Choosing To Grow: Introduction

Choosing to grow is the first step, however, every step after needs to be planned carefully to help you reach your goals. This article is the “speedrun” version of the Learning to Grow path in Creator Camp, which will be a four-part series focused on creator growth. This article is aimed at creators who are looking for some quick-fix advice to level up their live streams but don’t know where to look outside of Twitch. On this journey, we’re going to cover the following four questions briefly:

How do I get new viewers to find my stream?

There are several factors that can encourage new viewers to find your stream on Twitch. The good news is, a few options you can focus on are steps that can be taken right now! 

The first is your choice of which content to stream. You are encouraged to create content that you enjoy, i.e. a game you love playing or incorporating a hobby such as makeup or cooking into your streams. However, you may notice that your choice of the content may not always garner the results you’re looking to achieve when reviewing your analytics post-stream. Some content is more popular than others, and depending on the audience you are looking to reach, your choice of content will be a key factor in helping to attract new viewers.

Often the question is - is it better to be at the top of an unpopulated category or in the middle of the pack of a very popular category?” Either option is suitable depending on many variables outside of your control. Using the data you already have to make your decision is a great place to start. In your Creator Dashboard, under the Insights dropdown, select Channel Analytics. There are many helpful metrics here which we’d encourage you to explore, however for this purpose, you’re looking for “What categories do my viewers like to watch?”. This tracks data about what your viewers spent their time watching over the past 7 days while not watching your channel. Here you will see a list of games or other content on Twitch that you might want to try streaming in order to attract new viewers to your channel who are likely to enjoy this content.    

How do I get viewers to come back to my stream?

As a creator on Twitch, you are likely also a viewer and consumer of content yourself. So, you already have some great insight as to what makes you interested in a stream, and what encourages you to return! As a first step, consider the following - what brings you back to watching your favourite streamer? Is it the choice of content, the skill, the interactivity, the high-quality audio or video? What makes their stream unique and interesting? Perhaps there are a variety of different elements that make this stream right for you. What all of these aspects have in common is that they provide some type of value to you as a viewer; something that you get out of it, or that you take away from, that is valuable to you and keeps you coming back to engage with that streamer.. 

Now, think about what value you provide to your viewers. What kind of space are you looking to curate? What skills are you looking to share? What is one thing you want your viewers to feel or take away from your stream once you go offline? Once you have the answers to these questions, you are in a much better position to incorporate this information into a high value stream which will hopefully encourage returning viewers to your channel.

This question is one that has many different answers, but one of the simplest solutions is to maintain a consistent stream schedule. You want to make it as easy as possible for viewers to know when you are live, and even get into a routine of viewing your channel regularly. You can utilize Twitch’s Schedule tooling to help you share your schedule with viewers so they know when to expect to see you live, converted to their own time zones - plus your viewers can also set reminders to be notified when you go live!

Another immediate action you can take to answer this for yourself is to simply encourage viewers to come back to your stream. There is such a wide variety of content on Twitch for viewers to consume that you should not assume that they will always take the time to come back to your channel. Starting with asking them to come back and telling them when to expect your next stream will go a long way. For example, “Thank you so much for watching the stream today! If you enjoyed the stream I’ll be live again tomorrow morning so be sure to come by with your morning beverage and hang out.” This might seem simple but an ask or reminder can go a long way.

How do I get new viewers to find my stream while I’m offline? 

As a creator, the discoverability of your stream while live is difficult to manage and achieve on your own, but there are many steps you can take to help showcase what your content has to offer without even hitting the Go Live button. 

As a starting point, stream clips are a valuable asset to your channel growth while you’re offline; clips act as a method of sharing key moments from your stream that current viewers may have missed, or that new viewers may see and as a result, visit your stream. As a first step, encourage your community to clip your hype moments, hilarious fails, or motivational talks that inspire others. Those clips can then be found in your Creator Dashboard under the Content dropdown > Clips. Here you will see clips you’ve created and clips of your channel that others have created. Once you’ve selected a clip to share on your social media profiles, be sure to download the clip to upload on Socials. The clickthrough rate of an embedded video vs. a link to a clip is better.  *Side note: Be sure to ask your chat or stream Moderators to clip things you think are important, don’t assume they will clip them for you while you’re live. But, you can also clip moments yourself from the Quick Actions section of the Stream Manager.  

Later in this series, we will discuss edited stream clips and how important they can be, however, not all creators have the knowledge and or the tools to edit their own clips.

How do I mix up my content on Twitch?

Twitch as a service provides a wide variety of content - from gaming to cooking, to ASMR, to Music! You, the creator, may inevitably find yourself in a content rut at some point in your content creation journey. 

If you are feeling stuck in a content rut, there is, unfortunately, no simple solution to help resolve this feeling, as the circumstances will likely be unique to you - sometimes it is a case of taking a creative break to replenish your creative energy, finally trying that creative idea you’ve always wanted but which was potentially a bit too risky and different from your other content, or even taking some guidance or influence from your fellow creators to move forward

Like any of the questions we’ve covered so far, the good news is that there are multiple solutions to each problem which you can try, and we, therefore, encourage you to not only experiment with different options, but also to analyze the content you produce to figure out what is going well, and what could be improved. This might involve reviewing your VODs, asking for qualitative feedback from your community, or using the data which is available to you on the Creator Dashboard to inform your analysis. 

A key takeaway from this is that enjoying the content you create is one of the most important pieces of being a streamer on Twitch. If you aren’t enjoying your content there is a good chance that no one else will either. 

With all of this information be sure to check out the other articles we have on building your community and creating engaging content on the Creator Camp! Don’t forget that the only person that can improve your content is you.