Is anyone using Bluesky for their organization?

We claimed our handle but are not pushing any content there yet. It came up in a meeting last week and the consensus seemed to be “another platform??” We recently stopped posting to X and pinned a “follow us on these other platforms” message there. 

We post about daily- we’ve had good audience growth (modest but steady), though our engagement isn’t where I’d like it. We also left X at the end of last year, so I have been treating Bluesky as I did Twitter, but the vibe and posting style is a little different. I appreciate that they have made accessibility a priority though! It’s easy to add alt text and video captions.

With the volatile engagement metrics I’ve seen lately, I A/B test with Bluesky, but I am (and some professionals and brands I know are) not committed to it

My organization has been posting weekly, but hasn’t seen high user engagement on Bluesky. We’re still on X, and have an account on Threads, so we are focusing more on those platforms for the moment. 

We claimed our handle as well, but we don’t see much engagement. Most of our X audience has moved to either LinkedIn or Threads. I don’t see Bluesky overtaking X anytime soon. 

We similarly have claimed our handle and are pushing out content that would be similar to what we did on X (Twitter). So far I haven’t seen any great engagement or growth, but I don’t think our audience is really there. We’ve mainly been on as an experiment to see if it is worth investing more time in (which right now is a no). We’ll definitely keep our account in case the audience changes though! 

Hey, Angeline. The lack of platform analytics makes it pretty challenging to definitively commit to anything strategically on Bluesky. We're still definitely throwing spaghetti at the fridge with both content + formats. For a brand account representing a media org, I will say I've found the audience is much more local, newsy, podcast junky-type vs. what we're seeing on Threads (and, at least for us, the engagement and discourse has been healthier compared to X). But, per the sentiment articulated by others in this thread, I would agree that your potential audience growth opp will likely fluctuate pretty drastically based on the org/industry you’re in. 

Thank you all for your insights! I think it would be interesting to see the current audience using Bluesky. Let me know if anyone has any new insights from using or not using Bluesky!

We tried to claim our handle because someone else grabbed it, but BlueSky recommended a different approach than booting the current user. “Our moderation team reviewed the account and since this isn’t an impersonator or a squatter, they didn’t take action on the account. However, on Bluesky, you can verify your account by setting your website as your username, and we highly recommend that official organizations and high-profile individuals do this!”

We haven’t pursued the use of it, but it has come up in conversations. This came up because of an article from SEJ Today about it being a traffic source and publishers reporting 3x engagement. 

From the BlueSky platform, generally speaking, or from following their advice to use websites as a handle?

Yes we are! We’re seeing fast growth there as we put all of our news stories and commentaries on the platform, often optimized with an image. We’d love for this to be integrated into Sprout Social. Currently we’re using a free Buffer account to schedule BlueSky posts. 

After the election and the rise of hate on X, we moved to BlueSky. Musk’s inauguration behavior confirmed previous discussions on whether we should leave the platform or not. Our national account and most of our state level have accounts have migrated to Bluesky or incorporated it into their portfolio.

Highly recommend using your org’s domain name instead of a default bsky.social username! It’s actually easy to do if you have an IT person or someone with access to the domain’s DNS.

We moved to Bluesky early because we saw a bunch of the journalists and academics we engage with move over there. The amount of engagement is pitifully low, but we’ve had some great moments where key journalists and thought leaders have engaged, so that makes it worth it in my book. 

In general the balkanization of social media platforms in the last few years means that we’re trying to more strategically target deeper engagement with a smaller core audience. 

Hey Sprout, please consider this thread an example of growing interest in support for Bluesky! 🙏🙏🙏

I work for an education institution and we created a Bluesky account months ago to monitor the platform. In recent weeks we decided to start pushing content on it (the same content we push on X so we aren’t doing any extra work) so far we haven’t seen great return in terms of engagement. I feel like interest spiked with the platform at the beginning due to the controversy and drama surrounding X, and a lot of people and orgs have been leaving X but we have found that majority of our audience are still on X so we continue to utilize it. We are going to continue with Bluesky for a few more months but it’s not looking great so far.