Hello and welcome back to Let's Talk Social, the podcast where marketing insights meet just enough entertainment to keep you awake like a lukewarm cup of office coffee. Today we're diving into the rising social media platform Blue Sky and what it means for businesses in 2025. Spoiler alert, it's not just a Twitter knockoff, but it does come with fewer billionaires making headlines.

Let's break it down. What exactly is BlueSky? BlueSky started as a decentralized social media project backed by Twitter's co founder Jack Dorsey. You can think of it as Twitter's cooler, privacy obsessed cousin who shops exclusively at the farmer's market and codes their own apps just for fun. By 2025, BlueSky has evolved into a mainstream player with the mission to give users more control.

Businesses can tap into this ethos by creating communities that feel more authentic and less algorithm driven. No more dancing to the tune of a platform's opaque rules, unless you're into that sort of thing.

Okay, so BlueSky isn't just a trendy social experiment, it's a business opportunity. Unlike traditional platforms where you're at the mercy of the algorithm's shifts, looking at you, Meta, BlueSky uses the AT protocol. This allows users and brands to build their own spaces while still connecting to the larger network.

Picture hosting your party, but being able to pop into the neighbor's barbecue for snacks.

Brands can create bespoke, branded communities while ensuring reach across the ecosystem. That's like marketing gold dust.

So how do you get started on Blue Sky? First, throw away the one size fits all content strategy that we've all been recycling since 2018. Thanks for watching. On BlueSky, authenticity isn't just a buzzword.

It's the expectation. I put together three actionable tips for you to get started on BlueSky today. The first being engage your audience directly. So BlueSky's decentralized model encourages genuine conversations. Brands like yours should interact, not just broadcast. So think Reddit level engagement, but without all the trolls.

Second, you can leverage custom algorithms. BlueSky allows users to personalize their feeds with custom algorithms. For businesses, this means you can align your content with specific audience interests. If you're trying to market to a vegan cat owner that's in Boise, Idaho, there's probably an algorithm for that.

Third, focus on data privacy. BlueSky emphasizes privacy and transparency, so showcase your commitment to ethical marketing practices, because nothing says trust us like selling someone's email to a sketchy third party. So takeaway, BlueSky users expect you to be human or at least really good at pretending to be human.

Of course, no platform is without its quirks. BlueSky's decentralized model is like trying to play Monopoly, but everyone has their own rulebook. The lack of centralized moderation can mean more work for businesses to manage their own communities. And let's not ignore the learning curve. Navigating new tools and terms is like trying to explain the plot of the movie Inception to someone who's never seen it.

It's doable, but you might need a flowchart. But hey, if you survived Instagram's algorithm, TikTok trends, and your boss saying, can we go viral, you've probably got this. At the end of the day, Blue Sky is shaping up to be a major player for businesses in 2025. It's a fresh start for brands looking to escape the pitfalls of traditional social media while still reaching their audience in a meaningful way.

So pack your digital bags, hop on the Blue Sky train, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find a little sunshine beyond the algorithm clouds. Thanks for tuning into Let's Talk Social. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And we will see you next time for our episode on AI and conversion tracking.

Alright, post show notes on the Blue Sky thoughts. When I first heard about it, you know, I was like, what in the world is Blue Sky, hence the title of the episode? And, you know, truth be told, I don't think this is one I'm going to be downloading. However, I think at some point in the future, this could get to be pretty cool especially with the custom coded You know, little privacy decentralized models that you can bring into brands just like yours.

So you can kind of curate your own experience inside of that. Obviously, there's a large barrier to entry there. It's not easy just to code something up. So you've either got to pay somebody or figure out how to do it. And that's a issue in itself. With Jack Dorsey being behind it. I think they've got some bright minds there to lead the pack on a lot of the stuff that's going to go over go on over at blue sky, but ultimately it's just going to come down to, are people actually going to use this app or not?

And how is it going to make money? AKA, how is it going to stay alive? So if we're really trying to. Figure out whether this is going to be a viable platform, especially for businesses. It's going to be kind of hard to tell without seeing people actually joining and doing all of that. So you can do that.

There's obviously new platforms like red note and a bunch of other ones and. Social media is in a weird place right now where it seems like everybody's just kind, kind of perusing different apps and trying to figure out which one is their favorite, and I think that's totally okay. It's not a do do or die all on every single app.

I don't think everyone just has to have one app that they use, even though a lot of people do just tend to stick to one. But as I said earlier, you know, it's a, it's a social experiment. It's a business opportunity. It's something where You're trying to figure out how this is going to navigate and everything else but a big thing I pay attention to in business and in marketing is how am I spending my time and I don't feel comfortable spending it on something that's experimental with no kind of immediate ROI or even like next six months ROI, so That's kind of what I think about blue sky at the moment.

I don't have much else to say about it when it comes to the actual benefits for marketing or for business. I just, I don't see a lot there yet, but this could, it kind of feels weirdly enough like early stage Reddit with how blue sky just like feels in terms of outside looking in what you hear about it and everything like that.

So that could mean that could be a good thing then for them in the future. But, At the moment, I'm going to be off of Blue Sky. I'll keep a, keep a pulse on it and just see what's going on with it. I'll keep you guys updated for sure, but Who knows? You know, as I said in the episode, it could shape up to be a major business player for businesses this year.

But again, it's, you have to have a user base to get there. And with it out of mainstream media and not on, you know, most people haven't heard about it, not in the front of everyone's minds. I don't think we're going to be, if it's going to be this year, it's going to be the end of the year, but. Yeah, that's, that's ultimately what I think is going to happen there is just, it's going to take a long time if it survives.

But again, they've got some bright people over there doing good things. So appreciate you guys listening. Hopefully Jack Dorsey can pull this one together and maybe he can build this to something big. And I like decentralized. That means we all have access and no biased algorithms. So that's good too.

But yeah, share this with a friend if you liked it and we'll see you in the next one. Thanks.