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Twitch is the most popular streaming website in the world. With over 2.3 million streamers playing content per month, it is extremely difficult to gain traction as a popular streamer. But, month after month a new personality rises to the top and becomes a streamer with thousands of active viewers. The question is, how do they do it? Becoming a full-time streamer is a difficult job and there are a few major keys to reaching stardom on Twitch. For this article, we are going to explore those integral steps and show you what it takes to gain Twitch followers and become a popular streamer on the largest streaming website in the world.
Step One: Stream… A LOT
This step seems obvious but is one of the most important steps to popularity on a streaming service. Everyone who has been a top streamer has spent upwards of ten hours a day streaming content for their fans. One of the most well-known streamers, Ninja, a professional Fortnite player, averages 11.28 hours of streaming a day. His hard work is one of the main reasons he got the exposure that made him successful on Twitch.
Step Two: Use Social Media as a Resource
Many upcoming streamers utilize social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to update their followers on when they will be going live. This helps with exposure and ensures that streamers will gather new fans from social media users who do not always check Twitch for new streamers. Often, users will likely not venture from the streamers that they already know and love which leads us into the next point.
Step Three: Invest in High-Quality Equipment
Having a high-quality webcam, audio, and streaming display makes you more attractive to your audience. It shows them that you are a professional and are committed to your craft. More importantly, it is a better experience for your viewers. No one wants static-y audio and a lagging low-quality video stream so make sure to bite the bullet and shell out some cash for a sweet setup.
Step Four: Establish Connections with Other Streamers
This is the main way that new streamers are able to break into the industry. Most twitch streamers play with other players in multiplayer modes and communicate through voice chat services such as Discord. Making jokes, having an outgoing personality, and offering a unique character will allow you to “steal” viewers from more popular streamers in order to build a fan base of your own and hopefully make it. An example of this would be Tyler1 and Greekgodx. Tyler1 is a popular League of Legends streamer who has built his career over the years. Greekgodx was a completely unknown British streamer who caught the attention of Tyler1 through his hilarious sarcasm. Since they started streaming together, Greekgodx has a consistent viewership of 5,000 viewers per stream but used to have a viewership of 20.
Step Five: Make a Unique Community
Streaming is an art form in that you want your viewers to feel like they are part of a special group that is achieving a goal together. The most common form of this is creating a fan base with a title. PewDiePie is most famous for this in which he calls his subscribers the Bro Army. When a new subscriber joins PewDiePie says, “Welcome to the Bro Army my dude” and that new subscriber feels like he or she is part of a team. This is extremely important for growing a fan base ensuring that people feel like more than just another statistic.
Step Six: Be Strategic with the Games You Play
The video game community changes at a rapid pace. One month an RPG game is the most popular game and the next month a newly realized MMO game is wildly popular. The point is that you should always be open to new games and make sure to stay with what is relevant. Games that were popular three years ago are a ghost town now. However, make sure to not spread yourself too thin. Always have a specialization but have a strategy to make sure that you get to the maximum number of viewers that you can. Most popular streamers know when to change games and usually have two games that are the core of their streaming content.
Step Seven: Keep Talking
Most streamers never take off the ground because they see their viewer count at two and assume that no one is listening. However, Twitch viewer count refreshes every 60 seconds and you could be missing out on viewers who stop by your channel and see a speechless streamer playing video games. Always pretend that you have an audience and that will allow you to hold maybe five more Twitch followers an hour and that increases your ranking which allows for even more growth!
Step Eight: Do Something Unique
This is very important to a Twitch streamers success. Whether you are the best streamer at the game, the best at a certain character, dress in funny outfits, hold raffles and giveaways, make sure you have a special something that makes you stand out among the rest. Ninja dyes his hair all sorts of colors, is insanely good at Fortnite and dresses like a, you guessed it, ninja. These attributes are something that no one else in the industry is currently doing. That is what makes a streamer exciting and fun to watch: they are not like anyone else.
Step Nine: Just Be You
Our final step is as true in life as it is in Twitch streaming: be true to yourself. Viewers know when something is faked or a personality is being put on for their entertainment. Viewers tend to not tune into these streamers because it makes them feel like a video game player must put on an act to garner viewers; a feeling no one wants to have. Make sure you are streaming with your genuine personality. The internet is a very big place and there will always be viewers that love your content for your genuine flare so do not be afraid to put yourself out there.
