per follower.
- How much traffic is your website getting from it? Your Google Analytics can tell you. Best if you post UTM-coded links. Compare with other platforms.
- Are there more, and more important, key stakeholders (e.g. influencers, powerholders such as MPs or national media figures) you need or want to influence, only posting on X than posting on another platform? Then decide if you’re happy to continue engaging on there (which helps it make money, despite all its ethical questions), or perhaps, wait till somewhere else has enough of this group for you to pause X activity and switch it to somewhere else.
What are other organisations doing?
Many organisations, including my professional body – the CIPR, have now ceased posting and engagement on X. A survey by public sector comms expert Dan Slee found more than half of the public sector and third-sector orgs replying are evaluating their future on X, almost a quarter of the public sector is definitely leaving and one in 10 in the third sector are definitely staying.
Those remaining on X are seeing engagement and views for their posts drop. Dan found, for example, that 54% of John Swinney’s followers posts were now seeing his posts, while only 0.01% of the followers of Birmingham City Council are.
As users continue to leave, these numbers can be expected to worsen, reducing the utility argument for carrying on unless your goal is to influence a small number of people highly-important to your organisation who are still on X but not Threads or BlueSky.
Where should you go instead?
As with all professional comms, the answer depends on what you want to happen as a result of the communication – the Out-takes and Outcomes.
This infographic summarises (in a deliberately eye-catching over-simplified way) the differences in content between the major social platforms used in the UK.
Go where the audiences you want to speak to are and the content you want to be part of is.
How do Threads and BlueSky compare?
I’ve found Threads to be friendly but quite a grab-bag of topics. I’ve posted occasionally, followed all my Instagram follows who’ve arrived on Threads but had low engagement. The lack of Lists (a way to segment your follows – to view them in groups of your choosing) has been frustrating, though Meta is now rolling this out as Custom Feeds. It’s also U-turned on making the ‘For You’ algorithm-driven feed the default – in favour of letting you choose.
By contrast, BlueSky, which is built around a decentralised approach rather than controlled entirely by one company, so far is very much dominated by people in Politics, Media, Marketing, PR, Social Media and Comms talking about News and Politics.
Having found many of the accounts I followed on X once they started on BlueSky (how, below), I’ve had better engagement than I typically saw on X in the last year despite only being followed back by 470 accounts on BlueSky (at time of writing) versus the 2,625 accounts which follow mine on X – roughly a fifth.
Threads or BlueSky? Open a personal account on both and see how you find them. Which of the key bodies, VIPs, media and thought leaders in your sector are on each and how active are they? Post the same content on both for a while and measure the engagement and clicks for quantitative data to compare them side-by-side.
What if I decide to start on BlueSky?
Getting set up on BlueSky is like any other social media platform – choosing a username (one the same or close to those you use elsewhere helps followers from other places find you), writing a bio and uploading a cover image (ditto).
Verifying your identity via your website is ideal, too (there are fake accounts already) – to reassure users wanting to follow you. But it’s pretty technical – involving adding code to your site’s domain – so best left to your IT/Web person.
In terms of finding your existing audiences, the good news is you don’t have to start from scratch – Google Chrome browser extension Sky Follower Bridge allows you to log in to your account on X, go to the list of those you follow and then hit Alt-B to start it finding which of them have opened accounts on BlueSky.
Once its scan of BlueSky users is complete, it lists all the accounts with the same or similar usernames and allows you to follow them by clicking a button next to each name. N.B. As not everyone will use the same username, there will be false positives, so check the bios before following them.
As it’s still early days in X users migrating to BlueSky, I’d suggest you run a scan for new ones weekly – to find as many of your X follows as possible. Hopefully, over time, at least most of them will follow you back. And your X followers will find you once they migrate, once you’ve set up your account.
Make Lists
It’s sensible, as it was on Twitter/X, to create Lists to the accounts you follow to – so, rather than viewing a mass of posts flying by in a random assortment of topics at high speed like Tetris, you can view those you follow based on what they do, what topic they post about or whatever way you want to segment them.
You can then view just accounts in that List by selecting it in BlueSky’s app or via web browser. When someone follows you, view their Profile and under the ellipsis you’ll find ‘Add to Lists’.
Use a ‘deck view’
If you want to see all your Lists in one more-easily-read interface, install deck.blue as it’s emulating the same user experience as Tweetdeck – the tool many professional users used on Twitter.
It also allows you to search for content and save it to a column of its own – permanently displaying the current results. You can also arrange the columns in your preferred order.
It’s missing an emoji button, but on Windows you can Click Windows + fullpoint to bring up the Windows Emoji bar. On iOS, follow these instructions.
Sidenote – these tools were recommended to me by PR tools expert Stuart Bruce. As what’s best changes all the time, go to his website for the latest situation. He also has recommendations for best apps for iOS and Android as well as creating your own Feeds of users based on topics.
Once you’ve found at least some of the people who followed you on X, you should also find and follow other accounts useful for your goals.
Starter Packs
BlueSky has a brilliant feature called Starter Packs – which allows users to create a list of up to 150 people on a theme – e.g. people in your business or industry or experts on topic – and share it on your profile and in a post.
As they’re public, this allows other users to search the BlueSky Directory for them, find useful ones and follow the accounts in it, either individually or all at once. My advice – unless it’s a pack from a trusted source, check each account for relevance to your goals. There’s also this Starter Pack-only Directory endorsed on 26/11/24 by BlueSky.
Creating a Starter Pack for your team is a good way to get follows for them all. If some join later, add them and repost the link to the pack.
BlueSky Directory
As I mentioned, there’s also this useful third-party directory of tools and applications for BlueSky. Which one to use? Ask other BlueSky users, or me – we’re all really helpful and you’ll get useful answers, I’m sure.
Searching BlueSky
BlueSky’s search facility is still in the early days, but you can find how to do an Advanced Search here. If you’re old enough to remember the early days of Google Search, it’s very much like that or searching an Outlook folder for that email you need. Not hard, you’ll get used to it and they’ll develop a simpler one in time – they’re a small team right now.
What should you post?
So, you’re all set up, you’ve found a lot of X followers on BlueSky and got follows back. What are you going to post?
The simple answer is, to start with, what worked on Twitter/X – because it’s mostly the same audience. Unless your Business or Communication Objectives have changed.
Like X, you can use any number of hashtags (but best don’t overdo it – 4 max, I’d say), you’re limited to 300 characters per post, but you can create a thread of multiple posts in one go (by clicking the ‘+’ after completing the first post in the thread).
Multimedia options
You can post images (up to 4 per post) and video (up to 1 minute), GIFs and emojis.
BlueSky does have an algorithm, but it emphasises the posts of accounts you follow and usually displays them in chronological order.
As with pre-Musk Twitter, it allows you to block people who are abusive.
Most of all, I’d urge you to engage with the people and accounts which you want to build ties with, including having them share your posts. Social media is called that for a reason – so be sociable – comment, share, be helpful and ensure your content is useful, not just self-serving. The more you engage positively, the more of a relationship you’re building.
So give it a try. See how it goes. You’ll only find out if you try.
You’ll find me over here on BlueSky and here on Threads.
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