How To Use Bluesky To Build A Media List

In the past week, there's been a big influx of new users joining Bluesky. Bluesky is a social media platform that is very similar to the pre-Musk version of Twitter. The design deliberately plays off Twitter nostalgia, although some of the functionality is still lacking.

Is there a future in Bluesky from a Digital PR pov? Only time will tell. I've been a user for less than a week but the signs are promising. How relevant it becomes will ultimately come down to how many people join the app, and more importantly, how active those new users end up being.

One feature that has been a welcome addition for people signing up and trying to curate a feed of relevant people to follow, has been Starter Packs. Starter Packs are essentially a list of accounts that anyone can make, and serve as a great starting point for anyone looking to follow a group of people related to a certain topic.

For example, if you're looking to follow some of the key thought leaders in Digital PR, I've made a starter pack of people that post smart stuff about Digital PR.

Starter Packs are relatively easy to find as there's a directory that you can search within to find packs related to your search terms.

How to find Journalists on Bluesky

As well as following fellow PRs and SEOs, you're probably also going to want to follow Journalists that you might want to pitch stories to. This will help you get a taste of what they're currently covering, what they're looking for in the future, reply to any #journorequest posts they make, and possibly look to build a relationship up with key writers.

This is where Starter Packs are very handy in that you can find a lot of the ones you'll be most interested in following grouped together.

What I've done in this post is curated a giant list of nearly 300 Journalist Starter Packs and neatly categorised them, to make it even quicker for you to find the relevant Journalists that you might want to follow.

But first...

How to build a media list using Bluesky

So far we've talked about Starter Packs from the angle of finding Journalists that you probably already know, so that you can follow them on Bluesky.

They can also be super useful for building out media lists for any campaigns you're working on, especially if it's a topic or an industry that you're new to.

For example, if you're working with a Tech brand for the first time, by searching for terms like "tech journalists" in the Starter Pack Directory, you'll quickly find some great lists of Journalists that cover Tech stories. Most will have their emails in their bios, but for those that don't, you can then quickly use your media database, or do some manual research, to try and hunt their contact details down (or just ask them on Bluesky!).

As well as searching for Starter Packs, you can search for profiles that match your keywords. For example as you can see in the screenshot below, if you search for "tech journalist" and switch to the People tab, you'll get a list of Tech Journos.

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Finding Journalists by industry in Bluesky Starter Packs

Now you know how you can use Bluesky to find relevant Journalists, I've done some of the early leg work for you by curating these lists of Journalist Starter Packs that I've categorised by industry.

This is the list of categories. To jump straight to the ones that are relevant to you, click on the link and it will direct you to the round up list for that industry. I've just copied the name of the Starter Pack so apologies in advance if some aren't super clear what they contain.