How to Get More Bluesky Followers in 2026: 11 Tactics That Work

To get more Bluesky followers in 2026, set up a clear profile with a custom domain handle, get into the starter packs and custom feeds your community uses, reply generously in your niche, and post original text, images and links on a steady rhythm, with extra posts on weekend afternoons and weekday evenings. Build your own starter pack once you have a network.

Bluesky works differently from X, Threads or Instagram. There is no single algorithm deciding who sees you. People choose their feeds, follow lists of accounts that other people curate, and find each other through conversations. That makes Bluesky one of the easier networks to grow on if you show up as a real person in a real community, and one of the hardest if you treat it like a broadcast channel. This guide uses Bluesky's own blog, its open protocol documentation and the latest independent data to explain how discovery actually works, then lays out 11 tactics, how they change by account type, growth channel and account stage, a weekly routine, and the mistakes that stall growth.

Key Findings

• Bluesky grew 57% to 60% in 2025. Users rose from 25.94 million at the start of 2025 to 41.41 million at the end, according to Bluesky's 2025 transparency report.
• Starter packs hold up to 150 people and 3 feeds. Creators are notified when someone joins Bluesky through their pack, per Bluesky's starter pack announcement.
• Over 270,000 accounts use a domain handle. Bluesky said in its April 2025 verification post that more than 270,000 accounts had set their website domain as their username.
• Weekends win. Buffer's analysis of over 3 million Bluesky posts found Saturday at 5 p.m. had the highest engagement rate (6.89%), with Saturday averaging 6.17% and Sunday 6.05%, in its best time to post on Bluesky study.
• A typical post gets about four interactions. Buffer's 2026 engagement report found a median of about 4 likes, comments and reposts per Bluesky post in 2025, down from 5 in 2024 as post volume nearly quadrupled.
• Posts are short. A Bluesky post holds up to 300 graphemes and up to 8 tags, per the AT Protocol post schema.
• Bluesky does not demote links. Bluesky said in November 2024 that it welcomes publishers and doesn't demote links, in its post on publisher engagement.

What's Changed in 2026

Steady growth after the 2024 and 2025 surges

Bluesky's growth has become steadier. Its July 2026 announcement naming Toni Schneider as permanent CEO said more than 2 million people had joined in the previous four months, and nearly 200 new apps had launched on the AT Protocol, in Bluesky's leadership post. Activity estimates are mixed: SocialPilot's Bluesky statistics roundup, citing TechCrunch and Similarweb, reports mobile monthly active users of 10.4 million in June 2026, down 27.2% year on year. Registered users keep rising while app activity has cooled, so growth now rewards accounts that give people a reason to stay.

A Discover team and topic tags

In January 2026 Bluesky said it was forming a dedicated team to improve the Discover feed and exploring topic tags to help people find posts and organise around interests, in its "what's next" post. The same post promised drafts, better media handling, easier thread creation and "first-class treatment" for custom feeds. Better discovery tools help accounts that post consistently about clear topics.

Media limits

The same January 2026 post said videos are capped at three minutes and posts at four photos, and that Bluesky wants to raise both. Video launched in September 2024 with a 60-second limit and a daily allowance of 25 videos or 10 GB, per Bluesky's video announcement.

Find friends from contacts

In December 2025 Bluesky launched Find Friends, a contact import that matches people only when both have each other in their contacts and both opt in, in 13 countries including the US, UK, Canada and Germany, per its announcement. It makes it easier for people you already know to find you, so tell your real-world network you are there.

Stricter community guidelines

Bluesky's updated community guidelines took effect on October 15, 2025, organised around four principles: Safety First, Respect Others, Be Authentic and Follow the Rules, with faster escalation to account restrictions. More than 14,000 people gave feedback on the draft. "Be Authentic" matters for growth: inauthentic tactics such as follow-for-follow schemes and coordinated reposting are exactly what the guidelines target.

How to Get More Bluesky Followers: How Discovery Works

Bluesky was designed around what its team called "algorithmic choice". In a March 2023 post, Bluesky said the problem is not algorithms themselves but "a lack of transparency and control around how algorithms are used to direct your attention", and set out to build a marketplace of feeds that users can find, share and switch between. By September 2025 Bluesky described "a marketplace of over 100k algorithms" built by other users, in its community guidelines update.

For growth, that means there are five main ways a new person finds you:

1. Following feed. People who already follow you, and people who see your posts reposted by accounts they follow.
2. Discover and topic feeds. Bluesky's own Discover feed and thousands of custom feeds built around topics, communities and keywords.
3. Starter packs. Curated lists of up to 150 people and 3 feeds that new users follow when they join.
4. Replies and threads. Conversations under popular posts, where readers tap through to the people with the best replies.
5. Search and outside links. Search inside Bluesky, and links from your website, newsletter and other networks.

Every tactic below works on one or more of those routes. Our guide to how the Bluesky algorithm works explains the feeds in more depth.

Who Is on Bluesky in 2026

Knowing the audience tells you what will earn a follow. Bluesky is still small next to X or Facebook, but its users are concentrated and active in particular communities.

Three things follow from this. First, the US and UK are the core, so for most accounts US evening and weekend hours are where the attention is. Second, Pew's fact sheet shows younger adults are the most likely users, and Pew's 2025 survey found Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents more likely than Republicans to use it, which shapes the tone of many communities. Third, the network is small enough that one good starter pack or one well-used feed can make a real difference to an account, which is rarely true on larger networks. Only 2% of US adults regularly get news on Bluesky, according to Pew's news fact sheet, so being a reliable source in a niche is still an open opportunity.

The 11 Tactics

These are ordered from foundation to amplification. The first four are worth doing in your first week.

1. Write a profile that tells people what they'll get

People decide to follow from your profile. Use a clear photo, a display name people recognise, and a bio that says who you are and what you post: "Data journalist. Charts about housing and transport, most weekdays." Pin a post that shows your best work or introduces you. On a network where people browse starter packs of 150 accounts, a vague bio is a skip.

2. Use your own domain as your handle

A domain handle (yourname.com instead of yourname.bsky.social) signals that you are who you say you are, and Bluesky encourages official organisations and individuals to use it. Setting it up takes a few minutes: in Settings, then Account, then Handle, choose "I have my own domain", then add a TXT record named _atproto with the value did=did:plc: followed by your ID, per Bluesky's domain handle tutorial. Your old .bsky.social handle stays reserved for you.

3. Get into the right starter packs

Starter packs are the closest thing Bluesky has to a growth engine. New users join through them and follow the accounts inside. Search for packs in your niche through links people share (packs do not appear in Bluesky search), and when you find a relevant one, contribute to the community it represents. Many pack creators add accounts that are active and helpful in that space.

4. Pin and post into the feeds your community reads

Custom feeds are how communities organise. Find the feeds your audience uses (for scientists, artists, developers, journalists, a city, a sport) and learn how each one selects posts: some use hashtags or keywords, some use a curated list of accounts. Posting relevant content that qualifies for those feeds puts you in front of people who chose that topic. Bluesky's custom feeds post describes them as "super-powered hashtags or lists".

5. Reply more than you post

On Bluesky, good replies are discovery. People read the replies under popular posts and follow the people who add something. Aim for five thoughtful replies for every original post in your first months. Buffer's data shows reply effects are small on Bluesky (a 5% lift for posts that receive replies), but replies are mostly about being seen by new people, not about the post's own numbers.

6. Post original, specific content on a steady rhythm

Followers come from people who want more of what they just read. Pick two or three themes and post about them consistently. Specific beats general: "This chart shows rent in 40 cities since 2015" earns follows; "Housing is expensive" does not. One to three posts a day is a sustainable rhythm for most people.

7. Post when your audience is browsing

Buffer's study of over 3 million posts found Bluesky engagement peaks on weekend afternoons and early evenings (roughly 4 to 7 p.m.), with weekday peaks in the evening, about 6 to 9 p.m., and quiet late mornings and midday. That is the opposite of X and LinkedIn. Schedule posts for those windows in your audience's time zone. Our best time to post on Bluesky guide has the full breakdown.

8. Use images and video where they add something

In Buffer's 2026 data, Bluesky video posts had a median of 5 interactions, images 4, and links and text 3 each. Visuals help, but only when they carry information: a chart, a screenshot, a photo of the work. Add alt text; Bluesky's community values it, and it makes your posts accessible.

9. Share links without fear

Bluesky says it does not demote links. Publishers have reported strong results: in its November 2024 post, Bluesky quoted the Boston Globe saying Bluesky sent three times the traffic of Threads and converted to paying subscribers at 4.5 times the rate. If your goal is traffic, post links with a sentence of context and tag them with UTM parameters so you can measure what happens. Our UTM builder makes the tags.

10. Build your own starter pack

Once you know the people in your niche, make a starter pack of them and include yourself. Packs can hold up to 150 people and 3 custom feeds, each pack gets a link and a QR code, and you are notified when people join Bluesky through it. A useful pack gets shared, and every share puts your name in front of new users at the moment they decide who to follow.

11. Bring your existing audience over

If you have followers elsewhere, tell them you are on Bluesky, link your profile in your email signature, website and other bios, and share your best Bluesky posts. Pew found the share of 500 prominent news influencers with Bluesky accounts rose from 21% before the 2024 US election to 43% by March 2025, in its 2025 study; many of them brought audiences from other platforms.

Building Your Own Custom Feed

Running a feed is an advanced tactic, but it is one of the most durable. Every person who pins your feed sees your name each time they open it, and a good feed becomes part of how a community works. Bluesky's custom feeds post notes that building a feed from scratch takes some developer familiarity, but that third-party tools such as SkyFeed let non-developers build feeds more easily.

• Pick a gap. A topic, city or profession without a good feed, or an existing feed that has gone quiet.
• Define clear rules. Keywords, hashtags or a curated list of accounts. Publish the rules in the feed description so people know how to get in.
• Moderate lightly but consistently. Remove spam and off-topic posts so the feed stays worth pinning.
• Promote it with a starter pack. Bundle the feed with the people who post in it; packs can include up to 3 feeds.

What Transfers From Other Networks, and What Does Not

If you have grown on X, Threads or LinkedIn, some habits carry over and some backfire.

• Transfers: clear positioning, specific posts, replying to others, a consistent rhythm and a strong profile.
• Does not transfer: engagement bait, posting at office-hours peaks, long hashtag lists, and copy-pasted posts that mention handles from another network.
• Works better on Bluesky: links with context, community curation through starter packs and feeds, and alt text on images.

Our guide to how social media algorithms work compares the networks side by side, and our cross-posting glossary entry explains when posting the same content everywhere helps or hurts.

Growth by Account Type

The first breakdown is who you are. Different kinds of accounts grow through different routes.

Journalists and writers

Bluesky drew many journalists in 2024 and 2025. Pew's study found 43% of the news influencers it tracked had Bluesky accounts by March 2025, but only 31% posted at least four days a week there, compared with 83% on X. Consistency is a gap you can fill. Post your reporting with context, share other people's work, and get into newsroom and beat-specific starter packs.

Scientists and academics

Research communities organise through custom feeds and starter packs by field. Post plain-language summaries of papers with a figure, reply to colleagues, and contribute to field-specific feeds.

Artists and illustrators

Art feeds and art starter packs are central. Post work in progress and finished pieces with alt text, and credit collaborators. Engage with other artists' posts rather than only posting your own.

Developers and technical creators

The AT Protocol is open, and developer communities are active. Share what you build, code snippets in images or links, and tools. Building a custom feed for your niche is itself a growth tactic: people who use your feed learn your name.

Brands and businesses

Brands do best when they sound like people. Use a domain handle for trust, reply to customers, and share genuinely useful posts. Avoid broadcast-only accounts. If you manage several networks, our Bluesky vs X comparison explains where Bluesky fits.

Local businesses and city accounts

Many Bluesky communities are organised by place: city feeds, neighbourhood starter packs, local news accounts. A cafe, bookshop or local council can grow by posting useful local information (events, opening changes, community news) and replying to residents. Use the city's name in posts so keyword-based local feeds pick them up.

Nonprofits and campaigns

Mission-driven accounts do well when they share specific stories, data and calls to action, and when they lift partner organisations. Build a starter pack of your coalition so new supporters can follow everyone in one tap, and post updates on weekend afternoons when your supporters are most likely to be browsing.

Creators and personal brands

Lead with personality and expertise. Weekend posting, replies and starter packs matter most. Our creator scheduling page shows how to keep a multi-network rhythm without burning out.

Growth by Channel

The second breakdown is the route a follower takes to you. Track which routes work so you can do more of them.

Growth by Account Stage

The third breakdown is where you are now.

0 to 100 followers

Your posts reach almost nobody, so growth comes from replies and from people you already know. Do tactics 1, 2, 5 and 11 this week. Reply to ten posts a day in your niche, and tell your existing network you are there.

100 to 1,000 followers

You can start to post your way to growth. Find the feeds and starter packs in your niche (tactics 3 and 4), post daily on two or three themes (tactic 6) and schedule for evenings and weekends (tactic 7).

1,000 to 10,000 followers

You are now a node in your community. Build your own starter pack (tactic 10), consider building or co-running a custom feed, and keep replying. Measure which themes earn follows and do more of them.

10,000+ followers

Your posts get reposted into feeds you have never seen. Your job is now curation and community: amplify others, run your pack, and keep quality high. Growth at this stage comes from being the account people recommend.

Growth by Content Type

The fourth breakdown is what you post. Buffer's 2026 data gives the median interactions per post by format.

Text and links have the same median, so do not avoid links if traffic is your goal. Video has a small edge, which makes sense on a network with fewer videos competing for attention. The median is low across the board because a typical Bluesky account is small; compare yourself with your own median, not with these numbers. Our Bluesky character counter helps you fit the 300-character limit.

Growth by Posting Time

The fifth breakdown is when you post. Buffer's peak times by day, adjusted to each audience's local time zone:

Buffer itself calls these "guidance, not gospel". If your audience is international, pick the time zone where most of your followers live, and test.

Post Templates That Earn Follows

Bluesky rewards posts that are useful or interesting on their own, within 300 characters. These templates are copy-ready; swap in your topic.

Write the first line as if it is the only line people will read. On a fast-moving feed, it often is.

Verification and Trust

Trust drives follows, especially for brands and public figures. Bluesky offers three layers, according to its April 2025 verification post:

• Domain handles, self-serve and free, which link your account to a website you control.
• Blue checks, which Bluesky gives proactively to authentic and notable accounts; notable accounts can apply through a form.
• Trusted Verifiers, independent organisations such as the New York Times that can verify their own people with a scalloped badge; tapping the badge shows who granted it.

For most people, the domain handle is the practical choice: it takes minutes and works immediately. Organisations should also consider applying to become Trusted Verifiers so their staff accounts are easy to recognise.

Moderation, Labelers and Your Reputation

Bluesky's moderation is layered, and it affects who sees you. In its stackable moderation post, Bluesky explained that its own moderation is the base layer and users can subscribe to independent labeling services on top, which can hide, blur or warn on labelled posts. Labelers work across the whole AT Protocol, and Bluesky open-sourced Ozone, the tool they use to review and label content.

For growth, that means reputation travels. An account that a popular labeler marks as spam or as engagement bait can disappear from the feeds of every user who subscribes to that labeler, and a place on a widely shared block list removes you from thousands of feeds at once. The 2025 transparency report shows how active this system is: Bluesky applied 16.49 million labels in 2025, up 200% on the year before, and "Be Authentic" policy areas made up 81% of manual enforcement attributed to a policy. The practical rule is simple: post as a person in a community, label your own sensitive content honestly, and never use tactics that look automated.

Growing Without Burning Out

Bluesky gives users strong control over what they see, and many use it. Bluesky's 2025 transparency report says users filed 9.97 million reports in 2025, up 54% from 2024, and the network applied 16.49 million labels. For growth, two lessons follow. First, behaviour that annoys people is likely to be muted, blocked or added to a shared block list, which removes you from many feeds at once. Second, you can use the same tools to keep your own experience healthy. Bluesky's September 2025 update notes it gave users the ability to control their interaction settings, so you can limit who can reply to a post when a topic attracts bad-faith replies.

Protect your time as well. Schedule your posts in advance so you are not online all evening and weekend, and keep your daily reply session to a fixed window. Our guide to staying consistent on social media has a routine that avoids burnout.

How to Measure Bluesky Growth

Bluesky's app shows likes, reposts, quotes and replies on each post and your follower count on your profile. A simple weekly log is enough.

• Follows gained per week. Note your count every Sunday. This is your primary KPI.
• Interactions per post. Likes plus reposts plus replies, the same method as Buffer's report. Track the median of your last 20 posts.
• Top posts by theme. Which themes produce your top three posts each week?
• Link clicks. Use UTM tags and check sessions from bsky.app in your web analytics.
• Starter pack joins. If you run a pack, Bluesky notifies you when someone joins through it.

Judge a tactic over two to four weeks, not one post. Our social media metrics guide explains how to set up a cross-network dashboard.

A Weekly Bluesky Growth Routine: Step by Step

1. Monday: set your themes. Choose this week's two or three themes and the one question you want your audience to answer.
2. Monday: batch and schedule. Draft 7 to 15 posts and schedule them across weekday evenings and weekend afternoons. Our guide to batch content creation shows how to draft a week in an hour.
3. Daily: 20 minutes of replies. Read your main feeds and reply to five to ten posts with something useful. This is the single most important habit.
4. Daily: answer every reply you get. Conversations under your own posts make them worth reading for the next person.
5. Wednesday: recommend someone. Repost or quote a smaller account doing good work in your niche. Communities remember who lifts others.
6. Thursday: check your feeds and packs. Are you in the starter packs and feeds that matter? Are there new ones? Is it time to build your own?
7. Saturday: post your best piece. Save the strongest post of the week for Saturday afternoon, when Buffer's data shows engagement peaks.
8. Sunday: review. Note follows gained, your top three posts by interactions and which theme they belonged to. Compare with your trailing median.
9. Sunday: decide one change. More of the winning theme, a different time, a new format. One variable per week.
10. Monthly: promote your Bluesky outside Bluesky. Share a top post on your other networks and in your newsletter with a link to your profile.

A worked example

Consider a hypothetical urban planner who joins Bluesky with 40 followers and a following on LinkedIn. Week one: she sets her domain handle, writes a clear bio and replies to ten posts a day in two urbanism feeds. Week two: she starts posting a daily chart about transit in her city, scheduled for 7 p.m., with alt text, and a longer explainer on Saturday afternoons. A planner who runs a large urbanism starter pack adds her after a month of useful replies. By the end of the quarter, the Saturday explainers earn most of her follows, and she builds her own starter pack of local transport researchers, which gets shared by her city's transit advocacy group. The numbers here are illustrative; the pattern is what matters.

Common Mistakes (and the Fix)

1. Treating Bluesky like a broadcast channel. Posting and leaving earns little. Fix: reply more than you post, especially early.
2. A vague profile. Fix: state who you are and what you post in one line, and pin your best post.
3. Staying on .bsky.social when you have a website. Fix: set a domain handle in minutes.
4. Ignoring starter packs. Fix: find the packs in your niche, contribute to the community, then build your own.
5. Posting at X or LinkedIn times. Bluesky peaks on weekends and weekday evenings. Fix: schedule for those windows.
6. Copy-pasting posts from other networks. Hashtags, @handles and lengths that do not fit look lazy. Fix: write a Bluesky version that fits 300 characters and the community's tone.
7. Follow-for-follow and mass following. It conflicts with the "Be Authentic" guidelines and fills your feed with noise. Fix: follow people whose posts you want to read.
8. Images without alt text. Fix: add a short description to every image.
9. Only posting links. Fix: add a sentence of context and mix in text and images.
10. Getting into fights. Moderation tools and blocklists are widely used on Bluesky. Fix: disagree with substance, or move on.
11. Posting in bursts. Fix: schedule a steady rhythm for the week.
12. Measuring against big accounts. Fix: compare with your own trailing median of interactions and follows.

How to Grow on Bluesky With Postprism

Postprism is a scheduler that publishes to Bluesky alongside five other networks.

• Schedule for evenings and weekends without being online. Postprism publishes Bluesky posts with text, links, mentions and hashtags at the times you choose, from the content calendar. Our Bluesky docs cover the details.
• Write a native Bluesky version of every idea. The editor keeps a separate version per network, so your Bluesky post fits 300 characters and Bluesky's tone, with optional AI adaptation, through multi-platform posting. Our guide to whether cross-posting hurts reach explains why native versions matter.
• Load a month at once. Use bulk scheduling from a CSV and check the preview table before scheduling.
• Keep your other networks moving too. Grow on Bluesky while staying consistent on X from the same calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get followers on Bluesky fast?

Set a clear profile and a domain handle, reply to ten posts a day in your niche, get into relevant starter packs and feeds, and post original content on weekend afternoons and weekday evenings. Tell your existing audience on other networks where to find you.

What are Bluesky starter packs?

Starter packs are curated lists of up to 150 people and 3 custom feeds that new users can follow when they join. Each pack has a link and a QR code, and its creator is notified when someone joins Bluesky through it. They do not appear in search, so they spread through shared links.

How do I set a custom domain as my Bluesky handle?

Go to Settings, Account, Handle and choose "I have my own domain". Add a TXT record named _atproto with the value did=did:plc: followed by your ID at your DNS provider, wait a few minutes, then verify in the app. Your old handle stays reserved.

What is the best time to post on Bluesky?

Buffer's study of over 3 million posts found Saturday at 5 p.m. was the best single slot, weekends beat weekdays, and weekday engagement peaks around 6 to 9 p.m. Use those as starting points and test with your own audience.

Do hashtags work on Bluesky?

Yes, and many custom feeds select posts by hashtag or keyword. A post can carry up to 8 tags. Use one or two that match the feeds your audience reads, rather than a long list.

Does Bluesky have an algorithm?

It has many. Bluesky offers a Following feed, its own Discover feed and a marketplace of over 100,000 custom feeds built by users. People choose which feeds to use, so you grow by posting content that fits the feeds your community reads.

Should I post links on Bluesky?

Yes. Bluesky says it does not demote links, and publishers have reported strong referral traffic. Add a sentence of context so the post is useful on its own, and tag links with UTM parameters to measure results.

How do I get verified on Bluesky?

Bluesky verifies notable and authentic accounts with a blue check, and Trusted Verifiers such as news organisations can verify their own people. Notable accounts can apply through Bluesky's form. A domain handle is a separate, self-serve way to show who you are.