Create A Community, Not Just A Viewer Base – Grow Your Twitch Following

How often have you opened up someone’s stream and only minutes into your interactions with the streamer, they’re asking for a follow? Sure, we should be supporting smaller streamers and every follow they get helps, but take a second to look at the reality of it.

In this scenario, your follow will likely come out of generosity. Not due to your sincere interest in seeing the content they create or being a part of the community they’re building. Community is the foundation that your channel must be built off of and the content you create should resemble the community watching it.

In this article, we’ll uncover some of the best approaches to building that community and filling your channel with viewers who are there to support it. Grow Your Twitch Following!

What Is Your Why?

In general, people are drawn to others by common interest or aspiration to be similar. The same goes for twitch viewership. We frequent channels playing a specific game we’re interested in or portraying a certain “feel” to the content they provide.

Maybe you view Ninja for the witty and highly skilled nature of his gameplay on Fortnite. Or perhaps his down to earth personality and pronounced generosity.

Maybe you’re a fan of the “2 time BlockBuster video game champ” drdisrespect. Whether it’s the impressive gameplay, retro theme or the 90’s hardcore gamer schtick.

We all have random channels we visit for sporadic entertainment, but the channels we frequent usually have an underlying why.

So what is yours? Are you aiming to top the DOTA game directory as a MOBA badass? Do you have a funny personality that makes single player games better than they were intended to be? Are you a WoW guild leader looking for more guild members in an effort to mop up the rival guilds on your server?

Let’s Not Make This About The Money

Sure, plenty of streamers have grown a significant following that pays the bills but that shouldn’t be the primary reason for streaming. If you’re only hitting that Go Live button to rake in some dough, you may want to reconsider.

Passion will eventually play a huge role in your enthusiasm for streaming. Many streamers complain about the time and effort they have to commit to not only grow their channel but also maintain it.

According to Ninja, he was offline for only 48 hours and lost 40,000 subs.

Your community is going to want you around as much as possible. You’re their morning routine, their evening entertainment and/or their late night indulgence. If you don’t have a passion for the why in your community, you’re going to burn out.

Broadcast Your Why!

Put it in your stream panels, on your twitter, make a facebook group supporting it, incorporate it into your overlay, title your streams with it and if it’s something measurable; show progress.

Seriously. How will anyone find interest in following your journey if they don’t know what you’re setting out to do in the first place?

I hate it when someone gives vague advice so let me be a little more specific.

Just to grab a random subject out of the air, let’s say you have an obsession with rescuing abused hamsters.
Let’s put that into the About Me section of your stream panels. Maybe show a pic of the latest rescue there too.
Tweet pics of hamsters and articles relating to them with your twitch channel in your profile.
Create a Facebook group where others can post hamster adoption.
Maybe a subtle animation of a hamster giving a thumbs up every time someone follows or subs on stream.
Go live with a stream label like “20 hamsters saved from hungry cats today!”
Once in awhile, share a hamster rescue you experienced or read about.

Gather Like-minded Viewers From EVERYWHERE

So many channels fail to grow simply because the streamer is depending solely on twitch for exposure.
Yes there are methods to make sure you’re visible to more viewers but if you don’t capitalize on the other social platforms, you’re really limiting your reach.
Keywords on twitter are incredible for putting yourself out there for loads of new people to see. You should be posting frequently on keywords that relate to your why.
Facebook has groups sprinkled throughout the platform that have a wealthy amount of discussion on any given topic. Your participation will drive people to your channel so long as you broadcast your channel either to the group or in your feed.
Of course, YouTube can easily spill over into Twitch. Just throw your channel link in the vids you publish so your viewers can find you. It’s also a good idea to include it in your banner.
There’s a few others (like SnapChat, TikTok, and Instagram) that can be useful depending on your approach but it would make more sense to narrow it down to your specific why to discuss how to use them.

Thank You, Come Again!

My why here on NinjaGinza.com and on my channel MayjorMayham is simple. I see great streamers fail far too often. There are so many great personalities in this world that just don’t get the attention they deserve. If anything I produce can help them succeed, I’m doing what I’m meant to do.
Ultimately that will be in the form of a game that promotes the winners, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 1 piece at a time 🙂