5 Tips to Grow Your Following on Twitch
5 Tips to Improve Your Content and Grow Your Following:
- Learn basic video editing skills through YouTube
- Establish your personal brand
- Follow a schedule, be consistent
- Market your content on social media
- Network and Collaborate
Whether you’re a streamer, YouTuber, ASMRtist, or you just like sharing clips to socials, everyone knows that content is king. Consistently creating and properly distributing content can be a hard and time consuming task, but the payoff is well worth it when you begin to see growth and pass milestones one by one. Below, we will dive into 5 tips you can use to improve your content and grow your following. While these are only a few of the many ways to go about doing so, these pieces of advice can take YOU to the next level.
#1 Learn basic video editing skills
In an ideal situation you would have your very own video editor, but many of us aren’t able to afford that, nor is it necessary when you’re only starting to create content. Fortunately, YouTube is filled with hundreds of helpful tutorials no matter your prior video editing knowledge.
As for editing software, look no further than DaVinci Resolve 16, a FREE to download program with an easy to use interface and all the capabilities of Adobe Premiere Pro, which is what most high-level video editors use. While at first glance the program can be daunting, it only takes a couple tutorials to get a good grasp of the essentials.
Once you have the basics down, adding things like cut-scenes, transitions, intros, outros, and tweaking the audio can make a world of difference in the final product. All in all, the time you put into editing your content can switch someone from just passing by, to clicking on that link and subscribing.
#2 Establish your personal brand
Establishing your personal brand is what makes people remember your name and more importantly, YOU. The first step here, one that you probably completed years ago, is creating your alias or deciding to go by your actual name. Creating an alias can be fun, but be sure to make it something memorable and appropriate...no mom should ever have to hear her son or daughter say “I want to watch PoopyIdiot247’s stream”. While it’s best to keep it simple, it’s also ideal to have the same username across all socials, so you do have to be creative when landing on a name because most will already be taken.
Now that you’ve decided on your alias or name, you’ll need a logo to give it an identity. Whether you want a mascot logo, a text logo, or just a letter, that’s up to you, but you may need to shell out some cash to get one professionally made. There are a lot of talented graphic designers in the industry that create beautiful logos at prices ranging from $50 all the way up to $500+, but spending the money for your own personal brand is something you will need to do at some point, so you might as well establish your branding now. That way, your audience will always remember you as you continue to grow.
#3 Follow a schedule, be consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to streaming and producing content. While the scale is much different, the biggest streamers can lose out on thousands of subs and followers by taking a couple days break. This isn’t to say that you have to stream or produce content everyday, but a schedule certainly does help, and there should be a healthy balance. Even if you are only able to stream for say 8 hours a week, decide that you will stream 2 hours on Monday and Wednesday, and 4 on Friday, and let your followers know this. One way you can do this is by adding a Streamlabs Stream Schedule & Countdown to your stream, which only involves a few steps.
Consistency isn’t only needed when it comes to actually producing the content though, you also have to be consistent with who you are and the community you wish to create. Unless you’re so good that people will watch just for the pure skill, your personality is what gets people to come back and become lifelong supporters. Be true to yourself through everything you do, and be careful to not let the clout get to your head if you do begin to take off.
#4 Market your content on social media
Unfortunately this will be hard to hear for some, but social media should be your best friend if you want to grow your stream and following. Growing your stream and socials go hand-in-hand and only pursuing one can leave some serious growth on the table...but most of you already know that. What’s hard is being active on your socials, and knowing what to post and when to post it. This can become time consuming. While eFuse may be working on some tools to make this process easier, your best bet is to avoid spreading yourself too thin, and instead heavily focus on one or two social media platforms. While eFuse is a given, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are the most popular platforms in terms of what socials you should be on for gaming and esports related content specifically.
Now, what kind of content should you post to these socials? If you said “just post your stream link”, unfortunately that generally isn’t very effective, although done way too often. Give your followers a reason to engage with your stream link posts by including a short 15-30 second clip from a previous stream, a meme that you find funny, or even a brief explanation of what your stream is all about. Think of Youtube, everyone recognizes how click baity thumbnails can be, and that’s just what your social posts need, some clickbait. No, you don’t need to type out “INSANE CRAZY AMAZING STREAM 1V4’S ONLY”, but including a Call of Duty graphic or GIF might be just what the timeline needs.
Good stream promotion:
Bad Stream Promotion:
#5 Network and Collaborate
While consistency and patience is almost always needed to make it as a content creator, networking and collaborating will give you the best chance to “growth-hack” your way towards the top. While it’s not easy, properly networking can open up opportunities that would be quite hard to stumble across alone. The key to networking is making genuine connections with people who share similar interests and similar goals with you. Other content creators should not be seen as competition, but instead as friends that you can meet along the way and maybe even collaborate with. Collaboration is not only a good way to network and make new friends in which you can learn from, but it also helps both creators as their audiences are introduced to one another.
So how do you network as a content creator? Well, there’s a number of ways but most come down to interacting and engaging with the community, usually through social media. Instead of spending that 2nd hour in a row watching TimTheTatMan fail to identify states from cities, spend an hour stepping into small and mid-tier streams, and make some new friends. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through Twitter, search #esports and reply to the first 10 tweets that come up. Don’t sit back, get involved. Connect with people on LinkedIn, follow people on eFuse, Twitter, and Instagram. Don’t worry about your following to follower ratio, being an active member of the community is what it’s all about.
Final Thoughts
While you may have already known some of this, hopefully you still found value in our 5 tips to improve your content and grow your following. Have any questions about esports, the gaming industry, getting a scholarship, or getting a job in gaming? Tweet us with #eFuseLearning for a chance to have us answer it here.