Replacement for X?

​@robbie.schneider We were just discussing this today! Maybe you and Madison can connect on a discussion around this! Madison, I just returned from HCIC where this was a topic of discussion with some Health Systems. They were speaking about BlueSky as a peer-to-peer alternative to Twitter with the potential to foster better patient and clinical communities with better moderation. Let us know if you discuss with any of our peers and what their thoughts are!  

We’ve seen incredible engagement on LinkedIn among our research community, and I know some our internal units have switched to BlueSky and had great luck with the transition. I anticipate my organization phasing out of Twitter as our audience jumps to other networks as well, and have been trying to build up our community on LinkedIn so the transition is less sharp. 

We landed on Bluesky early on (June 2023) and this is where I am hoping we stay. More of our peers are moving over as well and I participated in the inaugural hospice and palliative care chat this week. That said, it’s Bsky is still laggy and needs to up the server speeds for participation in things like that. But they were also upgrading the system and it slowed things down as well on server end during that time. 

We actually just posted today that we are officially ending our usage of our Twitter account but are keeping the handle to prevent others from taking it. We also recently got on LinkedIn which has had a great engagement rate and according to a LinkedIn session I went to at INBOUND #HealthCare is in the top 1% of hashtags users engage with! So, that’s what we are doing for now but we’ve also thought about adding Threads to our accounts and will look into Bluesky. 

We are ending our at the end of the year. We’re currently in awareness month and once we finish the month out, will start winding down. The account will stay there to preserve it, and I will also export all of our data just in cause to archive it. Threads is -- well, it gets wonky at times.  I do wish Sprout had a report for threads as I already use it for scheduling and responding. 

We just recently claimed our handles on BlueSky and though we’re inactive, are already seeing followers trickle in, most of which are our clinical folks - and we’re starting to get some requests for departments/divisions who want their own account because their peers are talking about it. So it definitely seems like people are starting to consider that direction more than we ever saw with Threads. We have been encouraging folks who are looking to leave X to move over to LinkedIn, but haven’t seen a huge shift yet. 

Our plan is to continue to reevaluate X (we’ve already dropped the number of posts we’re doing there and removed all paid efforts), keep an eye on BlueSky and at least develop some best practices for folks looking to get active on the platform individually. 

I’m seeing more providers on LinkedIn and some on BlueSky. 

We’ve been on Bluesky since 2023 and have seen a decent jump in activity on there over the last few weeks/months.

Hoping to get Bluesky added to Sprout soon so we can start scheduling posts in the tool instead of having to manually pull content from our X account. On a future feature wishlist! 

I’ve observed a lot of people pivot from Twitter/X to Bluesky, perhaps for personal or professional reasons. Regardless, when A/B testing posts on both platforms, I’ve been seeing more meaningful engagement from Bluesky for posts in more technical/STEM content in Q3 this year into Q4. The anecdotal evidence in this thread alone suggests Bluesky might at least be worth experimenting in. 

Not the same but BlueSky is continuing to grow!

BlueSky for sure! Already seeing members of the healthcare community and journalists migrate and use that platform. It’s grown significantly. I already secured our brand handle but am waiting to post until Sprout integrates with it. 

Not many brands have hopped onto BlueSky yet - although I’d definitely go there over Mastodon. Plus, you could set up a new feed for whatever topic you’d like. Bring the conversation to you!

One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention is Reddit! I would need to know more specifics about the company to search for Communities that would be a good fit, but I’d definitely recommend looking there! One advantage that Reddit would have over a newer platform is that they have their ad platform up and running. 

Between BlueSky and Linkedin, I would pick Linkedin. It’s a proven platform and a lot of strategies to use to engage with a massive career, skills and business focused community there. 

Is Sprout exploring how an integration with BlueSky could work? Not being able to manage a BlueSky profile alongside our other social accounts through Sprout is one of the key reasons we’re not actively posting on there yet. ​@Jonathan Zuluaga ​@Laura Porcincula 

​@Simon I’m curious too. Especially since a few social management platforms already have BlueSky available (including Buffer and Social Champ).

Hi ​@Simon and ​@mary, I don't have an update for y'all on a BlueSky integration yet. I know it's extremely important to y'all as it is quickly becoming one of our top Arb Ideas. I'd recommend giving the Idea an upvote if you haven't already and I'll be sure to share updates as I receive them. Here's the link:

Thanks ​@Laura Porcincula. Weirdly I get an error on that link. As far as I can see I am logged in already so not sure where I’m going wrong?  

Hi ​@Simon, the link I shared is a gated Sprout Customer forum, I just updated your permissions and you should be able to see it now. If you’re still having difficulty, can you DM me directly and I’ll loop in a colleague for assistance. Thank you!

​@Laura Porcincula Do you have a link to where we can up vote it? 

 This is the link ​@mary:

Thanks ​@Laura Porcincula - that did the trick :)