A Growth Hacker’s Guide to Growing Your Twitch Channel In 2022 UPDATED (Part 4/6): Channel Presentation ✨
Want to read the different parts of this series at your own pace? Fast track to:
💯 ProTip: Think of your Twitch Channel like a physical store. Things like your stream title and thumbnail are your display window to generate interest from each passerby.
The first thing is getting people to come in. Once they are in, everything from the look of your stream, panels, bio, schedule, and the story you create is what will help someone decide whether or not they want to interact or follow you.
Since I’m not a designer, I had all my channel branding and artwork done by my favorite designer. We should all play to our strengths, so if you’re not a strong designer, I would highly recommend getting a professional to help you with this. If you go this route, be ready to pay them. Just like you, designers do not work for free. Let’s go deeper.
🤩 Your brand and your story
People want to know who you are and what you’re all about. Make sure that you have a panel that talks a bit about who you are. I feel much more connected to a streamer when I know, even just a little bit, about the person I’m watching.
💯 ProTip: have a panel dedicated to letting people know who you are, what you’re all about and why they should watch you.
These are the questions your brand and story should answer. You should also be thinking about how you can maximize every bit of real estate on your Twitch channel to make you and your brand stand out.
⚙️ Twitch Channel Design, Panels & Extensions (UPDATED 06/16/2020)
UPDATE: Twitch recently redesigned their channel pages in turn requiring streamers to slightly update how they portray banners and graphics on their channel. Check out the official update from Twitch here.
Panels, extensions and the overall design of your channel are perhaps the greatest way to differentiate yourself from other streamers, and also make you and your channel look more interesting to follow. This (UPDATED) video from Gael LEVEL pretty much covers EVERYTHING you need to know about customizing and designing your Twitch Channel!
💯 ProTip: ALWAYS be thinking about how you can make your panels and overlays look more unique and interesting. Do your best to differentiate yourself from the crowd! This should be ongoing.
There are TONS of Twitch channel extensions that can make your channel look better, more useful, and more interactive. Some I use are the Streamlabs Leaderboard and Streamlabs Loyalty, Music, Polls & Games. I am a streamer who uses minimal extensions; you may be different. Twitch is always adding new, interesting extensions to their library which you can find here.
⭐️ Find or CREATE your own themes for amazing looking stream overlays (UPDATED 11/17/2021)
As a streamer, you’re going to want to take advantage of all the widgets and tools you can to make your stream look pro. Not all of us are Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator wizards, so there are lots of options for people that aren’t designers like myself. I talk about how to set up OBS Studio in the previous section (part three) but, since we’re on the topic of Twitch channel presentation, I wanted to show this video of how to actually make your stream look pro using some OBS features.
You can also check out sites like Nerd or Die to find amazing stream overlays, alerts, widgets and more! Make sure you do your absolute best to make the style and vibe of your stream look as professional as it can… and, if you need help, work with a designer like I did.
💯 ProTip: when working with artists and designers — be ready to pay them! Be upfront about your budget and don’t shy away from talking about their process, pricing and terms. It’s OK to have a small budget and most will be happy to work within it.
✏️ Stream titles
Stream titles are super important for attracting viewers from Twitch’s browse section. Have you ever stumbled upon a stream in the browse section of Twitch? Why were you attracted by it, what interested you about the stream title and the thumbnail?
Here are a few ways to make your stream titles better:
- Use emojis: This is such a simple way to make your stream titles stand out in the vast oceans of streamers out there. I actually tested this, and I found (on avg.) I had about 15–20% more unique viewers come into my stream from the Browse section than when I did not use emojis in my stream titles. Aesthetic preferences aside, this works to help your title stand out in an ocean of text.
- Meme jacking: Do any of the games you’re playing have any wildly popular jokes/memes/culture references associated with them? If so, try to weave them into your stream titles. This will give people a direct, familiar reference and will make people more comfortable choosing your stream over someone else’s.
- Spelling and grammar: You can use CAPS if you want to, but try to use proper grammar/spelling. People are more sophisticated than you may think, and it will turn off a lot of potential viewers if you have poor spelling and grammar. I always have one or two people look over my stream titles quickly before going live.
- Branding: Is there anything consistent you can have in all your stream titles? You have a better chance of popping out in the browse categories if there is some consistency that people might see over time. For me, I always include “SENPAI plays…” somewhere in the title.
- Update your category: Imagine walking into a pizza joint only to find they’re serving spaghetti and meatballs. Still awesome, but not really what you signed up for. If you switch between games during the same stream, PLEASE update this in your stream title and category selection! This is such a common mistake I see streamers make. If someone finds you through browsing streams for a specific game, and they go into your stream to find you are playing something else, you are offering something they weren’t looking for in the first place and will leave. ALWAYS make sure your storefront (stream category/game) properly reflects what you’re offering!
🙅 DON’T
Don’t include anything in your stream title that YOU (YOURSELF) wouldn’t care about if you saw it in someone else’s stream title. Example: do you care when a streamer you’ve never heard of is trying to reach a certain follower goal? I don’t, and you probably don’t either.
💯 ProTip: if you want to rally your viewers, just say so during your stream! Your stream title should be optimized for enticing NEW VIEWERS to check you out.
Don’t put too much flare in your titles. Example: [ENG], [PARTNER], [SUB GOAL: 50], [TALKS TO VIEWERS], [AFFILIATE], etc. In my opinion, these are things that you shouldn’t be trying to convey in your stream title; it looks clunky. Talk the talk when/if people decide to chime in during your stream. The things you want to communicate in your flare will be obvious soon enough.
Don’t misrepresent your streams in the stream title. Be direct, and give people a good sense of what they’re getting themselves into.
🌐 Metadata & Twitch SEO (UPDATED 11/17/2021)
In this context, metadata refers to all the information that describes and gives context to your past broadcasts (vods) and highlights. The metadata Twitch allows its users to control is the thumbnail, title, game/category, description, language, tags, and what collections your videos may fall under. Here is why this is all super important, especially to small streamers and growing channels.
Most streamers don’t realize that they need to go back into their past broadcasts and highlights and add in RELEVANT METADATA such as keywords and video descriptions. This is important because you’re basically telling Twitch what your content is all about, making it easier for them to categorize you and feature you in whatever discovery algorithms they have going. This is my speculation.
💯 ProTip: your channel’s metadata tells Twitch what kind of streamer you are, what kind of content you create, and how to categorize you. It also gets you discovered by new viewers!
Tags! Don’t use tags that are not directly relevant to your streams and your video content. This is asking for trouble and will screw you over in the long run. A properly tagged highlight or past broadcast will include tags related to the content and keywords that you think people may search for on Twitch. Example: if I’m streaming Super Mario Maker the tags I might use would be — “Super Mario Maker”, “Mario”, “Nintendo”, “Mario Maker”, etc.
You want to optimize your metadata around popular search terms. In the case of Twitch, people might search for “game titles” or maybe “reactions” to “said game title” for example.
So, my keyword stacks and layers of similarity might look something like this if I just finished streaming Super Mario Odyssey:
Collection: JoMo Senpai x Super Mario Odyssey
Video title: SENPAI Streams Super Mario Odyssey! (Any%)
Video description: I LOVE Super Mario Odyssey! Mario and I have been around for such a long time. I’m a real Nintendo fanboy!
Video tags (use only when exporting to YouTube now): Super Mario Odyssey, Mario, Nintendo
So, now I’ve got Super Mario Odyssey as a keyword stack across four points of layered metadata. This is one juicy meatball for a discovery algorithm.
💯 ProTip: although metadata is an important consideration for making your channel/content more discoverable, try not to let it dictate your own personal writing style.
🎼 Best royalty-free & streamer friendly music sources for your Twitch channel (UPDATED 06/14/2020)
Music, as you may know, can be a GREAT way to connect with people! I’ve spent hundreds of hours sculpting my own playlist on Spotify full of tracks I love, promote, credit, and play during my stream.
Did you know Twitch has its own royalty-free music playlist on Spotify? Yup, neither did I. You can check it out here and learn more about it on the Twitch Music FAQ.
There are TONS of other amazing royalty-free playlists out there for you to use on your stream. They’re ideal to avoid copyright strikes and to stay within Twitch’s terms of service. Here are a few of my favorites:
📡Frequency: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🎚️NCS: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🦊ArgoFox: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🎙️Chuki Beats: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🔺Audio Library: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🕹️Game Chops: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🌀Spinnin’ Records: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
❤️Ninety9Lives: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
💫Remissum Records: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
🌑Night Mode: check them out on YouTube or Spotify!
Whatever music you do decide to use in your stream, ALWAYS make sure you’re reading and considering any terms they may have around crediting them or the artists. You should ALWAYS credit the work of others… especially if you’re not paying for it.
💯 ProTip: don’t just limit yourself to one royalty free music library. Try out a few and sculpt your own style and official stream playlist!
We could talk about channel presentation for a very long time. I’d really love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this section, so please comment below what you think I may be missing or what you’ve experienced differently. As always, this work is meant to be updated, refined, and discussed critically by the community! With that said, let’s move onto your channel interaction!
P.S., enjoying this series so far? Check out my other article on how to take your Twitch stream on the road where I talk about how I kept up my streaming schedule all across Japan for two months!
P.P.S., this series has blown up a lot more than I ever could have imagined! It seems to be helping a lot of new Twitch streamers and many people are writing to me asking how they can support me. Here are a few things to consider: you can tip me anywhere from $1-$5 through PayPal directly here, or you could share this article with anyone else looking to get into streaming, or you could follow me on Twitch and come say hi next time I’m 🔴LIVE! Thanks everyone, and happy streaming!
