It doesn’t matter which platform you are on – Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook, growing your audience as a streamer is hard. Getting discovered is way more complicated than in some other mediums of content creation. Nevertheless, more and more people choose streaming as their craft of choice. They stream for hours, weeks and months with little to no audience growth. You may be talented, entertaining and an all around professional streamer but there’s just something keeping you from reaching your viewers. Does that sound familiar? If so, here are some tips from our team on how you can improve your discoverability. It’s not rocket science but these guidelines can significantly elevate your chances of being the next full time streamer.
Present your content in a palatable way
When was the last time you followed a streamer you had never watched before? How did you find out about them? These two questions may give you perspective on how important the presentation of your content to new audiences is. Opening a stream with little to no context about the person streaming may be very confusing. It’s like joining an ongoing conversation of a group of strangers. They may be friendly, interesting and very fun to be around but the experience is bound to be a bit awkward.
That’s why it’s very important to take care of some more stranger friendly ways to introduce someone new to your content. Something relatively short, entertaining and representing your streaming style, unique traits or general vibe. Something that may be a directional sign and a business card simultaneously.
Compilations are one good example of such content. They take a stream that may be several hours long and boil it down to its essence – the crème de la crème, your concentrated entertainment value. It’s far more likely for someone to invest five, ten or fifteen minutes in the content that will give them a good impression of what they can expect from your streams. It’s a lot of additional work but it’s really worth it in the end.
Both edited down VODs and variety compilations are great for showing your streams to a new audience
Shorter formats tend to do well as an introduction to your content in general. That’s why Twitch encourages you to create clips in the first place. And you really shouldn’t neglect this tool. With a good library of clips, your chances of going viral increase immensely. It’s nice to have your viewers capture these moments for you but even if there's no one watching you at the moment, doing it yourself may still be a good investment of your time.
How Pulsoid may help: Our Highlights and Analytics tab features your recent VODs with your heart rate data connected to them. This way you can easily find segments
of your stream where you are excited, scared or generally worked up. This may help you create a compilation full of expression and emotions faster. And to clip those moments too!
Our automated clips feature will save every snippet of your stream where your heart rate spikes for you. It’s a great way to have at least some entertaining clips after each stream with no additional effort from you or your viewers.
Diversify your platforms
This advice is strongly connected to the previous one. Twitch (or some other streaming service) may be a great place to go live for your dedicated audience but it alone is not that good at bringing more eyes to your content. Don’t put your eggs in one basket they say. Well, don’t do that with your creativity, time and energy either! And there are plenty of baskets to choose from: TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube – the list goes on.
These services fight for both creators’ and casual users’ attention endlessly. Their algorithms constantly improve to show more content to the most fitting audience for it. They desperately want to hold users’ attention and your content is what they need to hold it with.
Even small streamers can get millions of viewes on one of their TikTok videos and some of those people are bound to convert into followers
After creating compilations, edits or well crafted walkthroughs you need some place to showcase them. Your evergreen content keeps bringing more attention to your channel while you are offline. And a bunch of your platforms can form a beautiful synergy: announce your streams and share your plans on Twitter, go live on Twitch and post your best clips to TikTok. Or pick any routine that works for you.
How Pulsoid may help: In addition to previously referenced features useful for content transformation we have a Discord webhook integration. It lets you post your heart rate and corresponding clips to your Discord server automatically. Our IFTTT integration lets you create heart rate sensitive events for any platform from Twitter to YouTube.
Make your streams stand out
This one may seem obvious but it’s easy to forget or neglect it nevertheless. To shine on an oversaturated platform you need to be visible among the myriads of streams happening simultaneously. “Be unique” is an overbearing task while just “being yourself” may be endearing but often not enough to get someones’ attention. Simply standing out is a lot more manageable and effective on the other hand. It’s less about doing something that hasn’t been ever done before and more about putting an interesting spin on your usual gaming walkthrough or just chatting session.
Almost everyone heard about Crossmauz - a 15-year old teenager who gathered almost 400k followers in no time by streaming super high energy raves from his bedroom. He's a living proof that there is still space for unique creators on Twitch
Decorate your surroundings, use interesting props and equipment like smart lights or an eye tracker, play games in unusual ways and don’t be scared of using some additional tools and scripts to make the whole experience more fun for your viewer. Put in a little more effort than an average streamer in your category and do things in a slightly different way than usually and you’ll be amazed how fresh and original your streams will become.
Oh, and remember that your stream title is a powerful tool to get someone to click on your stream. If you do something fun or unusual be sure to mention it there.
Let me give an example of this in action. While it’s not about streaming but rather video content creation it still shows how a simplistic but fun spin on an old format may make a difference for your career. I’m talking about Hot Ones – a notoriously successful talk show on YouTube loved by many. Let's be honest, Sean Evans is a genuinely talented interviewer. He’s well spoken, charismatic and not afraid of being genuine. And his team managed to get some really interesting guests on his show. But the real star, the thing that makes these videos stand out among thousands of other interviews on the platform are ten spicy wings. This little change to the equation changes everything. And they never forget to mention their leading actor in the title of every video. It’s not your another Shia LaBeouf interview, it's Shia LaBeouf Sheds a Tear While Eating Spicy Wings.
How Pulsoid may help: Having your heart rate displayed while streaming is still an unusual and interesting concept. It sure brings a breath of fresh air into a horror game walkthrough, fitness stream or speedrun attempt. And be sure to mention that viewers can see your heart rate in the title.
And you can take things even further by implementing our LumiaStream or Voicemod integration (or both). This way you can let your heart control your smart lights or voice modifiers for you. It also takes some power away from you and if there is something that is almost universally loved by the Twitch audience it’s a bit of chaos and streamers not being in control of what’s happening.
Engage your audience
After you eventually get someone to click on your stream there comes another challenge: you have to hold their attention. If they don’t feel engaged or enticed by what they see they’ll most likely click away. That’s why it is so important to keep things interesting and your followers involved.
Communication with chat is a staple on any streaming platform. But you shouldn’t forget that it’s really important to give them something to react to and talk about. The ability to create these anchors of attention and conversation starters is what makes or breaks a streamer. A good way to get better with it is to come up with things you can incorporate into your stream that will make people want to ask you questions about them. Mention funny stories, include unusual props in the background or give interesting snippets of trivia. If people start to ask you questions they automatically become more interested in you. Learn how to control your delivery and command viewers’ attention without them even noticing.
Another good way in which you can keep more eyes on you is by letting your views be involved in your content. Let them decide things for you, pick dialogue options via voting in chat, mess with your controller or keyboard, etc. Things get a thousand times more interesting when you feel that you can impact them. That’s why we love gaming in the first place. Just look at all the streams where chat gets to control the character. There may not be a streamer in sight and yet they often gather hundreds if not thousands of viewers.
Nmagnum78 has his heart rate widget right in the middle of his stream while playing a horror game. It's a great way to instantly grab new viewer's attention
How Pulsoid may help: Having a heart rate widget on sight is an ultimate talking point. It’s noticeable yet not overwhelming, it may make people curious about how you got it set up and most of all it lets chat talk about the way your body responds to whatever happens on your broadcast.
You can also come up with heart rate related challenges from your chat. e. g. watching a video submitted by your followers every time your heart rate gets over a certain threshold.
Don’t forget about your overlay
Since a very tender age we are taught not to judge a book by its cover. But almost everyone does it anyway. And who we got to blame. Aesthetically pleasing things are… well… pleasing. This obviously is about the way things sound too. Good image and sound (probably even more important!) quality and smooth frame rate is an absolutely essential starting point. But there’s something you should definitely do after you figure this out:
Get a proper overlay. Keep things organized, informative but not overbearing. And make it fit your streaming style. There’s no overlay that will work equally well for everybody. Oh, and its style should match your vibe to tie everything together. Cute or edgy, ascetic or maximalist just make it reflect and enhance you.
Services like Canva can help you create professional looking overlays with no prior designing experience whatsoever
And there are a lot of options to do this as well. There are tons of services and libraries with all types of layouts, Photoshop templates you can mess around with or people who will design it for you for a humble price.
How Pulsoid may help: Pulsoid heart rate widgets are easily configurable to better fit your style. We even let you create your custom widgets for maximum self expression. Who knows, maybe a heat rate widget is exactly what you need as a finishing touch for your perfect overlay.
Collaborate
It’s a tip older than the concept of streaming itself. Collaborations were so overused in the early days of YouTube that it seemed like everyone had a video together. But it was that way because this just works. Mashing two audiences together almost always results in both of them growing. Getting a person with the right energy to compliment yours also gives you a chance to have an entertaining banter at the very list. Keeping conversation going while you are the only one speaking can be really hard at first. Why not get someone else on your stream from time to time to catch a break.
Just look at all the popular steamers today and try to recall how many of them were propelled to the highs of online they enjoy now by collaborating with others. The answer is the vast majority of them.
How Pulsoid may help: We are very lucky to have a wholesome and creative community of users who are willing to help others and encourage them on their journey. You may find someone to stream with on our Discord server or post your clips there for others to see. All of us have one thing in common and that’s streaming with one’s heart rate so you can always use it as a starting point of your interaction.
At the end of the day there is no one recipe to success that works for everyone. There is a LOT of luck involved and you do still need to constantly improve as a content creator. These tips, however, can help you take everything from the moments luck is on your side and even create such moments by your own hands. When you are your own actor, director, and screenwriter, you shouldn’t forget about being your own producer and marketing department. Hard work deserves to be seen and appreciated.
To read more about our integrations and collaboration check out our articles on LIV, Voicemod, LumiaStream, Pipeline and others.
To pick a heart rate monitor to start streaming with your heart rate read our supported devices list.
And visit our Discord server and Twitter page to become a part of the Pulsoid community.
