Over the past decade or so, Twitch has grown from obscure internet anomaly to a full-time job for millions of people. Most people who stream on twitch don't make anything, but the people at the top make millions.
How do you close the gap? How do you grow your channel?
Starting With Quality
Before you start thinking about growing your channel, you need to focus on improving your channel. The higher quality your channel is, the easier it will be to grow.
- Choose a niche. As of August 2022, the most streamed games on Twitch are Grand Theft Auto V, with 119,000,000+ viewer hours and League of Legends, with 115,000,000+ viewer hours. These are highly popular games, and you might be intimately familiar with them, but it's a mistake to try and start streaming in these highly saturated markets. Instead, it's usually better to get your start in a specific niche; choose a game with fewer players and less active streamers so you can get a foothold in a category that's not currently oversaturated.
- Make yourself visible and audible. People want to watch you stream; they don't just want to watch the game unfold in front of them. Accordingly, you need to make sure you are visible and audible throughout the entire stream. Show your face and talk over the game, providing commentary as often as you can.
- Invest in better equipment. Your stream is going to be much more enjoyable if you invest in better equipment. Having a capable PC, a high-quality microphone, and an excellent webcam will instantly boost the appeal of your content.
- Stream consistently. If you want people to watch you regularly, you need to stream regularly. This way, they know when to expect you and they can watch you on a consistent basis. You can choose your own schedule, but once you choose that schedule, try to stick to it as consistently as you can.
- Design better overlays, graphics, and emotes. Twitch viewers love streams that have a unique look and feel to them. Work on designing better overlays, graphics, and emotes so you can stand out from the crowd. Hire a professional designer to do this if you can afford one.
How to Grow Your Twitch Channel
These are some of the best strategies for growing your Twitch channel:
- Start an email marketing campaign. One of the best ways to market a twitch channel happens to be one of the most effective marketing strategies overall: e-mail marketing. Email marketing is simple, inexpensive, and highly effective, especially if you send out messages on a regular basis. your email marketing strategy will be even more powerful if you leverage the right tools to make your content more engaging. For example, with Viewed, you can embed automatically playing videos directly into the body of your e-mail messages; all you have to do is create your FREE account at www.viewed.video and upload your video, our platform will host and process it and deliver you an ID or HTML code that you can copy and paste into your email template. You can also automatically generate personalized videos of your live events, adding data to the video, time, score, names and more... so you can send them by email to get your recipients to watch your live broadcast.
- Get active on social media. Get active on social media to promote your streams. Channels like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Discord are excellent opportunities to meet new people, improve the visibility of your channel, announce when you go live, and engage with the community. As you accumulate more followers, try posting more interactive content, asking open questions or starting debates. Over time, your following should grow, and you'll have a flood of new viewers every time you go live.
- Raid and engage with other streamers. Successful Twitch streamers often build their empires by cross pollinating with other streamers and other audiences. That's why it's valuable to raid and engage with other streamers in your niche as often as possible. Bringing your followers to someone else’s stream is a convenient and easy way to support them; they may reciprocate in the future, bringing their followers to your stream. It's also a good idea to collaborate with other Twitch streamers whenever it makes sense to do so; it's a mutually beneficial move, so both of you should be motivated to follow through on it.
- Spread to other channels. Don't just market yourself on Twitch. It's important to take the content of your live streaming and distribute it on other channels. Create highlight reels and upload them to YouTube. Pull some of your best clips and put them on your website. Develop short, quick videos and distribute them on TikTok. Then funnel all these audiences back to your main Twitch channel.
- Plan giveaways. Who doesn't love giveaways? You can reward your existing followers and incentivize new followers by giving away freebies periodically. Depending on the current size of your channel, that could mean giving away free items in whatever video game you're playing, giving away free merchandise, or even distributing gift cards. Just make sure one of the parameters for entering the giveaway is some form of engagement with your channel, such as following it or subscribing to it.
- Host community days. Give back to your community with the help of community days. During these special streaming days, you can experiment by playing other games, play with your viewers in real time, or provide other benefits for watching your channel.
- Attend meetups and cons. Attend in-person meetups and conventions like E3 and Twitch Con. It’s the best way to stay plugged in with the latest developments in streaming and video games – and it’s a great way to meet your fans in person.
- Delve into other niches. Once your channel is more established, consider delving into other niches. Gradually, you can start playing other games or streaming other types of content and reaching broader, bigger audience segments.
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