We live in a world where streaming is actually viable as a full-time occupation, and everyone — from your classmates to your old babysitter to the 13-year old across the street — is out here shooting their shot and broadcasting their content live to the world. In a world like this, one of the main challenges to reaching any level of success is found in answering the question… how do I stand out?
Let me walk you through a little line of (honestly, pretty obvious) logical reasoning real quick. Streamers make money through ads, sponsorships, bits, donations, subs, etc. All of these monetization methods stem from, in one way or another, having viewers. Hence, having viewers helps you become a successful streamer. Double hence, understanding what viewers want helps you become a successful streamer. And that’s what we’re here to help you understand!
We polled a variety of different Twitch viewers on how they personally engage with Twitch streams and streamers, split pretty evenly amongst demographics who watched daily, weekly, and only occasionally.
Here are our biggest takeaways:
Single-game / competitive streams were the most popular with our viewers, with around 88% of our viewers watching them.
In other words, just get super good at the game you’re playing and the viewers will come streaming (haha get it?) in!
…In all seriousness, though, you may find more success if you stick with a single game or game type. We know this can be difficult when streaming some of the bigger games like Fortnite, League of Legends, etc., so use this information as you will. Maybe it means you start out with a slightly smaller game to build your foundation, then transition over to your “main” game; maybe it means you stick with a smaller game through it all — hey, maybe it means you like a challenge and you stick with one of the larger games anyways. It’s all up to you.
A little over 50% of our viewers also enjoy watching variety streamers, so while this particular group of people polled don’t enjoy variety streamers as much as single-game / competitive streamers, you’d still probably have a pretty good shot as a streamer playing multiple games. Plus, you probably get to skip right over some of the challenges a smaller streamer in a single, popular game would most likely face.
Our viewers tend to only utilize chat when it’s a smaller stream and the streamer actively responds to chat.
Good news for you — since we’re assuming you’re a smaller streamer… — you already meet one of these qualifications! The second part is up to you, though, because aside from memer moments and emote spam in larger streams, our viewers will only chat if you chat back.
You know what that means. Whip that second monitor or phone or whatever out, stick it in an easily accessible place, and multi-task! Get to reading and replying, boys and girls.
Over 85% of our viewers discover new streams while browsing through specific games, via social media, or by word-of-mouth.
Let’s break down what this means. We all know Twitch orders streams by their view count. If your channel is on the smaller end and you’re streaming one of the more popular games, your stream probably won’t show up anywhere near what I like to refer to as “browsing territory” — AKA the area between the top streams and where a random viewer is likely to stop scrolling. This kind of goes back to the idea that you may be better off starting out with a slightly lesser-known game. Just, you know, don’t go so lesser-known that you end up where nobody will ever find you or your stream’s desolate body…
In terms of social media, here’s a good tip: have it! And be active on it! And not just by posting only when you’re live and stuff! Be fun, be authentic, get to know other streamers, and expand your network. If you’re going to be a “going live” bot… no. Stop it. No one wants to follow that. Social media’s great for a lot of things, and expanding your viewerbase can be part of that if you utilize it correctly.
Aside from overall quality of the stream (clear audio, non-hamster-run PC, etc.), the biggest incentives to follow for our viewers were (in no particular order) skill, personality / humor, and community interaction.
Good news for those of us with no talent — there are still people out there who will love and watch us. All jokes aside, though, there are a few good takeaways from this. A lot of streamers who are just starting out place a lot of emphasis on flashy overlays, cute emotes, professional panels and transitions, etc., but those things aren’t the most important to most viewers. Instead of spending a lot of money and effort on that sort of stuff, maybe try investing that time and those resources into making your content more unique and your channel more open and approachable.
Here’s a tip: get used to talking to yourself. If you feel awkward talking, laughing, and making jokes into the void, just keep on doing it. If you’re really just starting out and have no viewers, you’ll need to be okay amusing yourself and whatever ghost viewers happen to stumble in, even with no one in chat. You’ll eventually get to a point where you have a decent amount of chatter at all times, and then maybe at some point you’ll get to a point where you have too much chatter, and you’ll go back to talking, laughing, and making jokes into the void. It’s an absolutely necessary skill to have, especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have a whole lot of community interaction.
Speaking of community interaction, what exactly does that even mean? Our viewers considered “community interaction” to generally mean, while streaming, active communication with chat, and when offline, engagement over social media. It’s probably pretty obvious that this is an important aspect of streaming, but are you aware of exactly just how important it is? We asked our viewers how vital it was on a scale from 1–10 that the streamer they’re watching engages in said “community interaction,” and over 60% gave it a 7–8/10. Almost 10% rated it 9–10/10, and less than 25% gave it less than a 6/10.
That’s a lot of numbers, so I’ll simplify it for you: Engage. With. Your. Audience. :)
The only thing better than engaging with your viewers is to engage with your viewers in a fun, unique way, so utilize the various tools at your disposal, like… extensions!
Yes, I work at a company that builds extensions — hi, our company is Taunt, we make cool engagement tools like Prize Rush and Taunt ;) — and yes, this may sound like propaganda, but hear me out. Whether you use one of our extensions or one of the many others in the Twitch store, extensions can act as great tools to help you interact with your audience in a fun — and, more importantly, unique — way. While not all viewers use them, certain extensions can create avenues for discussion and expression with the parts of your audience that do utilize them.
I’ll toss out a few quick examples. TuneMoji is an extension that allows viewers to react with GIFs and sounds for free or with Bits. Dragon Pets lets you breed a creature unique to each channel. Prize Rush creates interesting discourse by providing trivia on games, pop culture, etc., every hour. There are tons of options out there, so dig around a little and find what works for you!
Whatever you end up doing, however you end up designing your channel, remember — every stream is different, every audience member is unique, and every interaction you have will be singular. The biggest takeaway should be to enjoy every step of the journey :)
Hopefully this helped you better understand your potential future viewers’ behaviors, motives, and interests. If you’d like to get in touch with us, feel free to join our Discord: https://discord.gg/gDySB7z
Happy streaming!