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.

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, no trending topics (very little rage baiting), alt text is encouraged, and transphobes ARE NOT WELCOME —nor are fascists. (I rarely see either complaining no one will debate other people’s right to human rights with them because like most Bsky users —I’ve blocked them).

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 traits, 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.

Why bother? So when more of us know who you are, have interacted with you in a digital ‘meeting each other’ way and are more likely to interact with your posts.

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.

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).
Posts are displayed on feeds if they include the keywords or emojis described a the feed’s 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 the plus symbol. (Select the bin to remove a feed from your menu if you change your mind).

My Favourite Feeds

Writers Finding Your People; Prompts & Chats

(Last updated Jan 2025)

Daily Prompts

#Vss365 there are so many posts on this tag now that selecting it and seeing the second word hashtagged in posts will tell you the day’s prompt.

#2WordPrompt by @jason-h-abbott.bsky.social

#FromOneLine by @fromoneline.bsky.social asks writers to begin poems/ vss posts with the first line it provides.

#WIPSnips by @wipsnips.bsky.social invites you to share a passage from your wip containing its prompt word.

#PretendPanel a prompt asking writers to pretend we’re being interviewed and respond accordingly. Hosted by @hiriadunning.bsky.social‬.

#BookishQOTD ???????? (open book & blue butterfly emoji is part of the hashtag) by @bookishquestions.bsky.social posts daily prompts for writers and readers to interact.

#QueerWriters, daily checkin for queer writers hosted by @amaralynn.bsky.social. You may need to check their account for the prompts, as the hashtag has other usage too.

#(insert current month)WorldBuilders run by @KiraoftheWind for world building writers.

#FantasyIndies(insertmonth) by @fantasyindies.bsky.social for fantasy writers.

Weekly Chats

#KidLitChat by Bonnie Adamson
Open to Kidlit writers
Tuesdays: 9pm EST.
The chat is one question weekly posted by this account.
It looks like participation is by replying directly to that post, on the chat hashtag.

#HorrorWritersChat by Matt Mason
Open to horror writers
Wednesday: 7pm GMT.

#MomsWritersClub hosted by Sarah Read and Jess.
Open to writers who are ‘Moms, furball moms, other parental units, people who have moms… as long as you’re kind’
Wednesdays

#WeekNightWriters by Dianna Gunn
Open to all writers.
Thursday: 7-8pm EST

#WowChat by Talli Morgan
Open to all writers.
Friday: 7-8pm EST. Discontinued

#SFFChat by C.J Subko & Steve Westenra
Open to SFF writers
Friday: 5pm CST on Thursdays (Aussie AEST 10am Friday) . Same format as above.

#WITD by Payne Sillavan
Open to all writers, some prompts having a dark/ horror leaning angle. Same format as above.
Friday: 5pm central. Discontinued.

#LateNightWrite hosted alternately by Blackbird and Jo Bruehler
Open to all writers.
Monday: 10pm central/ Tues 2pm AEST (Aussies) summer time). This chat has its own feed.

#MiddeGrade Chat by Ros Dando
Sunday: 5pm GST, for MG writers. Paused for 5 months. Discontinued

Following Feed -Making it Easy to View

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

1. Go to ‘settings’
2. Select ‘Home Feed preferences’.
   Here you decide whether to see or hide all replies, to only display replies by people you follow, or to remove all reposts from your feed.
3. Select right for ‘no’, left for ‘yes’ to change any of these 3 settings.
4. Select ‘Done’ (blue button at the bottom).

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. There are harmless emojis I can’t see in my followers posts because I can’t work out which setting in Adult Content Settings is bothered by it. So if you’d like to see things rated anything above G by Bsky:

1. Select ‘Moderation’ (the handle symbol in your main menu, above settings)
2. Select ‘Content Filtering’ and ‘hide,’ ‘warn’ or show to suit your preferences.

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, with the exception of chat hashtags (tags for prompts posted regularly that have moved to Bsky from Twitter). NB: hashtags were not a thing originally on Bsky, so its hit and miss whether the topic you want to see posts about or are posting about appear on that topic’s feed by keyword and or hashtag.

1. Go back to feeds you added above,

2. Select the 3 dots (top right of the feed name).

3. Select ‘about this feed’.

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

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

Note: you can put pairs of emojis ‘back-to-front’ and they still display on that feed.

Writer/ Author/ Book Visibility

Writers, our main key words are: writer(s), author(s), and any words containing ‘writing’ (this includes WritingCommunity, etc).
Book Feeds: see links under ‘Book Sky’ and ‘My Favourite Feeds’ above.

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, a little box will appear saying, ‘add link card’. Selecting this will add a link card. Then you can delete the link text from your post, saving characters.
Be warned, if the link makes your post exceed the 300 character limit, Bsky may cut off characters over the limit, breaking the link. So always check your complete link has pasted.

NB: there are no algorithms on Bsky, so unlike on Twitter, posts containing links will not be penalised and are just as visible.

Blocking Culture On Bsky

If you haven’t yet, you’re bound to see posts by and reminding Bsky users that the culture is block freely, block often, isolate trolls of all varieties until they give up and delete their accounts because no one will listen to them. Yes, you can subscribe to block lists to mass block people and these seem popular with MAGA of late, though I’m also seeing posts warning about bad faith block lists with misleading titles not matching users added to them. So user beware. I generally block manually as needed.

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 following feeds by topic.

Differences With Lists:
-List Feeds don’t pick up posts by keyword.
-List feeds display ONLY and ALL posts of people added to the list.
-You can create your own lists within Bsky (in the same menu that lets you post, view feeds, etc).
-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 profiles 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 feed at that time. This means my posts get the most interaction in their first 3 hours (if America is awake then). Aussie afternoons, when America and Europe are sleeping (except the night owls) tend to be VERY quiet.
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/ thoughts seems 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!