Dashboard Overview

This guide will help you understand what you're looking at when you open your feed dashboard. We've built a platform that lets you create custom algorithmic feeds for Bluesky, and your dashboard is where you can see how people are actually using your feed and what content they're connecting with.

Understanding Your Feed's Engagement

The first thing you'll see is a table showing how individual posts within your feed are performing. This is super useful because it tells you what's actually resonating with your audience versus what's falling flat.

Each row represents a different post. You'll see the title and where it came from (like @theonion.com or @npr.org), along with a bunch of numbers that tell the story of how your feed readers interacted with it.

The "Reader Engagement" column is probably the most confusing one at first glance. Here's what it means: the number shown is a ratio that compares your feed readers to everyone else on Bluesky. The numerator (top number) is how many people who performed an action like liking or reposting have ever read your feed. The denominator (bottom number) is the total number of people in the entire Bluesky ecosystem who performed that action. When you see a "0" here, it doesn't mean nobody engaged with it. It just means your feed readers represent a tiny slice of all the engagement that post got across Bluesky. This metric helps you figure out whether your specific audience is really into certain content compared to the general Bluesky population.

The other columns are more straightforward. Reader Likes shows how many people who use your feed liked the post. Reader Replies tells you how many comments came from your feed readers, which is great for understanding what sparks conversations. Reader Reposts shows how many times your audience shared the post to their own followers, basically saying "this is worth amplifying." And if you see numbers in the Request Less column, that means people are clicking "show less of this," which is helpful feedback that maybe that type of content isn't quite right for your feed.

In the screenshot example, you can see The Onion's satirical post about Indigenous People's Day absolutely crushed it with 3.88K likes, 49 replies, and 872 reposts from feed readers. That's a pretty clear signal that satirical news content connects with this particular audience.

Sticky Posts: Pinning Content to the Top

Sticky Posts are a feature that lets you pin specific posts to the top of your feed or have them rotate through prominently. Unlike regular posts that flow through your feed and eventually disappear, sticky posts persist even as new content comes in.

Looking at the dashboard, you'll see whether each sticky post is currently "Active" or "Inactive." If it's inactive, that means you've set it up but it's not currently showing to your feed viewers. When you flip it to active, everyone who loads your feed will see it.

The "Type" column tells you how the post behaves. "Rotating" means it cycles through with other sticky posts rather than being glued permanently to the top. So if you have three rotating sticky posts, they'll take turns appearing rather than all showing at once.

The "Order" column shows the sequence for multiple sticky posts, though if you see "---" that means there's no specific order set and they'll just rotate randomly. You'll also see when each sticky post was created (shown as a date like 08/15 or 07/28) and when it expires. Most of these show "Never" for expiration, which means they'll stay in rotation until you manually turn them off.

The really interesting columns are Views and Users. Views show how many times the post was displayed total when it was active, and Users shows how many unique people saw it. These numbers can get massive. In the screenshot, one sticky post hit 5.54 million views and reached 1.62 million unique users. That's the kind of reach you get when you pin something to a high-traffic feed.

Right now, all the sticky posts in the screenshot are inactive, but you can see they're from various advocacy organizations talking about things like resource hubs, legal complaints to Ofcom, and Pride membership drives. The "Today" column shows zero views for all of them since they're turned off.

Your Feed Analytics: The Big Picture

This is where you get the high-level view of your feed's performance. There are several key numbers here that each tell you something important about how people are using your feed.

First up is DAUs, which stands for Daily Active Users. In the screenshot, that's sitting at 86.8K, which means 86,800 unique people viewed your feed in the last 24 hours. This is honestly one of the most important numbers on your whole dashboard because it tells you your actual reach. If this number is growing, your feed is gaining traction and becoming a regular part of people's Bluesky experience.

Next you'll see Posts, which is just the total number of posts currently showing up in your feed. In this case, 3.89K means there are about 3,890 posts in the feed right now. This can change based on your feed's algorithm and how far back in time you're pulling content from.

Now here's one that trips people up: Likes/day shows 2.7. This is NOT the number of likes on content within your feed. This is how many people liked YOUR FEED ITSELF per day. On Bluesky, people can like feeds the same way you might subscribe to something or bookmark it, basically saying "yeah, I want this in my rotation." So 2.7 people per day are actively endorsing your feed by liking it, which helps it show up in recommendations.

Post Renders is a big number: 21.9 million. This is the total number of times posts in your feed were actually displayed to users. Every time someone scrolls through your feed and posts appear on their screen, those count as renders. The fact that this number is so high relative to your DAUs means people aren't just glancing at your feed – they're scrolling through it and consuming lots of content.

Feed Requests shows 657K, which is how many times people loaded or refreshed your feed. Each time someone opens your feed, that's one request. When you compare this to Post Renders, you can see that each request is resulting in multiple post views, which suggests people are actually scrolling and engaging rather than just opening and closing.

You'll also notice those little line graphs next to each metric. These show the trend over recent time periods. The graphs in the screenshot are mostly showing downward slopes, which indicates these metrics have been declining a bit. That's not necessarily cause for panic – social media metrics naturally fluctuate, and there could be seasonal variations, algorithm changes on Bluesky's end, or just normal ups and downs. But it's something to keep an eye on.

At the top of this screen, you'll see your feed details. This feed is called "News" with a newspaper icon, and it was last updated on 09/02 at 03:57 AM. The description explains it's "Headlines from verified news organisations in reverse-chronological order" maintained by @aendra.com, and it notes that it may contain promoted posts marked with the #promoted hashtag.

Below all the main metrics, there's a Top Posts section showing a carousel of your best-performing content. The example shows that Onion post again with its engagement broken down as ratios: 49 replies out of 208 total replies that post got across Bluesky, 872 reposts out of 5,163, and 3,884 likes out of 21,841. The post is noted as being "about 19 hours" old, giving you context on recency.

Making Sense of Your Performance

Looking at these numbers together, here's what they tell you. Having 86.8K daily active users is substantial. That's a real audience. When you combine that with 21.9 million post renders, it's clear that people aren't just checking in once and leaving – they're actively consuming content from your feed. Individual posts are getting thousands of interactions, which shows the content is resonating.

The downward trends on those graphs are worth watching. They might indicate seasonal variations (maybe people check news feeds less during certain times of year), or they could signal that your feed's algorithm needs some tweaking, or it could just be normal fluctuation that happens in social media all the time. The key is to monitor them and see if they stabilize or continue dropping.

There are some real opportunities here too. The 2.7 likes per day on your feed itself is something you could grow. More feed likes help Bluesky's recommendation algorithm surface your feed to new users, so encouraging people to actually click that like button on the feed could expand your reach. And those sticky posts sitting there inactive? They've proven they can reach millions of people, so there's strategic value in figuring out when and how to activate them.

Monetization: Turning Traffic into Revenue

Finally, let's talk about the monetization section. When you look at your dashboard, you'll see a section that currently says "No active campaigns or requests." This is where sponsored content lives – basically, where brands or organizations can pay to have their content featured in your feed.

Right now, there's nothing active, which means your feed isn't currently showing any sponsored or promoted posts. But here's the thing: with 86.8K daily active users and 21.9 million post renders, you're sitting on some serious advertising potential. That kind of traffic is exactly what brands and publishers are looking for.

There's also a "Coupons" button that lets you create promotional codes or special offers for potential advertisers. Think of it like giving someone a discount to try advertising in your feed for the first time.

When you do have active campaigns running, this section will show you the details – how much revenue you're generating, how many impressions the sponsored content is getting, and how long each campaign is scheduled to run. Since your feed already has strong organic traffic, adding some thoughtful, relevant sponsored content could be a natural next step once you're ready to explore monetization.

What to Do Next

If you're just getting started with understanding your dashboard, here's what to focus on. First, spend some time looking at your top posts and figuring out what patterns you see. What's driving engagement? Are there certain topics or sources that always perform well? Use that to inform how you tune your feed's algorithm.

With the traffic numbers you're seeing, it's worth thinking about whether monetization makes sense for your feed. You've got the audience for it.

Those sticky posts are another tool in your toolkit. They're currently switched off, but when you need to make an announcement or partner with someone for a special campaign, you've already seen they can reach millions of people.

Keep an eye on those trend lines, especially if they keep pointing downward. If metrics continue to decline, you might want to adjust your feed algorithm, experiment with including different types of content, or look at whether something changed on Bluesky's platform that's affecting your feed's distribution.

And don't forget about growing your feed likes. Right now you're at 2.7 per day, but encouraging more people to actually like your feed will help with discoverability and bring new users to your audience.

If you have questions about anything you're seeing in your dashboard, reach out to the Graze.social team. We're here to help you make the most of your feed.