SOCIAL MEDIA
Benefits of a Bluesky Starter Pack
Why creating a Bluesky Starter Pack is important
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Being on Bluesky right now feels a little bit like being on Twitter back in its infancy when MySpace was starting to decline. It has a lot of potential and those who establish a solid presence there now are going to be best placed to reap the benefits in years to come.
It’s still relatively small, with less than 25,000 users at the time of writing this article. But those of us who have made the switch from 𝕏 are pretty much unanimous in agreeing it’s a much nicer place to be than the mouldering mess that used to be Twitter, now that Musk has poisoned that once-great platform.
My last article, How to Find Friends on Bluesky, introduced a clever and useful little add-on to help users find and regrow their old community from 𝕏. In this article, I’m going to show you another valuable little tool — the Bluesky Starter Pack — to help you grow your following of like-minded people in any niche you choose.
What is a Bluesky Starter Pack?
In essence, a starter pack is a collection of recommended Bluesky users that you can provide to help your followers find other great accounts in your niche.
These can be really helpful for anyone new to the platform and looking to find people with similar interests to follow. In fact, they’re not just helpful for new users. Any time you want to find people posting about a particular topic or subject area, finding a starter pack in that niche can be a great help.
Here’s a screenshot of my Vegan/Animal Rights starter pack to show you what they look like:
As I mention veganism in my Bio and frequently post about animal rights issues, many of my followers naturally tend to be vegans, too. That’s why this starter pack has been so popular with my followers. It allows them to quickly find and follow other vegans with similar interests.
Once you open a starter pack, you will see a list of accounts which the creator of the pack recommends. You can scroll through these and check them out one by one, following those you are interested in. Alternatively, you can click the ‘Follow All’ button at the top of the starter pack to follow everyone listed there.
Within the starter pack, you can also switch from the ‘People’ tab to the ‘Posts’ tab to see a timeline featuring all the posts from those accounts. This can be a useful way to find content to share.
Key Benefits of Creating a Bluesky Starter Pack
By now, the benefits of starter packs for your followers should be obvious, but if you are going to go to the trouble of creating a starter pack, what’s in it for you?
Well, for one thing, it’s highly valuable content which your followers will appreciate you for. Everybody knows that the key to success on any social media platform is providing value for your followers and creating Bluesky Starter packs is an effective and easy way to do this.
But use them wisely and they can really increase engagement. For example, by asking for recommendations of other accounts to add to your starter pack, or inviting followers to let you know if they want to be added, you encourage replies and further interactions, which boosts your profile and visibility.
This method can also help show you which of your followers are most likely to engage, so you can focus on building relationships with those people.
As an example, here’s the pack I mentioned above again, this time showing an accompanying post:
As you can see from the above example, rather than just sharing my starter pack, I invited people to reply. Simply adding the phrase “let me know below who I’ve missed so I can add them,” led to a stream of replies which certainly boosted this post.
Another benefit I’ve found is that when people find your starter pack, they often want to create one of their own. When they do, who do you think is the first person at the forefront of their mind when they are considering who to add? In this way, I’ve found myself added to numerous other starter packs being shared all over Bluesky.
Conclusion
Whether you’re new to Bluesky or an established pro, creating your own customised starter packs is a fantastic way to provide value to your followers, increase your visibility and reach, and build community around your content.
It’s also a great tactic for increasing networking opportunities, which can lead to collaborations and partnerships. All in all, considering it only takes a few minutes to create a starter pack, this can be a great way to quickly build your Bluesky account.
I hope you find this information useful. If you’d like to connect with me on Bluesky you can find me at @PathlessPilgrim
