With 7 million+ unique streamers, Twitch is a popular live streaming platform. Apart from the very famous gaming category, you can live stream on lifestyle, fashion, makeup, business, travel, personal (non-business and non-gaming related), and more.

In fact, there are many categories on Twitch worth considering, such as "just chatting" and here's why.

When streaming to Twitch, a non-traditional social network, there’s no harm in streaming on Twitch and building an audience on the platform. But how? In this post, we share seven interesting Twitch live streaming tips to help you to build an audience.

Twitch Live Streaming Tips To Build An Audience

Tip #1 – Set Clear Goals: Know Your Why

Before you head off into the big world of Twitch, you should know your big “why”.

Without the “why”, the “how” will not help.

Figure out the answers to questions like:

  • Why do you want to live stream on Twitch, or what’s the end purpose of your live streams?
  • Are you live streaming to grow your audience because you want more brand recognition, boost your personal brand, or grow your business?
  • Do you plan to monetize your live streams? If yes, how exactly?

Knowing your “why” helps you set out on a clear path from the start.

It brings all of your live streaming efforts together to help meet your goals.

Tip #2 – Aim To Provide Value

Anyone can live stream on almost anything. If you are live streaming just because you want to, you don’t need to do much. However, if building a loyal fanbase is what you seek or making money through live streams to replace your full-time job is one of your key objectives, then you need to do a lot of work.

Whatever your objective is, aim to provide value. For example, for some types of live streams, such as gaming live streams, watching the gameplay itself could be valuable for the audience. For several other types of live content, the audience may expect value in the form of learning, ideas, or inspiration.

Remember, it takes a while for your live stream to grow an audience, but it can fizzle out and be forgotten even faster if there’s no value in it.

Tip #3 – Graduate To High-Quality Live Streaming Gear

You can live stream with just a phone and nothing more. However, to truly grow your audience on Twitch (and elsewhere), you’ll need to graduate (whenever you can) to high-quality live streaming.

Here’s what you’d need to achieve better quality streams:

Remember, better live streaming gear also helps you broadcast more efficiently and in much higher quality, besides offering several other perks like enhancing your on-camera presence.

Speaking of quality, we really liked the overall look of this Twitch live stream by a fellow StreamYard user, Ande Lyons:

Tip #4 – Promote Your Live Streams

You might think this is obvious, but it’s not. Many live streamers assume that live streams will be automatically found.

That’s half true.

Most platforms will automatically push live streams out (they need the audiences). That said, to succeed with live streams, it’s not enough to go live. You owe it to yourself to promote your live streams. While live streams themselves are highly-clickable, appealing, and follower magnets, you need to do more to build an audience through them.

Schedule your live streams in advance so that you have enough time to not only build up some buzz and anticipation for your upcoming live streams but also have enough time to do your promotions.

By scheduling your broadcast in advance, you also give your followers a heads up, so that they can schedule accordingly.

Even if you were only live streaming on Twitch (let’s say) -- and not multistreaming to all social networks, always cross-promote your live streams on your social media channels. Let the world know that you are going live soon.

You can create specific landing pages (built for having people sign up to get access or be notified when you go live).

Alternatively, you can have your previous live streams accessible for potential viewers by letting them subscribe for access.

This way, you’ll not only be building a captive audience for your live streams but also make it easier to distribute and promote your live streams (during, before, and after live streams).

Tip #5 – Show Up, In Full

Many live streamers just narrate their screens while broadcasting. However, some decide to show up fully by being present on camera, for example, on the Twitch live stream from the_exp, Ms. Jen hosts the live comic book sale:

Depending on the type of live streams, or even specific live streaming broadcasts that you might do, you can mix and match the formats.

But when you show up, even if it’s occasionally, improve your live streaming charisma to impress your audience. After all, watching you on camera in raw live footage is one of the key reasons people watch your live streams.

Tip #6 – Don’t Forget To Engage

Live streams are popular because everything that happens on a live stream is “live” -- there’s a sense of thrill in it. Interactions, knowledge transfer, teaching, and training all occur in real-time, depending on what kind of live streams you do.

As such, don’t forget to engage, talk, give a shout-out to particular members of your live stream community, address their questions, and highlight some of the comments.

You can use StreamYard to respond to your audiences in real-time (and do all of the above). In addition, you can add banners, overlays, and other branded elements like logos, colors, backgrounds, etc. to your broadcasts using StreamYard and engage with your audience better.

Learn the ropes from trueskool where they have an engaging stream with their audience:

Tip #7 – Stay Consistent

If you were to pick just one tip out of this collection of Twitch live streaming tips, this would be it.

“Consistency” is an often overlooked live streaming hack (bonus: also a life hack). Even if you weren’t perfect or “as good as you’d like to be”, consistency alone can take you places.

Consistency is the reason behind “success” for several people across different aspects of life: be it work, career, sports, wealth, health, and more. And so, it applies to live streaming as well.

Whatever you choose to do with live streaming, prepare to be consistent. Show up at the fixed frequency that you can -- once a day, once a week, once a month – or other.

A fantastic example of consistent Twitch live streams is Retrologists. Check out how they stream multiple times in a month and stay connected to their audience:

Tip #8 – Establish A Routine (And Calibrate Frequency)

Establishing a routine is easy for us to write about but tricky for you to implement. Show up too often (like multiple times a week), and you risk audience fatigue.

Show up much less frequently (like once or twice a month or once a quarter), and you risk your audience interest waning.

Slightly higher frequencies certainly help with audience engagement or retention, though. You have to strike a balance between showing up and still keeping your audience engaged.

The best frequency is usually once a week -- this way, you can establish a schedule, stay fresh (and engaging enough) for your audiences, and it is a decent cadence, to begin with.

That said, you can always change based on feedback, inputs, insights, or directly from what your audience tells you.

Conclusion

Twitch is another platform that provides an avenue for brands and creators to build an audience and nurture communities. Follow the Twitch live streaming tips mentioned above to make the most of the platform.

As you progress along your live streaming journey, consider joining other live streamers in our official live streaming community if you have any additional questions on streaming to Twitch.

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