Twitch — The Challenge of Discovery (Part 1 — Streamer Communities)
As someone who is constantly seeking new and engaging Twitch Streamers to review, every passing day shows in more clarity how difficult it is for streamers to get discovered. So how do you get your stream in front of new viewers, and get the engagement you’re looking for?
This series seeks to help lay down some basics of getting yourself up and running, and in front of the eyes of your potential followers. The items we discuss here are exactly how we have discovered the streamers we review, and how they got our attention.
Streamer Communities & How to Engage
If you aren’t networking with your peers, you are drastically reducing your ability to grow. Almost every streamer reviewed to date on our publication was referred to us by another streamer.
BE THE CHAT YOU WISH YOU HAD
How many times have you spent hours staring at your chat just hoping someone would say hello, ask how your day is going, or what you think of the game you’re playing? Fortunately enough, you aren’t alone and by solving this problem for someone else, you greatly increase your chances of them returning the favor.
Dedicate a portion of your day to engage with other streamers while they’re playing. Even a couple of minutes can make a significant difference in keeping them motivated and positive.
Silent chat tends to stay silent, lurkers will lurk forever unless something catches them and draws them out of hiding. By engaging with other streamers, you help them begin to develop their chat response skills and may unknowingly create a discussion which draws out otherwise non-engaged viewers.
SELF-PROMOTION (JUST DON’T)
Believe it or not, just being involved with a streamer is all the self-promotion you’re ever going to need in this realm. Anything more and you go from an engaged viewer to a self-absorbed jerk in record speeds.
Do not self-promote on ANY other stream. This should be obvious, however it is amazing how many times I witness people coming into other chats and asking for a shout out, dropping their own link, or using the alert system for bits or donations to get their own name and stream in front of another’s community.
Now this doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a place and time to have discussions about streaming, or how your stream went, or what you’re preparing to stream. This however should always be initiated by the one who’s stream you’re viewing, and generally you would have had a very good relationship built up previously.
Just because you are engaging with another streamer often doesn’t mean you should expect anything in return. While it’s nice to get a shout out, recommendation, or other form of recognition; always remember that this is THEIR stream. You are a visitor, and supporting them should always be about them, never you.
FOLLOW FOR FOLLOW / LET’S GROW TOGETHER
If you ever see a tweet with the above phrases in it, there is only one acceptable response… RUN! The streamers who are pushing this type of “content” out on Twitter are concerned about one thing, building their own statistics.
A key thing to remember is that followers are not fans, and just because they boost your follower number doesn’t mean they will ever show up for a stream.
The only thing you have gained is constant spam on your Twitter feed where you could be seeing good content, advice, ideas, and recommendations from streamers who are actually providing good content to the community.
I can tell you from first-hand experience, if I see one of these posts popping up from a streamer it’s the fastest way to get them removed from being followed and having those phrases muted so they’ll never show up again.
