Interested in growing your Twitch account? Want more followers? Here’s 4 insanely actionable tips on how to do just that…
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There are some 23 million Twitch streamers globally. That is a huge figure and, unlike some other platforms in the game streaming niche, Twitch’s user base is constantly growing with new streamers setting up profiles every single day.
Your job as a brand new Twitch streamer is simple: you have to stand out from the crowd; you have to do things differently; and, finally, you have to get creative with how your market/promote your channel.
If you can do all of these things, and you have some personality, you stand a pretty good chance of growing your followers pretty quickly. But like building muscle in the gym or improving at long distance running, it takes discipline and a strong will.
In this guide, we’ll cover off some basic tips and tricks for growing your Twitch followers. Some are easy to do, others will require a bit more work. And you do not need to follow them all, of course, but doing so will almost certainly help your cause.
First, let’s start by going over why you’d use Twitch to stream your content and not, say, something like YouTube Live and/or Periscope?
Why Twitch?
Twitch is one of the most popular gaming streaming platforms on the market right now. Sure, it has its competitor platforms. But Twitch is arguably the biggest and most well known. It also has the most “growth potential” based on its metrics from the last 12 months.
But there are other reasons why Twitch is a great place to start your streaming career. And they are as follows:
Firstly, it has a wide selection of games, ranging from the classics to the latest releases.
Secondly, Twitch offers an easy-to-use interface that allows gamers to interact with one another and participate in conversations about their favorite titles.
Finally, Twitch also has a great community of streamers that are eager to help each other out and create amazing content for viewers and you can use this to your advantage when building your follower base.
Why Followers Are Important on Twitch
If you’re serious about doing Twitch streaming for the long haul and you fancy making a career out of it, you need followers – lots of followers. With a hefty crew of people following you, listening to you, looking to you for information and recommendations, you can make a lot of money.
How much money? It depends on a variety of reasons. But the main thing you need to have to make money on Twitch is followers, so let’s start there before even think about how you’ll make your first $1000 or $10000 streaming on Twitch.
Tip 1: Stream Consistently
As with most things in life, if you want to illicit changes or make something work, you have to be consistent. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about dropping fat, building muscle, or growing your Twitch followers – consistency is king.
The act of being consistent, meaning following through with a pre-planned schedule, whatever the weather and/or circumstances, is what separates the vast majority of pros (in any field) from the wannabes. The desire to success is nothing with the discipline to follow it up.
So what does being consistent look like on Twitch? Here’s some examples to get you started.
A) Schedule Your Streams and Stick to Them
If you plan on doing regular streams, pick a day or a few days every week when you do it. Make sure you stream at the same time too. This locks in a schedule, so you might stream on Twitch every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8PM.
Also, get a decent webcam – no one likes fuzzy-looking streams. If you want to be big time, you need a decent webcam like the pros.
If you stick to this schedule and constantly refer to it in your streams, this signals to your potential followers what they can expect. It builds expectation and if you follow through and are consistent, your followers will notice and start showing up for your streams more often.
If you want to be really savvy, you can leverage social media to send alerts about when you’re about to stream. As you build a social following on other, third-party social media apps like Instagram and Twitter, this, in turn, will help bolster engagement on your streams and boost your followers over time.
B) Engage With Your Audience During Your Streams
Humans are social creatures by nature, and engagement is an important way for us to interact with others. Engagement helps us connect with people from all walks of life, form lasting relationships, and experience different perspectives. It also gives us a sense of purpose and belonging (especially if you share similar interests).
This is an evolutionary fact that is hard-wired into all human beings, and you can use it to your advantage for growing your followers on Twitch by ensuring that you engage with your followers.
What does this mean? It could be answering questions, asking them questions, having debates about a subject, or just chatting with them about life in general. The type of engagement doesn’t matter, so long as it is meaningful and your followers feel like they got something out of it.
Tip 2: Leverage Social Media Platforms to Promote Your Channel
Twitch is just one platform. But if you’re savvy, you’ll leverage the power of other social media platforms to promote and grow your Twitch channel. If done right, this will result in massive gains in your follower numbers. Here’s how it’s done.
A) Share Clips or Highlights of your Streams on Other Platforms
You can have the best content in the world, using the best tech and the most advanced streaming apps, but if people cannot find it, you’re basically wasting your time. This is why off-platform promotion is key when growing your Twitch followers.
TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram are your best bet for sharing snippets of the best bits from your streams. Set up a profile on each of these platforms, edit down some of the best bits from your streams, and start uploading them. This will drive tons of engagement and, if your consistent, help to boost your followers.
Another benefit of using third-party platforms like YouTube and TikTok to promote your Twitch content is that, once your subscribers on, say, YouTube, hit a certain level, your Shorts can be monetised, so you’ll make money promoting your Twitch streams.
That’s what’s known as a double-win situation.
B) Create a Presence on Various Social Media Platforms
You can get away with just using YouTube and TikTok to promote your channel. But the best Twitch streamers leverage these platforms as conduits for bespoke content designed specifically for each platform.
Is this more work? Sure. But it all adds up in the long run to establishing your brand.
Take Twitter, for instance, it is arguably less work than Instagram and/or TikTok as all you have to do is write stuff – there’s no video and/or images involved.
Another benefit of Twitter? You can engage with other, bigger Twitch streamers on and make connections which is a great way of getting yourself in front of a new, potential audience.
Of course, you’ll want to make sure you link to your Twitch in ALL of your social media profiles. You can do this in the bio by adding a link or, kill two birds with one stone, and implement something like Linktree which lets you add multiple links into your social media bio.
Again, it is of
If that means focussing on just one social media platform – say, TikTok or YouTube – that’s fine.
There’s only so many hours in the day, after all.
You’ll get far more bang for your buck if you go all-in on one, rather than spreading yourself too thin across ALL social media platforms, and trying to be everywhere all at once with limited time.
Tip 3: Collaborate with Other Twitch Streamers
One of the most tried and tested ways of growing your Twitch followers is by collaborating with other, more established Twitch users. By doing this, you’re putting yourself in front of an entirely new audience of potential followers. Here’s how you can start doing this…
A) Find Streamers with Similar Audiences and Join Forces
Building on from the above section, one of the easiest ways to big your brand up quickly is to collaborate with other, more established creators.
This is why, if you listen to a lot of podcasts, you’ll find the same people appearing on lots of different podcasts at the same time; they’re doing it to promote something – usually a new film, product, TV show, or book.
Now, you’re not Quentin Tarantino, so you’re not going to get on JRE but you can still use this same technique to work with other Twitch streamers with established followings to build up your street cred.
The best way to do this? Start doing outreach; message and build connections with other Twitch users similar to you. Ask them if they’d like to work on a collaboration, either on your stream or theirs.
You will have to knock on a lot of doors before you get a positive response, but, once again, persistence is the key to everything. If stuff like this was easy, every Twitch streamer would have tens of thousands of followers.
B) Host Online Events Together for Maximum Exposure
You’ll have much more success securing a collaboration with an established Twitch streamer if you go in with a plan. They’ll need to get something out of the collaboration as well, of course – people seldom do anything just for the hell of it, especially busy, popular streamers.
For this reason, you’ll need to A) think of something unique that you can present, something your target does not currently have or do, B) pitch yourself accordingly as the right person for the collaboration, and C) make sure you follow through and perform well if it all goes through.
Collaboration is a big trend on Twitch these days with plenty of popular streamers doing things like group gaming marathons, live artwork showcases, and charity streams as well as things like multi-streamer duels, team-ups or challenges.
Your chief goal is to to figure out what you can bring to the table for a collaboration. The more unique and interesting it is, the better – novelty is the mother of engagement, after all.
Tip 4: Be Different, Be Bold
The last tip on building out your Twitch followers, for most people, will be the hardest. In order to succeed as a Twitch streamer – or any kind of public figure – you need a lot of charisma and personality. There’s just no way of getting around this.
If you can make people laugh, do mind making a fool of yourself, or have a sharp wit, these are all bankable talents you can put to use when growing your Twitch followers.
For instance, let’s take broad look at some of the most popular Twitch streamers and see how their individual personality traits helped them to amass huge, loyal followings.
- Ninja, for instance, is well known for his high-energy and passion. He really loses himself in whatever he does, and this is infectious.
- DrLupo has excellent comedic timing and wit.
- TimTheTatman is overwhelming positive and gives off a really nice vibe which resonates with his followers.
- summit1G is well known for his expert knowledge and insight on all manner of things.
- Other popular streamers such as Pokimane, DisguisedToast, Nightblue3 and Shroud are known for their strong work ethics, enthusiasm for gaming and positive outlooks on life
The next big question you have to ask yourself is this: what can you bring to the table? How will your streams be different? Simply copying another person’s style won’t cut it, either. To be truly successful, you need to be completely unique.
Let’s look at a couple of ways you can do this.
A) Creating a Persona Works Wonders for Building Brands
If you’re not an especially confident person but you’re committed to doing something on Twitch, perhaps creating a persona is the way forward for you?
A persona isn’t you, it’s a character that you create. In this respect, you’d be acting. You will need to think carefully about how you develop this character, covering things like what they wear, how they talk, their opinions and beliefs.
A good example of this is DrDisRespect. The wig, the glasses, the way he talks – it’s all a creation by the person behind it. Another example, although not related to Twitch, would be Blippi, the YouTube Kids channel. It’s a character, not a real person.
The upshot of creating a persona, especially if you alter your appearance with wigs and glasses, is that you will effectively be anonymous – no one will know that it is you.
If you’re not a naturally confident person, this approach can work wonders for bringing you out of your shell. You can essentially hide the real you, with all your hangups and anxieties, behind the persona.
Plus, a persona, if executed properly, has a high novelty effect, and people LOVE novelty. Just look at what Slipknot managed to pull off over the course of the last 20 years.
B) Have REALLY Strong Opinions, Get Divisive…
If you don’t want to go the persona route, another approach would be to build your followers based on your opinions and beliefs.
This approach can be risky, however, so proceed with caution. And it will require a lot of planning to pull off correctly.
You’ll need facts to back up what you’re saying, experience to bolster your claims, and well thought-out, water-tight arguments to back everything up.
Why?
Because when you go hard on strong opinions, there is ALWAYS push-back (or, you could see it as engagement) from people that disagree with you.
But this is the entire point; this kind of approach, which courts controversy, is based on the idea that any publicity is good publicity.
This is why Jordan Peterson is so popular. Or why some people eat vegan diets and other people do keto, and why both sets can be very vocal about it online. And why The Liver King managed to get so popular.
It is also one of the main reasons for the spread of disinformation, anti-science sentiment, and other odd views/ideas/philosophies.
Psychologists often refer to it as “online tribalism”. And it is a very powerful tool when used correctly.
It worked for Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and a bunch of other people, so it might work for you too.
Just make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. And always keep it civil; you can be opinionated without being an awful human being.
Plus, if you’re too over the top, or just downright horrible to people, you’ll get banned from Twitch.
Twitch has water-tight community guidelines that are designed to make its platform safe for everyone. And it does not tolerate anyone who does not respect them – regardless of how big your following is.
People tend to respond to controversial stuff, though – this is just a fact of life. It is why, for the most part, the news is focused on bad news instead of good news.
Or, why outspoken “celebrities” tend to get more air time than those that simply keep their opinions to themselves.
And how it works is devilishly simple:
You take a hard line view and/or opinion on something, knowing full well that at least 50% of people will not agree with you – or, potentially, hate you for saying it.
And the reason you do this is because know there’ll be plenty of people that agree with you, and if you say it loud enough and often enough, through the magic of confirmation bias, you’ll build up a base of followers.
Again, this is a dangerous tactic and it isn’t something we’d advise, especially if you’re thinking about venturing into the already murky pit of political commentary.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of other ways to be divisive and have strong opinions.
You don’t need to offend anyone and you can keep it civil, especially when discussing games and/or gaming trends, as these tend to be impersonal and are not targeted at individuals.
Personality and enthusiasm, generally speaking, will always beat out a strong opinion, however, so if this kind of thing doesn’t sit well with you, focus on being the best version of yourself and using what unique talents you have to engage your followers.
Wrapping Up
That’s covered the basics of getting started growing your Twitch followers. It’s not an easy task and there’s plenty of competition, with new streamers starting up everyday.
But with the right mix of personality and novelty, anyone with the right work ethic and mindset can quickly build-out their followers on Twitch. Consistency is key. You need to make sure you keep to a schedule and you’ll want to book as many collaborations as is humanly possible.
Here’s a quick recap of everything discussed in the guide:
- Twitch is one of the most popular gaming streaming platforms, with a wide selection of games and an easy-to-use interface.
- To be successful on Twitch, you need to have followers – lots of them.
- Being consistent in your streams and engaging with your audience are key for growing followers quickly.
- Leverage social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram to promote your channel by sharing clips or highlights from it as well as creating a presence on various social media channels.
- Collaborate with other Twitch streamers who have similar audiences; host online events together for maximum exposure; come up with something unique that you can present during collaborations that will benefit all parties involved in the collaboration process.
- Be different – create a persona if necessary – and be bold when promoting yourself so viewers remember who you are!
