What Is a Bluesky Chat?
Bluesky chats are online events designed to help people interested in a specific topic meet others who are also interested in that topic. At our Bluesky chats, everyone gets together at a set time to network virtually. When you attend a chat, you actually read and respond to other participants' posts—as opposed to sending posts about your news, regardless of whether anyone is actively listening.
How It Works
Our #WomenWritersNet chat will take place over a fun, fast hour. We’ll send out a question for everyone to answer/discuss about every ten minutes. Each question is labeled Q1, Q2 and we ask that each answer be labeled A1, A2. To make sure your comments can be seen by everyone at the chat, please include #WomenWritersNet in your posts.
How To Make Friends on a Bluesky Chat
During the chat, we encourage you to send out your own posts. However, don’t forget to pay attention to what others are posting. When someone posts about a book or author you love, you can reply to that person. If a conversation develops, feel free to keep talking even if you miss a little of the rest of the chat. Responding to other people’s posts is a great way to make new connections and friends online. After the chat, we suggest that you follow everyone you talked to as well as everyone whose posts you enjoyed.
How To Follow a Bluesky Chat
Bluesky chats usually have a unique hashtag. If you don’t currently use a social media management program, you can use the search function at the top right of Bluesky to find the conversation. Ours, of course, will be locatable with the hashtag #WomenWritersNet. Make sure all your posts use that hashtag or they will get lost in the Bluesky feed.
However, to really get the most out of a busy chat, we recommend using a social media management program like deck.blue. These programs allow you to filter posts with searches on hashtags or specific accounts. This is what one network member’s deck.blue layout looks like when she’s attending a chat. There are streams for all the posts going to the chat hashtag, mentions of Rita’s account (@ritakitty.bsky.social) and her posts. This way, she can watch the conversation as a whole and keep track of any of her side conversations that develop.
