A Growth Hacker’s Guide to Growing Your Twitch Channel In 2022 UPDATED (Part 5/6): Channel Interaction 🗣
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Channel interaction and viewer engagement is something super personal and relative to you. Mentioned below are some of the things that have worked for me, and channel interactions that I consider when I’m live.
There are many successful streamers that barely interact in chat and/or with their community. However, if you’re trying to build an audience and get people to stick around in your channel, you can make a strong impression by introducing yourself and greeting them when they decide to chime in. Here are a few other points worth considering around your Twitch channel interaction and engagement.
🤪 Practice talking to yourself
If I’m watching someone play a game in silence, I’d rather go watch a “Let’s play” video on YouTube. I can’t speak for all viewers, but most appreciate some kind of ongoing commentary. If you have a lot of knowledge and/or passion around what you’re playing, talk to me about it! It will get you and your audience hyped and encourage new viewers to chime in.
This is a great video from Ty Baka on how to practice talking to yourself, how to create dialogue for your viewers, and for people coming into your stream.
🤔 Ask questions to chat
Ask your viewers how they’re doing, if they’ve played this game before, what they’ve been up to, how THEIR streams are going. I guarantee this will not only make your stream more enjoyable to you but to your audience as well.
💯 ProTip: don’t forget to kindly ask your viewers to CLIP funny moments of your stream if they see one!
🙋 Stream intros
TOTALLY dependent on your own personal style and vibe but, in my humble opinion, I think it’s professional and widely appreciated to have consistent intros and outros to your streams. This could be a countdown and “hello” for the first 15–20 minutes of your stream, and then shout-outs and a raid (what is a raid?) at the end of your stream.
People are rarely patiently waiting for your stream to begin. They may have an idea of when you’re going live, but they will be doing other things; trust me. A stream countdown lets people trickle in at their convenience and can be part of an intro. I usually do a 15–20-minute countdown and have a pretty active chat once I get going.
TEST EVERYTHING and have it all ready before your stream goes live. Create some hype in your chat during the countdown. For some reason, this is one of my favorite parts of my stream! I like to comment about the level of hype currently happening during my countdown and will really encourage dialogue in the chat. I have a lot of fun with this, and so do my viewers!
Again, totally dependent on your own style, but always have a few people in mind to raid after your stream is over. This goes back to community interaction.
💯 ProTip: you want to be raided during your streams, right? So, make sure you are giving back what you want to receive in return. This is so, so relevant!
🤫 Lurker and interaction etiquette
Twitch is all about making new friends and meeting new people. Try your best to interact with people in chat, especially if they say hello!
Introduce yourself regularly on stream, but only interact with people if they choose to interact in the chat. Lurkers tend to leave if you try and coax them into hopping into the chat. People have a right to lurk, don’t mess with that. Ever had a store clerk bothered you while you’re just browsing? Annoying, right? Don’t be like that.
💯 ProTip: if you come across trolls, don’t let them get to you and try and turn them into chill viewers. FotiGames on r/Twitch breaks down how!
🤖 Bots
If used properly, bots can be an insanely helpful tool in moderating your stream and sending out messages at useful times. You can also configure hundreds of different commands for different reasons to use in chat while you’re live. Here’s a comprehensive list of potential commands you can ask your chatbot to initiate. One thing I like my bot to do is to invite people to my Discord server every now and then.
Bots can also be MAGIC with adding interactive components to your stream like sound effects, triggers, command lists, song requests, and so on.
There are many chatbots out there and you should try a few of them out for yourself. I started on Nightbot and then moved over to Streamlabs Chatbot just because of how it all integrated with my stack. Here’s a great overview on it by Phlawless Gaming:
💯 ProTip: you can also use a bot poorly by making it over-moderate your chat.
I’ve seen small streamers turn up their chatbot moderation up to 11 and everyone gets banned for typing something in CAPITAL letters. It’s quite frustrating, and a fast-track to losing viewers.
I’ve also seen people use their chatbot to promote themselves WAY TOO MUCH in chat. This could be any number of overused prompts like “Follow me on Twitter!”, “Don’t forget to Follow!”, “Subscribe to my channel!”, “Follow me on MySpace!”, etc. Space out bot comments and commands over the course of your entire stream and tell your bot only to post automated comments after every 20–30 comments from real people.
Bots should be used sparingly, and to lightly assist you. They are not a complete solution to moderation and/or self-promotion and they can easily turn off potential followers if overused.
💗 Whispers, shoutouts, and (real) friendships
When someone follows my channel, I make a personal point to send them a DM/Whisper after the stream thanking them for the follow and any other laughs/hype they threw down during my stream.
I try and shout out people as much as I can during and at the end of my stream in a bunch of different ways — go check out their Twitch channel, YouTube page, Twitter, DeviantArt page, etc.
💯 ProTip: make clips of your shout outs, and tweet them to the people you’re shouting out! Wouldn’t you love it if someone did that for you?
🙏 Don’t forget to BE AUTHENTIC
People can smell bullshit. Always remember to share a little bit about yourself, and let people know how you’re doing. You will have good days and bad days. Your viewers will appreciate you keeping them in the loop.
Guys, this is how you make friends on Twitch! If you don’t want to make new friends and build a community, it may be difficult to grow your Twitch channel. Why is that important? Because your friends will hang out with you in your streams and create HYPE!
We’ve covered a lot of ground, and I’ve saved the best for last. So, let’s talk about Twitch channel growth!
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!
