Growing on Bluesky from zero
A new account has no followers, no history and no figures. Here is what to do in which order for the first 90 days, and when to start measuring.
Before you post anything
The how to grow guide covers what moves the follower count on an established account. This one is for the account with nothing: no followers, no posts, and the choice of what to be. The order matters more than the effort. A profile visited before it is ready costs a follower who does not come back.
Week 1: the profile
- A handle people can say. If you own a domain, use it as your handle; the custom domain guide takes twenty minutes. Otherwise a plain name on bsky.social.
- A display name that says what you are, and a bio that says what you post about, in the words someone would search for. "Ceramics, kiln diaries, glaze tests" finds people; "Just here for the vibes" finds nobody.
- A real avatar and a banner. A blank profile reads as abandoned.
- Follow generously: the accounts in your topic whose posts you want to read. Your Following feed is where you will spend most of the next twelve weeks.
- Connect your figures. Updrift measures one account free: followers by the hour, each post's first day and the hashtag table start filling in from the moment you connect, and a baseline of nothing is still a baseline.
Week 2: the first posts
Write three or four posts before you tell anyone the account exists, so that a visitor finds something. One of them should be the post you would pin: the clearest example of what the account is for, with an image if your topic has one, and alt text on it. Then post something most days at a spread of hours, because you cannot measure an hour you never post in. Do not worry about the figures yet; they will be small and they will be noisy.
Weeks 3 and 4: starter packs and feeds
This is the fortnight that decides the first 90 days. A starter pack is a list of accounts a new person can follow in one tap, and the packs in your topic are where most of your first followers will come from. Search Bluesky for your topic and "starter pack", read the profiles of the busiest accounts in it, and ask the makers of the best two or three packs to add you, briefly and with a reason. The starter packs guide has the wording. Then find the custom feeds your people read, learn which tag or list puts a post in each one, and post for them.
Weeks 5 to 8: replies
Nobody finds a small account from its posts. They find it from its replies in threads they were already reading. So for a month, reply more than you post: a real reply, with something in it, to busy posts in your topic. The people reading that thread see your name and your words; some of them tap through, and the profile you fixed in week one does the rest. Keep posting at your spread of hours too, and start putting one or two real tags on posts, as the hashtags guide describes.
Weeks 9 to 12: read the figures and choose
By now you have two months of posts at different hours, a few packs, a few feeds and a lot of replies, and the figures can tell them apart.
- Growth shows followers by the hour, so a jump on a Tuesday evening can be set against what you did that Tuesday evening: a pack share, a reply that went well, a feed placement.
- The best-hours view shows which hours beat your usual. Move your posting into them.
- The hashtag table shows which tags went with better posts. Keep those; drop the rest.
- The What works top line says the one thing that beat your usual most. Do more of it.
Then make your own starter pack of the accounts you have come to know, with yourself in it, and share it off Bluesky as well as on.
The 90 days on one card
- Weeks 1 to 2: profile, pinned post, first posts at a spread of hours, figures connected.
- Weeks 3 to 4: ask into two or three starter packs; post for three custom feeds.
- Weeks 5 to 8: reply more than you post; one or two real tags per post.
- Weeks 9 to 12: read the figures; keep the hours, tags and formats that beat your usual; make your own pack.
What not to do
Do not buy followers or trade follows: Bluesky's Community Guidelines prohibit manipulating counts, and inflated numbers make every figure afterwards meaningless. Do not post the same thing at the same hour every day for a month; you will learn nothing about the other hours. And do not judge the account at week four. A new account's figures are noise until there is enough to compare, and that takes about the 90 days this guide covers.
Questions
How many followers should a new Bluesky account expect in 90 days?
There is no honest number. It depends on the topic, the packs you get into and how much you reply. What you can expect is to know, by day 90, which of those is bringing your followers, which is the point of measuring from the start.
Should I follow lots of people at the start?
Follow the people whose posts you want to read, generously, because your Following feed is what you will reply from. Do not follow for follow-backs: Bluesky's guidelines are against manipulating counts, and the followers it brings do not read you.
When should I connect analytics?
In the first week. The figures are small at first, but the baseline is what makes week twelve's figures mean anything, and followers by the hour is the one thing you cannot reconstruct later.
See your own figures, free.
Followers by the hour, the posts that landed, your best hours and how your hashtags do. One account, no card, for good.
The Planner, the Inbox and the full What works report come with a paid plan, 7 days free. See the plans.