- Guys, I'm tired. I'm tired of seeing bad advice being spread around the internet about how to grow your
live stream audience. Seriously, the number of bad takes that I've seen on Twitter, on Reddit, and now even on TikTok
is getting out of hand. I don't know if this is old advice maybe that is being re-spread and isn't as relevant in
the Twitch matter today. Or if this is this new craze of Twitch tips that are
being spread across places like TikTok where people are really just posting them to hopefully
boost their own numbers. But some of these takes
are hilariously bad and would seriously ruin your chances of ever growing a dedicated
live stream audience. So let's take a look at some bad advice and suggest some better alternatives. (gentle music) Just before we jump into the
tips I'd like to give a quick thank you to the sponsor
of this video, Melon. Melon is a web based live streaming studio where you can create
professional live streams in seconds with no downloads
or software needed. You can easily invite guests onto your show just by giving them a link. They don't even need an account. And you can, of course customize the stream
with your own branding, lower thirds and colors or backgrounds. You can even set up your stream to go through four different
platforms simultaneously, right from your browser. To get started with Melon, just simply visit the link
down in the description below. All right, so bad advice number one is a crazy stream schedule. I constantly see people suggesting that you need to be streaming
at least five days a week for at least four hours per stream. And if you can't do that,
then you're not going to grow. And it's just, it's bad advice. You simply can't spend
all of your spare time, all of your free time dedicated
to this career by streaming. What you have to understand
here is that live streams as a format don't work
in your favor for growth because they aren't a
discoverable form of media. And next to nobody is going
to be watching your VOD after you finish streaming as a way to grow through
your offline library. This is why I think people are suggesting that you need to be live for longer because you'll be discoverable for longer. But the reality is
since these live streams aren't really discoverable
in the first place, that advice doesn't really ring true. Most people aren't going to
spend their time scrolling down in the directories, finding
a new live stream to watch. So this theory of being live for longer is going to help you grow
more just doesn't really work. What does work is diversification and producing video content for a platform that is built
around discoverability. So YouTube and TikTok I would say are the
two major players there because then people can
arrive at your video content whether you are live or not, and even if you made the video
months or even years ago. If you can spend your time
learning to create good, valuable content on one of
these discoverable platforms, it's going to be much easier
for you to build an audience and then hopefully help move some of that audience across to
watching your live streams. Think about it. What sounds like a better strategy to you? Spending eight hours
streaming to 10 people for then nobody to watch your
VOD from that live stream, or spending those eight
hours creating a super engaging and valuable
YouTube video that can keep bringing new viewers
across to your channel even months or years after
you've finished creating it. I'm living proof of this working. Some of my oldest and
admittedly cringiest videos from two or three years ago are still getting
thousands of views a day. And people are discovering my channel and the content around it from something that I worked
on two or three years ago. So how should you be
spending your time then considering most of you are doing this as a sort of side hustle,
side project right now and probably have work and other family
commitments to think about? I'd advise when starting out spending roughly 25%
of your time streaming and 75% of your time creating content. So let's say that you have 20 hours in the week that you can dedicate to trying to build this career. I would spend five hours
streaming, maybe in two lots of two and a half hours streams that are on a set schedule
every single week, and the rest of the time creating content for discoverable platforms
like YouTube or TikTok. Of course, once you've
built an audience and a bit of a following, you might
want to adjust this balance in favor of more live streams
as your audience grows. But certainly for growth the best strategy is going
to be producing good quality, valuable and engaging content on a more discoverable platform. If you want to be extra
efficient with your time, I would recommend taking the same strategy that popular streamer Ludwig does, which is to actually
create your YouTube content whilst you're on stream. Pretty much every single
live stream that Ludwig does is built around the content
that he wants to put into a YouTube video each day. He then records that content
live with his stream audience effectively combining the tasks of creating content
and streaming together. So ultimately I'd advise
you not to spend all of your free time streaming and instead learn and practice the skills of being a more diverse content creator, rather than just a streamer. Iterating over this
process again and again will not only improve your content but also result in more avenues for potential viewers to find you. The second bit of bad
streaming advice that I saw plastered over the internet
was people being encouraged to create their own discord
server as an avenue of growth. Now, I'm not saying that you
can't create your own discord server, or that you need to
wait for some magic number of viewers or followers
before you create one. But I see far too many
streamers spending days creating this perfect discord server with 15 different channels, auto posting their social media posts, auto moderation bots
that they've brought in and really expecting this
perfect discord server to bring viewers across to their stream. But if you actually go in the server there's little to no
interaction happening there. You have to weigh up the benefits of spending the time creating
and managing a discord server when you haven't really got enough members of your community yet
that really desire a place to be able to speak and communicate in. If you think about this from
your audience's perspective, what actual value are you providing them by asking them to join
your discord server? And what's their impression going to be if they do join your server
and see 15 channels there but little to no interaction happening? That's probably going to hinder
your brand rather than help it. Instead, I'd recommend participating in some medium-sized discord communities that you share similar interests with. Maybe you can find one for a game that you're passionate about or some specific niche that
you're very knowledgeable in. Whatever it is, the purpose is to interact and participate in that community. Learn what it actually takes
to build a good discord server by being a member of one and making friendships with
other people in that server that share similar interests to you. Don't go spam--
(alert sounding) Don't go spam--
(alert sounding) Dude.
- [Man] Sorry, sorry. - Don't go spamming or self-promoting in these discord servers. Trust me, nobody is
clicking on your links. And most communities will
probably warn or ban users that are coming across as self-promoting. The aim here is to find a
community of like-minded people and to actually participate
in that discord server. And then eventually down the line when you have got a big enough audience from your live streams
and your content elsewhere to build a discord server
for them to interact in, you will know exactly
what you want to build because you've been
the other side of this. You've been a member in a
bigger discord community so you will understand what it is that your audience wants
from your own discord server. Then you can look at
creating all the fun bits of your discord server,
like private live streams or stage channels, but
you need to make sure that you have an audience that desires it and not the other way around. You're never going to
build a discord server that's going to grow your stream, which is where this bad advice comes from. And hey, whilst we're on the
topic of discord servers, I would be doing myself dis-justice if I didn't mention that Gaming Careers has its own discord server
where thousands of streamers and content creators
interact every single day. So I'd heavily recommend
joining the discord server. The link is down in the description. Bad advice number three is that you need to be putting
your content everywhere on all of the different social medias. But when we're talking
about Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat. I mean, there's endless
social media platforms and it's unrealistic to expect anybody to be able to post on all of them. And that's not even taking into account that places like YouTube
now, you have videos, live streams, shorts, community posts. They're trying to be all encompassing and it's just unrealistic
to post everywhere. Instead, what I'd recommend doing is focusing on one or two
social media platforms that serve slightly different
purposes and that you know that your target audience
is already using. For example, if you're streaming
content that was all to do with cooking food, you might
want to be using Instagram for all those finished plate pics and TikTok for quick 60 second highlights of the recipes and how you made each meal. Or if you're streaming a competitive game that has frequent patch
updates, you might want to choose YouTube where you
can post in-depth guides about certain aspects of the game that people might be searching for. And your second social
media could be Twitter where you can share your thoughts with the community on
updates and patch notes. I definitely recommend
having one of the platforms be a video first platform. So YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, just because that medium
is going to be the closest to what your live stream
is going to be like. So if they like seeing a
lot of you on your videos, that's probably the closest representation of what your stream might be like too. Now you might well be thinking, Pete can't I just make
one video and post it to multiple different
social media platforms? Create one vertical video and then post that to
TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and
Snapchat simultaneously, and then I can be on all the platforms. And yes you can, but I actually
wouldn't advise doing that. Again, it really just comes
down to value for your audience. What value are you providing by posting your TikTok clips
into your Instagram reels? Why would somebody want
to follow you on Instagram if all you're doing is posting
your TikTok content there? You want your audience
to feel valued by you. So if all you're doing
is re-posting content, that's going to come across as low effort and low value content. Instead, what I'd recommend doing is to edit the same content
to fit and be specific to the social media platform
that you're posting it to. Then that's ideal. So for example, you could take
a Twitch clip and turn them into portrait highlights
for TikTok using a tool like StreamLadder to crop your web cam and actually make good, valuable content that is intended for the
vertical video platform. So to summarize, you don't need to be on every single social
media platform out there, instead focus your energy
on one or two platforms that you know that your
target audience is using and really putting out
valuable content for them on those platforms. Bad advice number four is
to stream just one game for your whole streaming career if you want to grow to
be a full-time streamer. And I can certainly understand
where this advice comes from because the old
advice at least used to be that if you wanted to grow,
you needed to stream one game because people were only
interested in watching one game. And if you went and
streamed a variety of games then you'd lose your audience
every time you mixed up games. But thankfully Twitch as a
platform and streaming in general has become a bit more forgiving from the audience's perspective. The majority of partnered streamers aren't just streaming
one main game anymore. Instead, they vary what they play day to day or month to month,
depending on what's popular or what's entertaining for their chat. Think about how many of your
favorite streamers took part in the big trending games
on Twitch in the past year like Among Us or Fall
Guys, Rust or GTA Roleplay. The reason that they can do this is because it's the
personality of the streamer that the audience is attracted to. People may arrive at your stream from the game that you're playing or the category that you're streaming in, but if they're going to
become a valuable member of your community, it's likely
that they're sticking around because they like your personality. I've seen far too many streamers burn out and give up on streaming
because they'd been streaming the same game that
they no longer enjoy playing. And that comes through in their content. It's obvious to the audience that you no longer enjoy
streaming that game and your content suffers as a result. So the ideal situation
is to build a community of people that want to
watch you as a streamer exploring and playing new games and creating content about
new and different games. And they're just wanting
to see your reactions and your entertaining value that you bring whilst playing those games. But how do you go about
building that kind of audience? Well, I think there's a
few things that you can do. Firstly, I would suggest
having a just chatting portion to every single live stream that you do. This section of your stream
should be solely dedicated to interacting with your
audience and discussing topics or having a conversation back
and forth with your chat. This can be a bit tricky if
you're still a very new streamer and you only have a
small handful of viewers, but try and plan a topic that
you're going to talk about for each stream and
choose a topic that you're comfortable talking about
on your own if you have to. You should also try streaming games that are closely related to each other. So don't just jump into a
new game every single day that's completely different to what you've been known to be streaming, but pick games that have
similarities between them. So for example, if you're known
for trying to do no hit runs in games like Dark Souls, then you could look at other
games that you could try and do no death or no hit runs in. That way your audience won't
find it such a jarring contrast to what they're used to. And hopefully they'll still find the links of what they found entertaining previously just in this new game. And finally, you can plan
some content and some streams around real community
engagement by playing games like Marbles on Stream or
GeoGuessr with your chat or doing a tier list of fast
food restaurants for example. Those kinds of events are
really going to make that bond between you and your
community much stronger. And they're going to
be much more likely to watch you play different games
than what you're known for. Bad advice number five is better
gear equals better stream. You can buy every light,
camera, microphone, capture card, stream deck in the world but it's not going to
make an engaging stream for your audience. They're not going to stick around just because you've got good gear. If you can't give your viewers the content that they want to support and consume, then they'll be gone before you know it. This is a difficult one for me because obviously on this channel I do cover a lot of the
latest streaming gear and products that come out. And often if I like the
product, I do recommend it which may influence some
people into buying it thinking it will improve their chances of becoming a full-time streamer. But you always have to
be thinking in your head will this product actually
benefit my audience in any way or am I just buying it because I want the latest streaming tech? It's really important to highlight
that there's a difference between improving the
quality of your content and improving the production quality. When I'm talking about improving
the quality of your content it's nothing to do with
the gear that you're using. The amount of improvements
that you can make by simply balancing your audio and EQ-ing a cheap microphone or lighting yourself
properly with a cheap webcam, easily meets the threshold
of what viewers will consider as good production quality. So it's really not about having
this super expensive gear and that being the reason
that you're not growing. In reality, the main
reason people don't succeed with streaming is quite simple. It's that they're not making
good content and they give up before they put in enough
learning and repetitions in creating content that
eventually becomes good, valuable content for an audience. So next time you're watching
me review the latest bit of streaming tech, think to yourself is that piece of streaming tech
something that I really need and something that is going to improve the viewing experience for my audience? And if not, maybe put that
money towards something a little bit more valuable, like learning how to video
edit from an online course or something that is actually going to directly impact your audience. Because if you can improve
your video editing skills, then your content is
going to become better. And that's going to help
your chances of growing much more than some piece
of hardware that's come out. That being said, if you are a gear head and you get a lot of joy out of testing and getting the latest streaming tech and you have the
disposable income to do so, then feel free to buy
as much as you want to. I don't control your money. You can choose what you spend
your money on completely but just don't expect it
to increase your viewership because really that's
down to your content. All right, so that wraps up five bits of bad streaming
advice that I've seen scattered across the internet
these past few weeks. If you have enjoyed the video
please do give it a thumbs up. That really does help me out. And if you haven't yet checked out the Gaming Careers podcast, we are live streaming
it every single Monday. Me and my cohost Benjamin Green every Monday at 9:00 AM PST, 12:00 PM EST. We record this podcast live and we're taking questions from chats. So do drop by. And if not, I'll catch you
in the next video, peace. (gentle music) Live streams and shorts are
kind of the polar opposite. Shorts is like scrollable. You're probably watching less
than five seconds of most, and then maybe you watch
one the whole way through, which is 30 seconds or something. But how many times are you browsing five seconds of live streams? You're not, you're just finding somebody that you know you want to watch and you sit and watch
them for a few hours. And then when they stop
streaming, you stop watching. And that's the problem with Twitch.
