How to get Bluesky followers: 11 tips for follower growth
How to get Bluesky followers: 11 tips for follower growth
Bluesky has emerged as a fresh and innovative platform that sets itself apart from traditional networks like X, Instagram, and Facebook.
As an open social network, Bluesky fosters transparency, accessibility, and user independence. The platform officially opened to the public with its launch in March 2025, marking the beginning of a new era in decentralised online communities.
Launched by one of Twitter’s co-founders, Bluesky aims to create a decentralised social media experience that emphasises user control, privacy, and community engagement.
Unlike traditional platforms, Bluesky is structured to prevent ownership by a single organisation, ensuring that the network remains community-driven and resistant to centralised control. Built on open protocols and an open ecosystem, Bluesky encourages collaboration and innovation.
As of July 2025, Bluesky has over 37.4 million registered users and is gowing every day.
Looking to the future, Bluesky continues to develop new features and expand its capabilities, with a vision for a thriving, customizable, and decentralised online space.
This article will explore practical strategies for gaining followers on Bluesky, highlighting how its distinct features influence follower growth compared to other platforms.
1. Optimise your profile
Your profile is the first impression potential followers will have of you. A well-optimised profile can significantly increase your chances of attracting followers who resonate with your content. Ensure you are prepared to verify your account to enhance trust and credibility. Here are key elements to focus on:
Craft a compelling bio
Choosing the correct words for your bio is essential for attracting followers and making a strong first impression. Use keywords that reflect your interests or expertise to attract like-minded individuals. Consider including your hobbies, professional background, or unique perspectives that make you stand out from the crowd.
Choose an eye-catching profile picture
A clear and engaging profile picture can significantly impact your visibility. Select an image that aligns with your brand or personality. If you're representing a business or brand, consider using your logo or a professional headshot to enhance your online presence.
Use a unique banner image
The banner space is an opportunity to showcase your creativity or further highlight your interests. Use this area to feature something relevant to your content or brand identity—whether it’s a catchy tagline, artwork, or a photo that reflects your personality.
2. Create engaging content that resonates
Content is king on any social media platform, but the type of content that works best can vary significantly between platforms. Sharing original content is crucial, and content creators should prioritise originality to stand out and establish a strong presence.
On Bluesky, creating engaging content requires understanding what resonates with its user base while also showcasing your unique voice.
Diverse content types
Experiment with various formats, including text posts, images, photos, videos, and polls. Engaging content encourages interaction and shares. For instance:
Text Posts: Share insights, thoughts, or questions that spark discussion.
Images/Photos: Use high-quality visuals, such as photos of customers using your product, that complement your text and attract attention.
Videos: Create short clips that provide value or entertainment—these tend to perform well across platforms.
Polls: Engage your audience by asking for their opinions on relevant topics.
Taking a screenshot of a positive post or choosing to repost user-generated content are effective ways to share and engage with your audience.
Focus on quality over quantity
While consistency is essential, prioritise creating high-quality posts that provide value to your audience. Aim for depth over breadth; thoughtful posts that resonate with followers are more likely to be shared and engaged with. As a result, prioritising quality leads to higher engagement and more meaningful connections.
Use visuals
Incorporate images or videos that complement your text to make your posts more appealing. Visual content makes it easy to capture attention and tends to do so more effectively than text alone, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
3. Embrace consistency in posting
Consistency helps establish your presence on Bluesky while building trust among your audience over time. For best results, a consistent posting schedule should run over a sustained period. Regular posting reinforces your commitment to providing valuable content while keeping followers engaged with fresh updates.
Develop a posting schedule
Regularly posting content keeps your audience engaged and encourages them to check back for updates. Determine how often you can realistically post without sacrificing quality—whether it's daily, several times a week, or weekly.
Experiment with timing
Analyse when your audience is most active and tailor your posting schedule accordingly. Certain times yield higher engagement rates than others; experimenting with different posting times can help you discover the optimal time for your audience.
4. Leverage hashtags and trends
Hashtags and trending topics can significantly increase the visibility of your posts while connecting you with broader conversations happening across the platform. There are several ways to leverage hashtags and trends for increased visibility, including participating in trending discussions, creating branded hashtags, and incorporating relevant keywords into your posts. Understanding how to use these tools effectively is essential for growing your reach on Bluesky.
Research relevant hashtags
Use hashtags that are popular within your niche to expand your reach to a broader audience. Examine what similar accounts are using and try to incorporate those elements into your posts, while also creating unique hashtags specific to your brand.
Participate in trending conversations
Engaging with trending topics can attract attention from users who may not be familiar with you. When participating in trends, ensure that your contributions are meaningful and relevant to maintain authenticity.
5. Engage meaningfully with other users
Building relationships is vital on a decentralised platform like Bluesky, where community interaction drives follower growth more than algorithms do elsewhere. Engaging with other community members can increase your level of influence and connection. Meaningful engagement fosters connections that lead to lasting relationships with followers.
Comment and share thoughtfully
Engage directly with others’ posts by leaving meaningful comments or sharing their content when appropriate. This fosters community and encourages reciprocity—people are more likely to follow you if they see you actively participating in discussions.
Respond to comments promptly
Show appreciation for engagement by responding to comments on your posts. This interaction can convert casual viewers into followers who feel valued and connected.
Join interest-based groups or communities
Bluesky may have interest-based groups or communities where users share common interests. Joining these groups allows you to connect with potential followers who share similar passions.
6. Promote your Bluesky account across platforms
Cross-promotion can help you tap into existing audiences while expanding your reach beyond a single platform’s user base. By leveraging other social media channels effectively, you increase visibility for both yourself and the new platform you’re promoting!
You can also promote your Bluesky account on your website to showcase your presence and encourage your website visitors to follow you. Bluesky, as a service, offers unique features that can further enhance your engagement and community building across platforms.
Share your profile link
Promote your Bluesky account on other social media platforms where you have a following. Include links in bios or posts that direct traffic to your Bluesky profile.
Encourage followers from other networks
Invite your audience from platforms like Instagram or Twitter to join you on Bluesky. You might say something like, “I’m sharing exclusive content on Bluesky—follow me there for more!”
7. Collaborate with influencers and peers
Collaborations can introduce you to new audiences while enhancing your credibility through association with established figures within your respective niche. Influencer marketing is a powerful way to grow your audience on Bluesky, as partnering with influencers can extend your brand reach and build trust through authentic, sponsored content. Working together creates opportunities for cross-promotion, benefiting all parties involved mutually!
Partner with influencers
Collaborating with established users can lend credibility to your profile and expose you to their followers. Identify influencers within your niche who align with your values and reach out for potential collaborations.
Engage in joint content creation
Consider creating content together, such as interviews or discussions, which can be mutually beneficial. Joint projects allow both parties to tap into each other’s audiences while providing valuable content.
8. Analyse growth metrics
Understanding what works is crucial for sustained growth; tracking performance indicators helps identify successful strategies while refining those that need improvement over time. Set clear goals for your Bluesky growth and ensure your analytics align with your overall goal, so you can measure progress effectively and stay focused on your desired outcomes.
Utilise analytics tools
Monitor follower growth and engagement metrics using analytics tools to track your progress on Bluesky. These insights can help you understand which types of content resonate most with your audience.
Adjust strategies based on insights
Utilise data insights to support and refine your content strategy continually. If certain types of posts perform better than others, consider focusing more on those formats while experimenting with new ideas.
9. Stay authentic and positive
Authenticity resonates well in any social media environment. Being genuine in your interactions helps to build trust and rapport with your audience, making them more likely to engage with your content.
Be yourself
Share genuine thoughts and experiences that reflect who you are. Authenticity attracts followers who appreciate real connections—people want to follow accounts they feel they can relate to or trust.
Maintain a positive attitude
Positivity can foster a welcoming environment that encourages others to follow you. Even when faced with criticism or negativity, responding constructively can enhance your reputation within the community. Don’t let Bluesky degenerate into what X has become.
10. Use User-Generated Content (UGC)
Encouraging user-generated content can be an effective way to engage followers. By showcasing the creativity and experiences of your community, you create a sense of belonging and involvement among your audience. Ensuring proper moderation of UGC is essential to maintain a positive and safe environment for all users.
When you publish user-generated content, users must be appropriately credited for their contributions. UGC can be featured in custom feeds, enabling personalised content curation through third-party clients. Moderation plays a key role in the publishing process, ensuring that shared content aligns with community guidelines and platform standards.
Encourage followers to share their experiences
Ask followers to share their experiences related to your niche or brand using specific hashtags you've created. This not only increases engagement but also provides social proof of the value you're offering.
Showcase UGC on your profile
Highlighting user-generated content on your profile shows appreciation for your community while also providing fresh content without needing extensive effort from you.
11. Host contests or giveaways
Contests and giveaways can quickly boost engagement and attract new followers. For example, a recent Bluesky giveaway, where users shared their favourite product photos, led to a 30% increase in followers and high user-generated content engagement. These activities create excitement around your brand and encourage participation from both existing and potential followers.
Create challenges
Host challenges related to your niche that encourage participation from followers—this could involve sharing their content based on specific themes or topics.
Offer prizes
Consider offering prizes relevant to your audience’s interests—this could range from merchandise related to your brand, exclusive access to content, or even collaborations with influencers.
Should you be using Bluesky for your brand?
Gaining followers on Bluesky requires a strategic approach that leverages the platform’s unique decentralised nature.
By focusing on authenticity, engaging meaningfully with your audience, and creating high-quality content, you can cultivate a loyal following that values genuine connections. With millions of potential users on Bluesky, your reach and influence can grow rapidly as the platform expands.
The strategies outlined in this article—from optimising your profile to utilising user-generated content and hosting contests—are designed to help you effectively navigate Bluesky’s landscape. Developers are building Bluesky on open web protocols, ensuring an open, interoperable ecosystem that supports innovation and user control.
Embrace the opportunity to connect with others who share your passions, and watch as your follower count grows alongside meaningful interactions. Your commitment to community will set you apart and pave the way for lasting relationships on Bluesky.
Example of an LLM cut off data period.
Each tool manages its information and datasets differently. How each tool manages its training set impacts the information it references and serves to users, thus also impacting how visible brands and information are within its platforms. For instance, at the time of writing, the training knowledge cutoff date for Claude’s premium model is April 2024 (other tools have different knowledge cutoff dates).
LLM providers regularly announce when they update their training sets (in the same manner as product releases).
As mentioned earlier, each LLM manages its training data differently.
ChatGPT, for instance, uses a tiered system for data freshness, with those paying for GPT-4 Turbo seeing data as fresh as December 2023 and those using the free version of GPT-4 seeing information up to September 2021. Additionally, users sometimes get access to previews of new features and models, which can change what data they access. Gemini is the most complex, though, because Google shares very little information about its workings.
However, for all these LLMs, the knowledge cutoff date for the training set determines whether certain content is eligible for inclusion in the LLM’s responses, making it worthwhile to check and monitor.
Furthermore, if you use visibility tools connected to ChatGPT, check the documentation to confirm the version of the model the tool uses before making adjustments to your strategy or approach. Agencies like Blu Mint can also leverage these visibility tools to monitor LLM visibility for their client projects, ensuring that client content is included and up-to-date in relevant LLM responses.
Optimise for brand mentions (not links)
It’s essential to note that these LLMs rarely, if ever, show links.
This means that your goal for these LLMs should be to be frequently and accurately mentioned for relevant queries (rather than receiving clicks).
When links are shown (as is sometimes the case in Google Gemini), you are unlikely to get links to your latest content, but rather to content that forms part of the most recent training data.
To track your progress toward increasing brand mentions, conduct regular queries for relevant entities and brand terms. You can do this by querying these models in bulk. For example, if you are promoting an AI tool like a portfolio copilot, frequent and accurate mentions in LLM responses can significantly boost its visibility and adoption.
Agencies like Blu Mint have started offering LLM visibility monitoring as a service.
To track your LLM brand visibility, use tools like GPT for Sheets or Ahrefs.
Services like SpyGPT by RiverFlowAI can reveal how often your brand appears in its collection of 250 million ChatGPT queries.
For SEO experts accustomed to traffic as a core KPI, this may seem counterintuitive. But mentions are an important metric for LLMs and may contribute to your overall brand value and even conversions. To prove this, you may want to include ‘ChatGPT’ as an option in customer-facing ‘how did you hear about us’ surveys.
Adapt your approach for each model
Remember that each LLM will have a distinct set of training data, a different update rate, and a unique user journey. Take this into account when speaking with stakeholders and managing your campaigns. If you are unsure of which model you are using, in many cases, you can ask the LLM chatbot directly. Some models may be better at referencing specific functionalities, such as Excel features, depending on the training data they receive.
Familiarise yourself with the release notes and documentation for the LLMs most relevant to your brand, and follow their updates to stay informed about changes to the platforms.
For instance, upon review of Google Gemini’s model documentation, a highly technical brand and product that relies on long, complex, highly contextualised explainers may choose to optimise their content to be more accessible to Gemini users.
This is because the Gemini model most frequently used by consumers, Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B, has a 54.7% accuracy rating for interpreting long context texts (as shown below). From a content strategy perspective, this could mean that shorter content may help with visibility in this model.
Major LLMs, such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, share data for their capabilities and knowledge sources. Understanding the differences between them can help you optimise your content's performance on each channel.
Provide feedback for accuracy
Even when an LLM isn't receiving fresh data, it still learns from its users, so feedback on responses is incredibly important.
Whenever you encounter an incorrect response about your brand, it is essential to provide feedback with the correct information. Ideally, this should be verifiable from the existing knowledge sources of the LLM. In its documentation, Google explains that feedback can “help make Gemini better” because “One important part of developing responsibly is expanding participation . . . . You can rate responses as good or bad and send feedback each time Gemini responds.”
In my experience, this approach yields results.
I was working on a website called MoneyHub, which was completely new and launched in summer 2023. In the summer of 2024, I asked Gemini [What is MoneyHub], and it listed other entities, but not the consumer comparison website I co-founded.
In March 2025, I asked the same question and found that the model was now aware of the website. When I asked for the URL of the site, Gemini listed a competitor's website. In response, I clicked the thumbs down button and provided the correct URL. When I asked the same sequence of questions again later, I found that Gemini returned the correct URL for the site.
Like any machine learning algorithm, LLMs require feedback to improve. So, updating them with better information about your brand is beneficial for both you and the tools.
Optimisations for search-augmented LLMs
Search-augmented LLMs have all of the elements of static pretrained models, but in addition, search results also form part of their corpus of content. This means that these LLMs can surface fresher data in a short amount of time. With regards to visibility, the methods you might use to optimise for search-augmented LLMs will be more similar to those used for ranking in a traditional search engine.
Using an SEO tool can help identify and optimise the content that is most likely to be surfaced by search-augmented LLMs, streamlining your SEO tasks and improving your chances of ranking.
When optimising for search-augmented LLMs:
Optimise for the relevant search engine
Check your core queries regularly
Prioritise pages that show in the LLM when internal linking
Optimise for the relevant search engines
For search-augmented LLMs, like Perpexity, Copilot 365, or ChatGPT Premium, your optimisation strategy needs to take into account both the LLM and the search engine behind it. Use Google Search Console to monitor your site's performance and visibility in search-augmented LLMs, track keyword rankings, and analyse impressions and clicks.
When Bing launched the first iteration of its search-augmented LLM, Copilot (then called ‘Bing Chat’), the company explained that it developed the Microsoft Prometheus model to ‘ground’ ChatGPT and reduce inaccuracies with information from Bing’s search results.
As illustrated above, this means that the interplay between the search engine and the LLM is dynamic and significant to the final output of the LLM. Further, this is specific to the search engine in question. That is to say: if you are looking to rank on Copilot, then it will be your Bing rankings (rather than your Google rankings) that will influence this.
Check your queries regularly in Google Search Console
Just as search engine rankings fluctuate, your visibility in an LLM that is dependent upon search engines is also subject to change. Spend some time auditing the results for your most important queries to see where your brand appears.
Remember to check again at regular intervals. This will help you to identify progress. LLMs can also assist with other tasks, such as content creation or data analysis, which can impact your brand's visibility.
Prioritise pages that are showing in LLMs for internal links
Search-augmented LLMs will very often show links as references for their results. When you see your brand’s domain in these links, this tells you that the LLM understands and knows this content, and that it now forms part of its corpus of information. This is akin to being indexed in traditional search
This also means that your content that the LLM already cites is a great place to start when planning your internal linking for even greater LLM visibility. For example, an online store can improve its LLM visibility by prioritising internal links from product pages that are already referenced by LLMs. To get more pages referenced in a search-augmented LLM, you should create links from the pages that are already referenced.
Optimisations for all LLMs
Now that you’re familiar with the differences between types of LLMs, let’s look at the optimisations you can apply to all LLMs. Some LLMs are integrated into fully featured desktop apps, which may require different optimisation approaches compared to web-only platforms.
Manage the crawl
Prioritise search-augmented LLMs first
Manage your brand entities
Get involved with LLM platforms
Optimise for the crawl
LLMs use crawlers in the same way that traditional search engines do. That means you can block or instruct them via your robots.txt file. You can track bot log reports, and SEOs can use additional methods to guide the crawl for desired results. Users can also download Microsoft Copilot to take advantage of its integrated crawling and AI capabilities.
Many LLMs make their user agent names public.
| LLM | User Agent(s) |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, GPTBot |
| Copilot | BingBot |
| Gemini | Google Extended* |
| Claude | ClaudeBot |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot |
*Google does not explicitly state that Gemini uses Google Extended; however, this is the most likely user agent (based on observation).
When optimising for an LLM’s web crawler, take into account the purpose the LLM crawler serves.
For these tools, the aim is to use web content to improve the chat on the LLM. So, Prometheus uses Bing search to ‘ground’ ChatGPT before producing an answer in Copilot, and ChatGPT uses search results to “get you to a better answer: Ask a question in a more natural, conversational way, and ChatGPT can choose to respond with information from the web.”
The difference here (compared to classic search engines) is that the crawler is essentially a tool to help the LLM perform better. So the purpose of the crawl bot is to interpret and understand your content rather than to rank it.
From a crawling perspective, this means that crawlers do not necessarily need to see navigational pages or pagination pages. Instead, you should manage the crawl to prioritise content with information about your brand, products, and/or services.
Prioritise search-augmented LLMs first
This advice is a case of timing: Search-augmented LLMs receive fresh data all the time. If you make changes to your website and want to know if they're reflected in your LLM visibility, you won’t get real-time feedback from a static LLM. You will have to wait until the next update.
If you take steps to make your content visible in a search-augmented LLM, on the other hand, then you can make improvements and see your progress in real-time. Copilot features, such as AI-powered content creation, image generation, and workflow optimisation, support real-time feedback and optimisation, helping users track changes and enhance productivity instantly. And since many model groups, like ChatGPT and Copilot, feature both search-augmented and static systems, the information that the search-augmented systems receive is highly likely to filter down to the static models within the group over time.
Manage your brand entities
Both search augmented LLMs and static LLMs are trained on Wikipedia’s collection of over 65 million web pages. This information forms an essential part of Google’s knowledge graph and the semantic web as a whole.
This means that entities form a core component of LLM training and that brands with robust entities will have high visibility within LLMs. For example, creative brands that produce artwork can benefit significantly from strong LLM visibility, as their unique outputs are more likely to be recognised and surfaced by AI-driven tools.
Case in point?
Let’s look at Barbie.
If you use an NLP tool to analyse the summary for the 2023 film Barbie, entities like “Mattel”, “dolls”, and “toy industry” emerge, even though the summary does not explicitly mention Barbie being a toy.
Why does this happen?
Because language processing models can identify Barbie as an entity (particularly when close to Ken), and multiple data points across the semantic web tell these tools that Mattel owns both those entities. Further, the opening line of the brand’s Wikipedia page is “Barbie is a fashion doll.”
This means that when you ask an LLM, like Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini, to “name a fashion doll”, the first thing they answer is Barbie.
Whilst your business may not have the colossal intellectual property of an iconic brand, working on your structured data, Wikipedia presence, and wider semantic footprint can go a long way to improve the accuracy and visibility of your products/services in LLMs.
Get involved with LLM platforms
Don’t just prioritise visibility within these LLMs—get involved with the platforms. In addition to being included in the answers of LLM chatbots, brands are:
Creating content partnerships with LLMs
Creating custom GPTs
Making Perplexity pages
Exploring voice chat features to enable users to interact with their brand through AI-powered conversations, enhancing engagement and streamlining communication
Partner with LLMs
At the start of 2024, OpenAI started courting major publishers to become content partners; soon, other LLMs followed suit. At time of writing, these partnerships include:
OpenAI deals with Hearst, LeMonde, Prisa, VoxMedia, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, GEDI, NewsCorp, and Time
Perplexity Publisher Program deals with Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and Der Spiegel
Some of these partnerships involve tools where portfolio copilot combines image generation, content creation, and portfolio management into a unified platform, streamlining creative workflows for publishers.
For teams from major publishers, there is potential to align yourself directly with LLMs to increase your visibility. For others, prioritising link-building campaigns to appear in publications with direct partnerships is worth considering.
Create custom GPTs
Not only do custom GPTs allow you to get your brand in front of ChatGPT users, but the URLs also rank on Google.
Creating a custom GPT tool for your potential customers can be seen as a PR move, but also an opportunity to make a curated space for your brand in the ChatGPT ecosystem, and to drive traffic to your website from ChatGPT. For example, brands can develop custom GPTs such as an AI picture generator, which creates high-quality visuals and artwork from text prompts, to engage users and drive traffic. For instance, the Diagrams: Flowcharts & Mindmaps GPT has links built into its outputs that drive traffic directly to the brand’s website. This is an opportunity that should not be underestimated.
Similarly, Perplexity’s ‘Perplexity Pages’ act as curated brand experiences directly within the app.
Common LLM mistakes to avoid
While large language models like AI agents offer powerful capabilities, it’s important to use them wisely to maximise their benefits.
One common mistake is relying too heavily on AI-generated content, which can result in a lack of originality and may negatively impact search engine rankings. Failing to optimise content for search intent can also lead to poor search results and reduced online visibility.
Additionally, neglecting essential SEO tools such as meta tags can limit the reach and effectiveness of your content. Over-reliance on AI agents for tasks that require human creativity and judgment—such as writing code or developing complex, nuanced content—can also be problematic.
To avoid these pitfalls, it’s crucial to combine the strengths of AI agents with human expertise, ensuring that content remains authentic, relevant, and aligned with your brand’s goals.
Always review AI-generated outputs for accuracy, and use SEO tools strategically to enhance your online presence and achieve better results in search engines.
LLM optimisation: blend tried-and-true tactics with new technology for brand success
Though the technology is dazzling, SEO professionals can bring tried and tested methods for boosting audience discovery into the process of LLM optimisation. From managing crawling to coordinating link-building campaigns and adopting new channels, there are gains to be made for proactive marketers.
AI agents like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT and Gemini are transforming the way individuals and businesses approach daily tasks and creative projects.
For businesses, AI agents streamline the creation of engaging content, support customer interactions, and open up new avenues for creativity.
Optimising for LLMs can also spark inspiration and help brands create stunning visuals through advanced image generation features. It's important to ensure brand visibility across platforms, both on-site and off-site.
