Millions of viewers come to Twitch every day eager to be entertained. How much time and effort you put into developing your channel will determine whether those lucrative audiences will linger over your content or move away swiftly.
Networking
Organic growth does not happen as easily on Twitch as on other platforms, mainly because the service is relatively new and does not feature many content discovery tools. Luckily, networking can help you with this a lot. The secret is to view other content creators as your helpful allies rather than competition.
- Collaborate with other streamers. Working with like-minded streamers whose audience equals or slightly exceeds your own is a great way to expand your viewer base.
- Expand your search beyond Twitch. Take your search for collaborative opportunities beyond Twitch and explore other options like Twitter, subReddits, gaming forums, etc.
- Join Twitch communities and attend official meetups. Participating in Twitch communities is a sure way for streamers to grow their network, build an audience, find inspiration, and discover new sponsorship opportunities.
Personal Brand
Every successful Twitch streamer is a powerful personal brand characterized by a strong identity and clear positive values. Turning your name into a brand takes time, but the effort will pay off nicely by giving you a solid and consistent image that others will recognize across various social media.
- Give your brand a unique identity. Do some thorough self-digging to understand what it is about your personality that will make viewers want to follow your channel. Look for hidden talents, fresh ideas, and strong values your audience can easily relate to.
- Analyze competition and learn from the best. Take the time to analyze well-doing streamers whose style is similar to yours. Consider their best qualities and signature features, and think about how you can borrow some of those without coming off as a copycat.
- Deliver genuine value to your audience. The quality of your content is what your channel will live or die on, so make sure you feed something helpful to your viewers; otherwise, they will soon get bored and disengage.
Going Live
Provided that all of the above have been taken good care of, the next logical step is to focus on how you will appear and what you will do when you finally go live. It means having a plan that outlines what you should do and say when on air. Drafting a script might also be a good idea, especially at the start. It does not limit your ability to be creative or act in a spur-of-the-moment way, but it sure gives you something solid to fall back on if needed.
- Offer an interactive experience to your viewers. On Twitch, interaction is the key and something you should continuously build on. Only streamers who provide their viewers with a gripping and meaningful watching experience can expect to grow their loyal audiences quickly.
- Stay consistent and stick to a schedule. Respect your viewers’ watching habits and the time they are willing to invest in your channel by developing a consistent and convenient streaming schedule that will not change much.
- Do not get obsessed with stats during your streams. Tracking stats while streaming is a bad idea. Seeing that the numbers aren’t what you expect can negatively affect your mood and ruin the entire session. While it is crucial to know that what you tell people is received well, you should concentrate on that after the stream is over and you have time to reflect.
Growth Hacks
The following tips have helped some of the most successful streamers with million-user audiences get where they are now. See if you can benefit from them as well.
- Do not focus on the highest-performing games. The most popular games are tough to stream as the competition is cutthroat here, and there will always be someone more qualified for the job. Try indie games instead – they are fun, entertaining, and attract more viewers than commentators.
- Save the most memorable moments for new users. Spend some time after your streams to clip a few most laughable moments and exciting bits that summarize the experience for new users. This way, you can re-engage with your existing audience and get the attention of new viewers out there.
- Analyze your best sources of traffic. Analyze where the majority of views come from and act on that knowledge. If your best audience is mobile users from Asia, consider optimizing the experience to be more mobile-friendly and schedule your streams to run at the time most suitable for Asian viewers.
Hopefully, the above tips will help you perform at the level you never expected and achieve true success in no time. And if you are looking for more personalized assistance growing your account, do not hesitate to contact our StreamSkill experts.
15 December 2022
