Blue Sky Social (Bsky) Newby Guide

I know, you’ve spent years making connections and finding your niche/ building community on Twitter, then Musk bought it and history happened. In this BlueSky Newby Guide, I’ll go through what features Bsky has and doesn’t have (yet), profile set up, using feeds to find your people and interacting tips. (Note: if you’re comfortable with Bsky basic settings and are looking for Writer Feeds, Prompts, Chats and or BookSky, you can jump to that section here.)

Not another NEW Platform!?

Blue Sky (bsky) is basically Twitter. Look at my Bsky dashboard (below). It’s VERY similar. The general differences with Bsky include no algorithms, no sponsored ads, trending topics are opt in or out, alt text is encouraged, and transphobes ARE NOT WELCOME —nor are fascists. (Mass blocking has driven many of both the latter away).

Getting Started: Profile Set Up

Be sure to fill in your bio so we know you’re not a bot. If you can find space, consider including alt text for your cover photo, as Bsky doesn’t have that option on the cover image itself (yet). Cover photos don’t tend to crop well. I ended up shrinking my book covers on a larger background image on Canva and uploading to Bsky multiple times, using trial and error to get this fit.

You’ll note my bio gets personal. I’m openly nonbinary, neurodiverse and chronically ill, and happy to present publicly as such and to discuss all three to raise awareness. Don’t feel you owe anyone this information. But do consider including your interests etc —things you will post about, that will help your people recognise you as their people.

Pinned Posts

Yes creatives this is our chance to pin images and links to books/ art etc. You might also want to elaborate on anything in your bio and or give your new followers something to interact with. For example, my pinned posts ends with the question, “What are your projects?”

First/ Intro Post

Not everyone you knew on Twitter will be on Bsky, and some people on Bsky never had a Twitter account. There will be people in whichever communities, interest groups or fandoms you’re part of whom you don’t yet know. So assume we don’t know you, tell us who you’d like to hang out with in your intro post and maybe give us a question to answer. For example, my intro post is below.

Finding Your People: Following & Starter Packs

The tried and tested method initially was find your mutuals by looking at who friends you’ve found are following. If you’re a writer and you knew me on Twitter, I linked as many writer friends as I could by their Insta and Bsky handles and by genre, identity, country on this (view-only, master) spreadsheet (in 2023).

But with Starter Packs arriving in 2024, you can now find up to 150 profiles linked by common interests, shared identities etc. Entering your interests and the words ‘starter pack’ into the Bsky search bar could turn up what you’re looking for. It may also turn up posts offering to add you to starter packs.

My starter packs are all linked to this thread. Feel free to reply if you’d like to be added to any. FYI, if a person has made a starter pack, it will be linked to the menu which displays posts in their profile.

Post & Reply & Viewing Preferences

Your Following/ Home feed automatically displays posts by people you follow AND all replies to those posts AND everyone you follow’s reposts. If this is too much, you have a few options.

To Manage Your Following Feed

1. Go to ‘settings’
2. ‘Content & Media’
3. Select ‘Following Feed Preferences’
   Here you decide whether you want your follow feed to display; organic posts (which includes quote reposts- with comments by the reposter), reposts and replies. Unticking any will remove it from your Home Feed.

To Manage Replies

1. Go to ‘Settings’
2. ‘Content & Media’
3. Thread Preferences
4. Tick or untick whether you want newest/ oldest/ popular etc replies to display first when you view a thread.
5. Tick or untick of you want to see replies by people you follow first.

Feeds
Bsky doesn’t just have hashtag feeds, it has topic feeds independent of hashtags, which you can choose to follow and view in your own menu under ‘managed saved feeds’ in ‘settings’. I’ll explain them after the section below.

Following Feed Display -Content

Another thing about settings is it will default to not displaying adult content, which includes sexual content, violence, nudity (yes, a happy snap of a woman showing some cleavage will be censored as nudity), hate groups, suspected impersonation and spam. So if you’d like to see things rated anything above G by Bsky:

1. Select ‘settings’
2. ‘Moderation’ (the handle symbol)
3. Scroll down to ‘content filters’ and select ‘hide,’ ‘warn’ or show to suit your preferences. Or select ‘Bluesky moderation services’ at the bottom for advanced options.

Muting Words, Blocking, & Interaction Settings

‘Settings’, ‘Moderation’ is also where you’ll find options to control who replies to you (interaction settings), and the option to mute words, users and block people.

Finding Your People: Feeds

I won’t give advice on general posting yet. Because to understand post visibility, you need to understand how posts are organised on Bsky. You have many options in another menu in your profile here (right/ below). You’ll have a feed of everyone you’re following. Under that, you can pin feeds of any topic or community you wish to see (and ‘Only Posts‘ which filters out reposts and replies of your followers, showing only organic posts).
Depending on the feed creator and when it was made, there are 3 different things that may put your post on feeds; keywords, emojis and hashtags. The best way to know how to get on a feed is read its description.

Adding Feeds

So how do you find feeds displaying posts you might want to see, or get your posts displayed on?

1.Under the feed menu (pictured right/ below), select ‘more feeds’. That will display this menu.

2. Enter topics that interest you in the search bar.

3. To add a feed to your feed menu, select ‘pin feed’. (Hitting ‘like’ lets the creator and other people know you plan to use the feed, as anyone viewing the feed sees how many likes it has. Conversely, a feed with lots of likes likely has lots of people browsing it).

4. To organise your pinned feeds, select the settings wheel (top of page), then little arrow (right of each feed in the menu, as in below Discover Feeds image). That will display up or down arrows, allowing you to move each pinned feed up and down your feed menu. Don’t forget to click ‘save’ (top) when you’re done, to lock feeds in the order you want.

Not a writer? You may want to skip down to Posting and Getting Seen.

My Favourite Feeds

(Last updated May 2025)

Note: so this section didn’t become unwieldy, I’m now just linking my favourite feeds. To see which keywords, hashtags and or emojis feed pick up, click through to view the feed on Bsky, then the 3 dots menu to view the description.

FYI: if you have questions or suggested for any of the feeds I curate, feel free to ask them in reply to this thread (which links all and describes some of my feeds).

Writers Finding Your People; Prompts & Chats

(Last updated May 2025)

Daily Writer Prompts

Weekly Writer Chats

Posting & Getting Seen (Feeds, Emojis AND Hashtags)

You’ve got 300 characters to play with. So how do you get your posts seen by your people? You can select hashtags to see a feed of what people are posting on them, but they don’t impact your visibility via algorithm, as Bsky doesn’t have algorithms. Keywords (sometimes emojis and hashtags) get your posts onto topically relevant feeds.

1. Go back to feeds you added above, via ‘#’ (in the same menu as the ‘settings’ icon, ‘Content & Media’, ‘Manage Saved Feeds.’

2. Select the feed you want to read the description of.

3. Check which keywords and emojis (and or hashtags) get your posts displayed on that feed.

4. Use any combination of relevant keywords/ emojis/ hashtags on your post to put it on multiple topically relevant feeds.

Note: you can put pairs of emojis ‘back-to-front’ and they still display on that feed. You can put emoji combinations from different feeds side by side without spacing, and your post will still appear on feeds matching any pair, set of 3 extra emojis in your emoji row.

Accessibility: Alt Text

Alt text is big on Bsky. We want all users to enjoy content posted. If you tend to forget to add alt text to images in your posts, good news —you can adjust your settings so Bsky will not let you hit ‘post’ till you’ve added alt text.

1. Go to ‘Settings’
2. Accessibility (forth option down)
3. Flip the toggle beside ‘require alt text before posting’ to blue.

Sharing Links in Posts

If you paste a link into a post, it will generate a post preview. Then you can delete the url from the main post to save space. Remember, there are no algorithms on Bsky, so sharing a link in a post won’t hurt your visibility.

Blocking Culture On Bsky

Block early, block often, deprive trolls of oxygen and drive them off Bsky seems to be the general approach. Yes, you can subscribe to block lists to mass block people, but I’ve heard multiple accounts of MAGA making lists that sound like they’re to block MAGA accounts when actually they block left wing accounts. Sabotage is real with block lists, so I suggest only subscribing to them if you know/ trust the creator. Otherwise, block at your discretion as you encounter people.

Bsky Lists

This looks like feeds, but has key differences. Its a better way to display posts of and stay in touch with people you know, as opposed to seeing the posts of everyone on Bsky using that feeds keywords/ emojis/ hashtags in the their post in a topic feed you follow.

Differences With Lists:
-List feeds display ONLY and ALL posts of people added to the list.
-You can create your own lists within Bsky (the symbol under # in the main menu, with 2 dots and 2 horizontal lines, like a list).
-You can add people to lists (go to that person’s profile and hit the 3 dots next to the ‘follow’ button for a menu to do this).
-The ‘about’ section of a list displays the bio of every account that has been added to that list.

My Lists

I’ve made A LOT of lists. The screenshot below is a menu for them, and every list is linked into that thread. You can also view all of my lists by visiting my profile and looking at the menu under my bio (‘lists’ is on the right end).

If you’d like to be added to any of my lists, let me know by replying to my post below by selecting it.

Functions That Don’t Exist (yet) & Alternatives

No Algorithms –Repost

Likes have no impact on visibility. Re-posting just shares posts with whoever of your followers is on their following feed at that time. This means my posts get the most interaction in their first 3 hours (if America is awake then).

So if you see a post you think is helpful/ enjoyable etc -repost it to your followers! This is our main way for anything worth seeing to get seen. While most feeds I browse DON’T display reposts, they DO tend to display quote-reposts. So re-posting with your own comment/ thought is best for visibility.

Bookmarking Posts –Pinned Feed

If you see a post you want to refer to later, reply to it with the red pin emoji. Then add this pinned feed to your feeds and select it to view posts you’ve ‘bookmarked.’

Ask Bsky Developers For Functions

There’s a ‘send feedback’ link on your profile (mine displays under my feed’s menu on computer). Selecting that lets you fill in a form to ‘make product suggestions.’ I’ve already made my case for adding pinned posts and requested bookmarks, so we can store things we want to refer back to, without those posts getting buried.

I hope this is all helpful as you get started. Welcome to Bsky!

Related Reading

Bsky & Other Pitch Parties (for querying writers)

Twitter, KU & Author Ethical Dilemas

Social Media For Authors

Avoiding Social Media Burnout

Author Newsletters, The Basics

Why I Chose to Self Publish

Becoming an Indie Author Part 1 and Part 2 (Book Launch).