How to Use BlueSky Starter Packs for Outreach

BlueSky Starter Packs are one of the fastest ways new users find people, feeds, and communities. Instead of discovering accounts one at a time, a person can use a curated pack to follow a set of recommended accounts around a topic or community.

For creators, founders, journalists, developers, artists, and small teams, Starter Packs matter because they turn reputation into distribution. If your profile is useful and clearly positioned, other people have a reason to include you when they help newcomers find accounts to follow.

BlueSky's Starter Packs announcement explains that Starter Packs can recommend users and custom feeds to help communities find each other.

What are BlueSky Starter Packs?

A Starter Pack is a curated recommendation list. It is not a paid ad, an SEO shortcut, or a guarantee of growth. It is a social proof object: someone says these accounts are worth following for a topic, place, profession, community, or interest.

That means the best outreach strategy is not asking every pack creator to add you immediately. The better strategy is to make your account clearly valuable enough that adding you helps the pack stay useful.

Make your profile easy to categorize

Starter Pack creators need to know where you fit. If your bio, pinned post, and recent posts are vague, they have no clear reason to include you. Make the account easy to understand in five seconds.

Say the audience or topic plainly in the bio.

Pin a post that explains who should follow you and why.

Keep recent posts aligned with a few recurring themes.

Avoid switching topics so often that the account has no center.

Make sure the best posts are easy to scan without extra context.

Build the posting rhythm before doing outreach

A Starter Pack inclusion helps most when the account is already active. If someone clicks through and sees stale posts, generic copy, or only promotional links, the pack placement will not convert well.

Use ONYX to schedule a baseline: useful posts, short lessons, questions, updates, and threads that match the topic you want to be known for. The goal is to make the profile look alive and useful before anyone recommends it.

Use the calm BlueSky growth workflow to stay active without posting all day.

What to post before asking to be added

Before outreach, build a visible trail of proof. People should be able to tell that your account adds value to the pack's topic.

A clear intro post for the topic you cover.

Three to five useful posts that teach, explain, or show proof.

One short thread that goes deeper than a single post.

A few replies to people already active in the community.

A pinned post or profile line that makes the account easy to place.

How to ask without sounding spammy

Do not mass-message pack creators with a generic pitch. Find packs where your account genuinely fits, follow the creator's instructions if they have any, and make the ask specific.

A good ask is short: who you are, what topic you cover, why your account fits that exact pack, and one link to the strongest proof post. If the answer is no, move on. Starter Pack outreach only works when it respects the person curating the list.

Track whether the attention converts

Starter Packs can create profile visits and follows, but the real question is whether the attention turns into replies, clicks, saves, newsletter subscribers, product trials, or community conversations.

Use ONYX analytics and insights to look for changes after outreach. If the posts that convert are explainers, write more explainers. If replies come from questions, schedule more specific questions. Treat Starter Pack discovery as one input, not the entire growth plan.

Start planning your BlueSky outreach rhythm with ONYX on the free plan.