Pokimane's Top 5 Tips for Small Streamers!

So today we have to teach people how to get viewers on Twitch, hey guys welcome back to my channel today I want to address one of my most frequently asked questions which is how you get your followers and grow on twitch, Mimi's also here for the lesson.

If you don't already know twitch is a live streaming platform where you can find people doing just about anything, a lot of it is gaming but you can see people going outside going on trips, cooking, doing art literally anything so think kind of like a YouTube video like this but instead of it being a video that you watch anytime it's live in real time so you can chat and interact with the person in front of you.

I’ve been streaming for over 6 years so I’ve seen a lot happen on the platform I’ve seen people explode in popularity and I've seen people fall off so I think I’ve got a pretty unique set of experiences and knowledge that I want to share with you in hopes to help you grow your channel as well, let's get into my top 5 streaming tips and please watch until the end because you may already know tips 1 2 & 3 but you may have never heard of 4 & 5 or may not be doing it everybody needs help in different ways so I wanted to cover all of my bases of this advice before we get into it, please leave a like on this sort of video if you want more informational talky sorts of videos and comments exactly what you want me to make a video about because I really take your feedback into consideration and I want to make stuff that you guys want to see and also if you’re going to do those two things you might as well sub so that you don't miss the video that I make because you recommended me to make that video okay enjoy!

Number one! interactivity is key and I know you would think that seems like a no-brainer on a live streaming platform but I couldn't tell you the amount of smaller streamers whose channels I’ve gone to or visited and I sit there and I want to watch and they go many minutes without saying anything without talking to anyone in their chat without talking about what they're doing and you have to keep in mind that the key aspect to livestreaming is that it's live and just like live radio.

As the saying goes you don’t want any dead air honestly you don’t even want like 10 seconds to go by without you actively saying or showing something to the people that are watching, the only people that can really just sit there not talk and show off their gameplay and still be really successful are the people that are already at the top of the top of streaming or gaming so the fakers and shrouds of their own the people that are already known for the really good gameplay so the way you should see it is the importance of interactivity is inversely related to how successful you are so it's the most important when you’re just starting out and I know what you’re about to say hope you mate I can’t respond to people in my chat because there's no one in my chat to respond to.

No one is saying and even how do you want me to talk if there's no one to say anything too much care and I get it you're partially correct but I just want to really drive it home that even if there's one to five people watching they may not be saying anything in your chat because sometimes people are shy you’re the one that needs to get them to talk you're the one that decides how interactive people can be you need to prompt them with questions ask them how their day is doing it's so important that when you're just starting off you know how to carry a conversation because at the end of the day interacting with you that's what's really gonna keep people coming back and staying for long periods of time.

You grow on Twitch for reasons outside of twitch which is like the most counter intuitive because on all other platforms use the actual platform to grow on, YouTube you post more videos you do different titles different tags different thumbnails on Instagram you post more photos you tag those as well you follow people that do somewhere things to you and network with them but twitch has none of that so naturally people just think oh I just need to stream really long hours I need to keep grinding and sooner or later I’m bound to grow but that's really not the best way to go about it and I'll explain why.

Twitch doesn't reward channels just for streaming really long hours like you don’t do a 24 hour stream and boom you’re on the front page of twitch, twitch has one algorithm and it’s viewership the more viewers you have the more exposure you have because that’s how the website is laid out it’s organized by most viewers to least viewers if you have more viewers you’re showcased to more people and that's when you really want to grind long hours when you’re already at the top of a category and more people can see you the longer you stream but then what do you do when you’re just starting out.

Well for people to click on your channel you don't want to force them to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and then randomly come across you and find you, you want to make it a lot easier for people to discover you and how do you do that by posting your stream on outlets outside of twitch whether that's a subreddit that’s related to what you're doing let's say you’re doing a 12 hour knitting stream maybe post your live stream on theKnitting Reddit is something I really don’t that's gotta be a thing or if you grow community on platforms like Twitter or Instagram or YouTube places where you can actually use the platform and algorithm in order to get more eyeballs on your content that can be incredible because you just tell your community there to come watch you on Twitch and boom you instantly have a good and set amount of viewers and a community to kind of launch your streaming channel off and I know that's easier said than done especially if you don't have a community set.

So what do you do that then you have to figure out how can you bring value to others do you want to post your channel and see your play with viewers are you really good at a game in which case you can do it with more of an educational angle like hey I'm this rank and you post it on the League of Legends subreddit and I’m teaching people how to do XYZ so figure out how you can attract viewers and then go advertise yourself out there, PS if you want to know what I did when I first started basically I had a Tumblr blog with about 800 followers and I would post my stream link so people who were already interested in what I was doing would stumble across my stream and I would just play with viewers or get to know people and that's how I made so many friends and also just linking your stream to friends or people that you play with telling them to come watch you that helps a ton as well, a plus one when you’re just starting off is huge.

Tip number three the door metaphor, okay hear me out I was thinking about this while lying in bed the other day and I forced myself out of bed to write it down because it's probably the best way I’ve ever thought of how to explain growing on Twitch and twitch streaming in general.

Think of your channel as a door and there's thousands of other doors out there because there's thousands of other channels and other streamers out there so what I mentioned in tip number two is how to get people to come to your door and open it in the same way you open a door you click on a stream and go see what’s inside but that's only half the battle because you need to make sure that whatever is behind the door and in that room is good enough to make them want to stay.

The contents of the room need to be worth staying for you get it like contents of a room like streaming content you could get a hundred thousand clicks on your channel but if your stream isn’t really that good all those people are about to leave and you'll be left with no viewers either way similarly you could have the most hilarious amazing stream but if no one ever clicks on it then no one will ever know how good it is and you'll still be left with no one oh that sounds so sad.

You could get like a hundred thousand clicks on your stream but if your content isn't that good then people aren't going to stick around and you won’t be left with many viewers your stream sucks no one's going to stay in the same way that you could have amazing content and be really funny if no one clicks on it you still have no one but if you don’t try to get people to come through that door and you don't get many views on your channel or clicks no one will ever find out how good your channel really is and how good your content is.

Guess at the end of the day we all just have no what so try to keep in mind to put equal amount of work into getting people through the door and on giving them a good reason to want to stick around, well this video buddy the formula is literally how good your content is times how many views you get so you could get a million views but if your content sucks then it's time zero and you have no furious at the end of the day or you have the most amazing content but if nobody ever clicks on it and you get zero views it's still zero people watching the zero view is equipped with

Listen guys it's like a formula okay it’s your content times the views you get equals your viewers so if you have really high number of content and your channel is amazing but you have zero views that's times zero it's nothing if you have a million views but times zero content no one's going to stick around your viewers at the end of day also nothing, Einstein of twitch.

Tip number four figure out your branding, let me address something real quick I know there's going to be so many people in the comments trying to say stuff like how to be successful on step number two and although I don't think anyone's success should be minimized to just their gender do want to point out a learning lesson in comments like those so because girls are kind of a minority in gaming or at least they were a lot more when I first started than they are nowadays.

When you would start off streaming as a girl it was kind of like built-in branding you are different you stood out and that’s really really good in this space you need to stand out in order for people to want to click on your channel over other channels and that's why I recommend you think about how you want to stand out you want to be known for being really really into kpop once you figure that out you can then start thinking about how you want to reach your target audience which are people that enjoy the same things that you do.

If you want to do a fitness livestream then maybe you want to create a Fitness Instagram because that's very popular on Instagram and network with people in that space use the right hashtags make videos on there and then tell people to come watch you on Twitch another example when First started I was really into League of Legends so I made sure everything on my channel which is all about League banners with the champions I have posters behind me animes i watch shows I like and it's really really good because when someone sees that they think oh my god I love that game - or I play that champ and they instantly connect with you and it gives them a reason to want to come back to want to interact with you to want to be a part of your community as well.

Last but not least tip number five wiwis which stands for would you watch your street trying to answer these questions figure out why or why not and figure out what you can specifically do to be better one of the best ways to learn anything is to reverse engineer a process so what I mean by that is think of the streamers that you like the best and figure out how you came to know them did you find them on a subreddit called or / new streamers if so then post yourself on that subreddit and then people like you can also find you keep in mind when I say put your stream out there I don't mean spam your link everywhere or in other people’s streams or in communities because that's not very considerate or nice and will probably garner more hate than it will people genuinely wanting to watch your be a part of communities.

What I recommend is being selective and methodical figuring out how you can bring value to people and actually attract them instead of annoy them also think about the streamers you look up to and love to watch and how they’ve put themselves out there and have attracted more people to their channels and then you can follow in their footsteps you don't need to copycat anyone but it can be so helpful to just observe others what has been successful or worked for them and then put your own little twist on it and make it work for you.

That's all for me today I could honestly talk about this sort of thing forever but I really wanted to put together in short simple sweet little video with some of what I find to be the most effective but widely applicable streaming tips really think you can use these at almost any viewer accounts and I really hope you learned something I hope you enjoyed but most of all I really hope that you don't get discouraged trying to compare your day one to someone else’s day 1000 as I said earlier I've been doing this for six plus years there are so many streamers that have been doing this for a really long time but I genuinely believe that there's so many paths to online success and you can find your own unique way of doing things, good luck have fun and I'll see you next time!