It’s time. Bluesky as a social media platform may or may not make it (I’m optimistic for them), but due to the way the AT protocol works, the work you do on your account will be yours, and you’ll be able to take it with you in case of… changes.
So here’s my high-level take on what you should be doing as a Brand Person (marketer, CMO, founder, etc).
Bluesky Action Items
- Get an account and set it to your company’s domain.
- Set up access controls for the account. I don’t know that deck.blue has the same multi-login abilities that TweetDeck had, but this is a solution that will show up soon, and in the meantime, pretend like you’re sharing a Netflix login. It’s very important to have more than one person who can get into a brand account, because it’s extremely tied to your brand, and if something happens, you need a second person.
- Make sure you have a social media policy and everyone using the account knows it. Just trust me, it will save you a bunch of trouble.
- (Optional but advised) Figure out a message routing system for when bug reports and complaints come into the account.
- Add a profile and picture before you start trying to follow people.
- Start following relevant people and brands. This is made easier by Starter Packs, Lists, and Feeds. More on that in a bit.
- DO NOT START SKEETING YET.
Culture Vibes
Every online culture is different. You know this instinctively, but if you’re running a brand, you need to know it out loud, too. You have this one first chance. It’s not your only chance, but it’s worth investing in. So here is my advice for Bluesky, specifically, as of November 20, 2024.
- They’re called skeets. I know. Jay Graber knows, and she made the mistake of asking a bunch of nerds with persistent demand avoidance to stop doing something, so now they’re skeets forever.
- This community has a bedrock of early users that are queer, trans, furry, Black, Brazilian, or any of the above. I’m not saying you have to post lewd pictures to fit in, but being a weirdo about it is going to seem unfriendly. There are a lot of ways to avoid seeing things you don’t want.
- Almost everyone here has been on previous social media, especially Twitter. Some of the design choices that seem weird to you exist in reaction to the design choices of other companies.
- All images should have alt-text. You already knew that, but it’s very strong cultural norm, and some people will block or ignore any skeet that has an image with no alt-text.
- There is currently no monetization. Obviously, this is not sustainable, but for right now, you cannot buy ads. That means that your skeets have to be organically interesting.
- Relatedly, the “main” timeline is completely chronological. That means that something appears once on a user’s timeline until and unless someone reskeets it or quotes it. If you’re thinking this sounds like a real problem for your post visibility, you are correct. Git gud, scrub.
- I really strongly recommend that before you post anything besides a “Hi, we’re here”, you spend a couple days reading the platform. In the Usenet days, we called this “lurking”, and it kept you from coming in hot with a really wrong understanding of what’s going on. You can read by searching on hashtags, or search terms, or by following industry leaders you already know about. That will give you the vibe of the conversation so it doesn’t feel like you’re crashing into it.
Mechanics
There are a lot of things that seem like you know how they work, but are either new or work differently than you expect. It’s useful to remember that at this point, Bluesky is adding a million people a day, and they have 20 full-time employees. They’re mostly trying to keep everything up, not making usability improvements. Most of the following features are either human-curated by other users, or automatic.
Starter pack
A group of accounts, usually organized by theme. These are mostly intended to help newcomers find the people that are interested in the same things they are. There is a listing here: All – Bluesky Directory When you open a Starter Pack, you can choose to Follow All (everyone in the Starter Pack) or you can select individuals. Starter packs are limited to 150 people at this time.
If you’ve been added to a Starter Pack, you’re likely to get many, many people adding you. You do not owe them anything except the content you would produce anyway, although sometimes it’s nice to go through and see if you recognize anyone.
List
A list is a collated group of accounts, often curated by a user. Lists function in two ways. One is a “Curate” list. It is used to create a feed, and can also exist as a more persistent kind of community recommendation than a Starter Pack. The other function is a “Modlist”. This is a collection of accounts that the curator wishes to block. In both cases, everyone in the list is publicly visible, and anyone can choose to add (from a curate list) or block (from a modlist) both individuals or the whole list. To see what lists your account is on, use Clearsky.
One of the cool uses I’ve seen for lists are a verified hyper-regional list, or a list of people who have appeared on a podcast.
Feed
A feed is a slice of the total posts on Bluesky. Each feed exists independently. There is a setting where you can combine your feeds into your following feed, in addition to having them separate. But for brand purposes, you only need to know that everything is chronological, but that there are some places that move more quickly than others, depending on the number of members and frequency of skeeting. Some feeds are also based on keywords, so they are mostly relevant. For example, the feed about fountain pens is mostly about pens, ink, and paper, but also picked up a skeet about a movie that mentioned fountain pens. Creating a feed requires slightly more technical expertise than lists or starter packs.
Block
Bluesky uses what users call “nuclear block”. Once an account blocks another account, it vanishes, from their point of view, as do all of that account’s posts. This has the effect of reducing both interpersonal friction and overall engagement. There are several refinements to this basic structure, including “unlink quoted post”, but what you need to know to start with is that if you block someone from your brand account, they cannot DM and cannot see your skeets if they’re logged in to that account. Culturally, blocking is seen as a form of self-protection or curating one’s own space, not always as an act of aggression.
Labeler
Composable moderation is so cool. There are a lot of interesting articles on it, and I’m not going to try to recap them all (in this post). What you need to know is that labels are a more-nuanced way to configure what shows up.
For example, I have a friend who is setting up https://bsky.app/profile/brandblock.online so that people can choose not to see posts from brands. This is great! I would rather someone not see my brand posts than be irritated every time they see me.
Many of the early labels are cute or toys, like this:
Some of them are usability enhancements, like hiding images without alt-text or motion. Some of them remove or label content that you may not want to see, such as sexual content, racism, homophobia, or even screencaps from X.
The important thing about labelers is that for you to use one, you have to subscribe to it. List of labelers.
tl;rs
For years, I ended my conference talks with a summary slide headlined “tl;rt” for “too long; read twitter”. Now perhaps it is “too long; read skeets”. Here’s the summary.
- Get your account established
- Watch before you post
- Remember that this part of the internet is permanent
- Be kind and human, as well as a brand
To my friends with brands, please consider using your web domain as @bsky.app handles.This will help your audience find and verify you, while also increasing your brand's visibility.Plus, it looks a lot cooler. Please share to help others.bsky.social/about/blog/4…
— ⛉⚔ ᵂⁱᴿᵉᴰ•ᵁˢᴰ ⚔⛊ 🧶 (@xxwiredxx.bsky.social) 2024-11-15T16:00:25.849Z