The obvious advice like stream on the schedule that has just been beaten into your minds on every single advice video ever posted about twitch I’ve been streaming on Twitch for almost 4 years now and I spent years making these mistakes. But make sure you are not facing twitch error 2000 while streaming.
But I didn’t realize I was making it until I started growing in that I had I was able to look back and say like oh my gosh these are not only like not good things were bad things and I don’t think people realize that they’re bad things.
Because they sound really great in theory well you’ll see like any advice channel pointing out the mistakes that the brand new streamers make I want to talk about some of the more subtle mistakes that I’ve seen streamers not only that have like you know between 1 and 5 yours.
But that streamer that has like up to 15 years I’ve seen them make these mistakes intentions are always good the effort is there I see what they’re trying to do they just we just need to sidestep just a little bit and we can turn those mistakes like twitch AdBlock into really great practices so let’s do it let’s talk about them what’s good about me open and let’s make some.
There’s a good chance you’re saying yourself well here’s why should we trust you with this why do you know better than we do they get that’s fair what’s address that and then let’s move on to these just a little background about me this is your first time in the article I’ve been full-time consecrator for 5 years.
Cumulative followers
I started on the music channel with my wife we built over 2000000 cumulative followers we had an amazing social media career we watched our relevancy tank a little bit spaced off of not only algorithm changes on you to really just kind of destroying the music scene.
But also mistakes on my part and really just a great learning experience you know your parents always say like I was a learning experience with talking about some really crappy that happens you’re like not sucked me like no you learn from it was a good thing for you to move past that I have a learning experience.
But I’ve worked with massive brands like Microsoft Google Nissan my wife and I were on screens in Times Square for gap ads anyway I’ve been in the industry for a very long time and I’ve screwed up in this industry I’ve learned the things that help people grow and I’ve learned the things that keep people from growing.
Trust me when you used to have millions of people watching your content and then you have a hard time getting thousands of people to watch your content you spend a lot of time reflecting on what did do wrong and so this article is my way of helping you not make those mistakes that I did it most of these are just minor.
Minor adjustments that you can make to put yourself back on the right course and like a lot of these are just plain misconceptions and wrong ideas people have about how growth happens on social media and on places like twitch so anyway let’s get into it.
Okay, number 1 let’s talk about the only 1 in this group that I’ve actually said multiple times before this there’s a misconception I’ve heard big streamers say if you’re not live nobody will find you and that is a lie because in 2019.
If you’re trying to grow on the switch if you’re just starting your people down on the list no matter what game you play even if you go live nobody will find you in the social media content creation industry you have to be able to recognize what each platform is what the weaknesses and strengths are and what the purpose.
Platform
Why do people go to each 1 where they do what other habits on every single platform and how can you cater to those platforms right the bottom line is on twitch the strength comes from the fact that it’s a live streaming platform real life for hours there’s a chat room that you interact.
So to the strength is about engagement and communication and building relationships it’s a very intimate platform while its weakness is discoverability answer your time on the platform is best spent cultivating the relationships of the people that have found you and building those relationships versus something like YouTube.
Where there is an algorithm is a recommended feed there’s a home page there are plenty of ways to get discovered on YouTube or on Twitter YouTube strength is discoverability and its weakness is well intimacy there are plenty of people who when the camera turns on them they put on a face.
They’re totally different people the camera goes away and they go back to being bland vanilla totally boring not even that friendly people I’m not talking to anyone in particular by the way this is not a hit piece the point is you can take you to the personality you can’t onto it should recognize these both as tools in your toolbox for your social media career.
If you want to get discovered spend time on YouTube when you want to spend time cultivating those. Relationships spend time on twitch you need to find that balance.
But I just watched a YouTube video recently talking about how you shouldn’t stream games you should stream smaller games to help you get discovered and that’s just flat out wrong if you look at your twitch graph over here what you’re doing by playing a game you’re not interested in as you’re sacrificing.
Your genuineness you’re sacrificing your integrity to just add a tiny bit more discoverability and you know honestly I would even argue that it’s not really helping your discoverability at all you’re hurting yourself much more than you’re helping yourself by choosing a game based on what’s gonna you discovered.
Whereas if you create your best content where you can be your best over here and then spend your time on a platform like YouTube to yourself discovered that’s how you’re gonna grow I would definitely recommend you spend time observing each of the platforms twitch YouTube Twitter Instagram.
Try to figure out why do you go to each platform how can you cater to the type of person that uses that platform that way can I just add one more insight to this before we move on to the next one this is this is probably to be the longest one out of all.
Job of figuring
But I have a friend who is done a better job of figuring out rest has a massive karma score on Reddit and it’s trying to use the exact same tactics to grow on Twitter and can’t figure out why it’s not working I had a conversation with him about the different practices on these platforms on Reddit you hit the upload button.
It doesn’t mean anything it’s a meaningless up so if you like something you upload it you’re good the more upvotes it has the higher it is on the subreddits and the more people see it on Twitter the way to get something on people’s timelines is for people to retweet it getting much alike generally doesn’t get your tweet on people’s timelines.
You need retweets and in order for someone to re-tweet it, they have to claim that content as their own you can’t anonymously retweet something because it shows up with your name on it when you retrieve it so in order to get something to go on Twitter.
Yet to post content that people would be proud to share as their own opinion something that would grow really well on Reddit doesn’t grow as well on Twitter. Vice versa.
Okay, that’s about as much as I want to get into that 1 hope it makes sense we’re gonna move on to the next 1 number 2 I consider making a whole video on this but it would just be nothing but a giant bus killed hosts do next to nothing and I know that’s a really hard thing to do here.
Because I know a lot of you have had really exciting hosts right now a lot of people have been waiting for big hosts bottom line is when you host someone it’s fun and it’s exciting and it boosts your morale sure but then there’s an immediate crash than extra because you’re hoping a lot of those people saying.
The bottom line is nobody really states either good friend whose strength 0 joiner people streams Fortnite very good streamer got hosted by T. food like 2 weeks ago for like 40000 viewers and of course that was an amazing stream the next day he was training for 110 people.
Analytics
Again if I look at my analytics in 2019 I’ve been hosted by over 10000 individuals the works do you want to know when I ask who came here from host how many people say me literally 0 hosts need to be used as more of a business tactic than an actual growth mechanism hosts do more for the host than they do for the hosting the way I use my host is let’s say there’s someone screaming for 150 people.
I host that person with 150 people that person recognizes me as someone who is about their size who likes their content enough to send all of my viewers their way it’s a business contact worse pursuing him up on Twitter afterward we’ll get the talking lots of times it’ll turn to collaboration that is the best way to use a host user host to create contacts.
But rarely will any of my viewers ever go back to that person streaming and maybe 1 or 2 it happens but that host does very little for the streamer except for making them aware of my presence and creating a contact I’ve never seen someone blow up from a 1-time post doesn’t happen.
Number 3 is where we get into a little bit more of the mindset of the viewer and understand why people come to the platform even if they don’t realize it themselves and this is where we get the kind of some gray area and recognize that there is some crossover he.
Your but it’s still an important thing to understand every other social media platform is about entertainment it’s a one-way street people make the content they send it out in the viewers consume the content that’s not the way twitch is a 2-way street you are communicating with your viewers.
At the same time they’re communicating with you you’re creating the content together and that combined with the general audience on twitch create something really special the reason I think twitch is blowing up the way it is is that generally.
I know I’m tossing up a wide net here there are exceptions to this rule but generally, the people on twitch are gamers and are people who if you’re anything like me you don’t like going out in public you don’t like being around large groups of people socializing to me is exhausting.
Social experience
If you feel this way or have any more insights about that please leave in the comments down below if I’m around more than 3 people at a time I just stopped talking I feel like it becomes less of a conversation and more of the battle for social dominance and generally the audience on twitch they just they feel they feel similar to what I do.
But we are humans we are social beings by nature and we need that social experience twitch has provided an opportunity for us to connect with people not only other people in chat rooms but with someone, we can watch and listen and talk to we can see things respond.
We can connect with people that we look up to and enjoy and I’ve discovered over the last year or so that twitch is less about raw entertainment and it’s more about personal intimate relationships that you built your viewers will come back to your stream not because you are the loudest best person on the platform that screams and yells and has flashing lights.
It just that’s not what people come back for people come to twitch for a relationship I’m not saying entertainment’s not important of course do everything you can to make your stream more fun to watch and engaging so people are bored but if you can build a relationship with your viewers spend some time in.
Just chatting get to know as many of your viewers you can let them know a little bit of your history but I think it started when I know some of your struggles if your viewers feel like they know you and they feel like you know them to come back.
So let’s see we’ve covered streaming too much not spending enough time discoverable platforms we talked about the misconception about hosts we do this we talked about people trying to be too entertaining and ruin the authenticity of the stream.
Number 4 and I see this in the comments section a lot we’ve got to do is such an interesting point where I remember when I was a little kid I wanted to be a professional football player which by the way I was not good enough to do that but nowadays every kid in elementary school or middle school.
They want to be you tuber they want to be a streamer because when we are living when we’re in videos were on the string we’re putting our best faces and let’s face it it’s a really really cool job but it’s still a job it’s still a career and there’s going to be times when you have a schedule set.
You’re sitting there 5 minutes before your stream starts and you’re saying I really don’t want to do it right now and I’ll see comments saying well they don’t do it focus on you take a break I don’t subscribe to that mindset because it the bottom line is every moment you’re not streaming every moment.
Creating content
You’re not creating content whether it’s YouTube twitch whatever someone else’s sometimes you have to go live from you don’t want to sometimes you have to film videos, when you don’t want to it, is 3 in the morning I have to wake up in 5:00 hours to get on a flight for dream act I have to get this article done.
If I want you to have to put me in their algorithm and put many years in the recommended feet I have to so I’m here also to be very might sleep schedule is destroyed and I’m wide awake right now but that’s not the point streaming is an amazing job but that doesn’t mean it’s fun all the time.
It’s still a job treat it like a career at the people who try the hardest on the ones who grow the most by the way I do want to point out if you suffer from anxiety or depression and you’re actually hurting yourself yes please take a break take care.
Yourself your mental health is important burnout is real there is a balance last one number 5 the awareness of utilizing other social platforms to engage an audience and bring them over to your twitch channel the awareness of that is growing more and more people are making content on other platforms which are great let’s take it a step further and talk about the type of content.
Because 99 percent of the people who post content to Twitter and YouTube are getting less than 100 years and there’s a reason for it recycled twitch content only works if you’re in the top 10 streamers on the internet if you are not to mention or shrouds stop posting your twitch content to YouTube.
No one wants to watch H. which compilation on YouTube it doesn’t work posting highlight clips to Twitter after your stream doesn’t work you need to come up with original content and let me clarify here if you’re a massive twitch streamer and you stream full time you don’t have time to make you too content to your twitch doing well.
So doesn’t matter and you want to re monetize some of that content over on you too bye just grabbing highlights and throwing up there sure that’s great but if you’re trying to use social media to grow your twitch because your twitch isn’t big I promise you if only 50 people watch your twitch content on twitch.
Twitch content
Fewer people will watch your twitch content on other places let’s use a very good streamer as an example that this guy is actually a friend of mine he’s a very good streamer who streams from you know anywhere from 500 to 1000 people at any given time isn’t excellent Fortnite player.
Reamer is all around and he’s doing really well this definitely isn’t like a jab at his career but it’s important to recognize that even someone with 1000 viewers on twitch if you take a look at his youtube channel it’s that same concept of recycled twitch content posted to YouTube which is fine.
Because he’s a successful full-time streamer but over the last 2 months of his nearly daily content she does not a single video like it’s over 6 interviews and again not to tell this guy that he’s a fantastic stream youtube is just not as a top priority but what I’m trying to get recognizes that this guy can’t get you to views.
I promise you posting compilations of your twitch content will not get you discovered you need to be making original content and you know if you don’t have time for that let me give you some suggestions come up with stuff that you can do during your twitch streams that will be good YouTube content.
For example, doing a whole series where you talk with a funny voice changer to your random teammates in a game and getting their best reactions that’s clickable you to contact hiring someone on Fiverr to teach you how to play a game that you’re actually really good at is really good YouTube content.
You can do that on your twitch channel cut it up to make it a really great published maybe throw some dialogue over the top so it looks like the original content on YouTube and I get the argument against us and like so what do I do just stop making content look.
Conclusion
If you’re using this kind of editing and posting to grow your skills as an editor by all means keep doing it this kind of stuff isn’t like the other ones were hurts you I would say the way that this hurts you is it gives you false hope in something that doesn’t do anything that wastes your time to waste your brain capacity.
You could be spending that time you’re editing these useless videos and instead spend it on something that’s actually going to help you out so no these videos are a bad thing to make if you want you to miss practice do it but if you’re trying to grow to use the limited time that you have on good original content that works.
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