Bluesky 101 for the Heritage Sector

Contemplating making the leap to Bluesky? Secured your handle but staying quiet? Started posting but not seeing growth?

At our May event we heard from Justin Parkes, Industrial History Curator at North Lanarkshire Council. Justin is one of the contributors to the NorthLan Heritage Bluesky account, which racked up over 4,000 followers in just three months.

Why Did You Open a Bluesky Account?

Justin explained that the decision was prompted by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October 2022, primarily with regards to the alterations Musk was making to the platform and that users were leaving for alternatives. Personally, Justin was concerned that the changes around content moderation in particular did not fit with North Lanarkshire Council’s values or its social media policy, let alone their commitment to equality and human rights.

He also wanted to think about spreading out the organisation’s social media presence, so they weren’t so reliant on Twitter (now X). After speaking to colleagues who felt the same way, Justin started investigating other platforms.

What Are the Benefits of Bluesky?

Put simply, Bluesky is a similar platform to X. Bluesky was originally developed by the former Twitter head, Jack Dorsey, so it’s not surprising that when you look at Bluesky, it’s very easy to get your head around. They’re both available on the web and via mobile apps and they’ve got similar functionality (including a character limit – 300 for Bluesky, 280 for the free version of X).

However, Bluesky has a much more attractive set up. Bluesky is what’s called a decentralised social media platform, meaning it’s split across more than one server. As a result, the whole network isn’t controlled by one person.

In addition, Bluesky feels like a nicer community than X. It’s much more focused on the way things used to be on Twitter, which is people wanting to share information and support one another. It’s a small but a very friendly community where you can find like-minded people and organisations. It also currently doesn’t have ads.

In addition, moderation is much better on Bluesky than X. You have options to mute posts, block users and report users, as you’d expect, but one thing I haven’t yet explored is the option to customize moderation. You can customise reporting so you can put in your own keywords that you want to report and filter out, which users may find helpful.

What Are the Downsides of Bluesky?

Bluesky doesn’t support polls like X, which is a bit annoying. And you can’t schedule posts yet.

The biggest downside, though, is the smaller user base. The general feeling amongst the North Lanarkshire Heritage team is that there’s less engagement on their posts compared to X.

Has Bluesky Been Successful?

Justin noted that they established the Bluesky accounts at the end of August 2023.

At the time of the SHSMG event, they had 4,181 followers on Bluesky, meaning they’ve overtaken their X following, which was sitting at 3,883.

Persuading Senior Management

If your boss is reluctant to change from X to Bluesky, Justin would recommend making a case using examples of other accounts in the sector that are successful and suggesting that your organisation opens an account to trial it before leaving X.

He also recommends pointing out that there’s much better moderation on Bluesky and there’s the opportunity to take control of moderation which can be more reassuring, especially for a public body.

Justin’s Top Tips for Success:

Choose Your Handle Carefully

The handle for Justin’s organisation is @nlheritage.bsky.social, but you don’t have to choose that format. You can choose a different server (.social is the bit that would change). For example, you can make your website URL your handle on Bluesky, which could help carry your identity across onto Bluesky and enable people to find you more easily.

Just note that the fact that you can create a handle out of your URL may in the future become a paid feature, so it’s worth moving quickly if this is of interest.

Don’t Sleep on Your Old Posts

If you’re looking to leave X as well as setting up a Bluesky account, it’s a good idea to download an archive of your old posts from X.

This can be particularly useful if you need to come up with new content at short notice.

Get Familiar with Lists and Starter Packs

On the Bluesky home screen, you’ll find an option to open “lists”, which are public curated feeds on particular topics. These feeds are created by people putting in certain criteria when they create the feed and it pulls some hashtags, keywords or emojis (so it’s not just keywords or hashtags that define a feed). So sometimes feeds can throw up quite weird things that you maybe wouldn’t have expected to find in them.

Starter Packs are more curated. They’re basically lists of accounts that you might want to follow on a particular theme and can be created by anyone. You can see a directory of starter accounts below. There are a few online directories, such as blueskydirectory.com, bskydirectory.com, bluesky.garden, that will help you find Starter Packs and different web tools that you can use as well.

You can get a lot of followers through being on a popular starter pack, so consider being added to one if you fit the theme. It’s also worth noting that you can remove yourself from a Starter Pack, should you wish.

Get to Know Your Analytics

The native Bluesky app does provide some analytics and you can use Bluesky Insights and Blueskymeter.com for some additional (but limited) data.

However, Bluesky can’t track the number of interactions on a post due to the nature of the platform. Because posts exist on separate servers, Bluesky can’t collect that information in an accurate enough way. It’s therefore likely that this feature will never appear on Bluesky.

Increase Accessibility

Justin recommended turning on the alt text setting, which means that everyone using your account must add this to images when posting to Bluesky. Alt text is used to increase accessibility and user friendliness, including for blind internet users who rely on special software for web browsing.

The toggle can be found under the accessibility menu in Settings.

Tell Stories

A lot of the advice for creating content on other platforms applies to Bluesky: aim to tell great stories about your organisations, collections, buildings, etc. Threads (replies to posts) on Bluesky have proven particularly useful for this, as well as popular.

If you want to share operational updates and visitor information (e.g. opening times, etc,) stick to Facebook.

Don’t Forget Flashes

An independent developer has built a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. It’s powered by the same technology that underpins Bluesky and is designed to rival Instagram.

In Flashes, users have the same handle that they have on Bluesky, so you’re effectively just linking one account to the other.

Just note that it’s being actively developed, so it’s going to look different over the next few months, but it’s worth taking a look.

Follow Successful Accounts

Looking for some inspiration? Justin listed a few organisations who he believes are doing Bluesky well:

And if you want to see more of Justin’s work, check out the NorthLan Heritage Bluesky account.