Thread by @tessa_vt

CONFESSION: 2 years ago, I wanted Twitch to fail. The hustle culture, toxic positivity born from streamer culture was disgusting. I saw the preference from VTubers to stick with Twitch, and worked hard to be an expert

Here’s what I learned and why you should stay on Twitch 🧵

Twitch has the most sophisticated and comprehensive livestream ecosystem. YouTube Live is in beta and has no algorithm like the rest of the platform does. So when streaming on YouTube, save for sheer luck, you’re most likely going to need to upload videos to find an audience

Now that Twitch is trying to improve its platform, I look forward to see what new features change the game and see what will help small creators grow. There are now an increasing amount of new tools to allow folks to be more versatile and flexible with their own channel

A general rule that I gave clients starting out is the rule of 3. If you can stream for at least 3 hours per day for at least 3 days per week, you more often than not will begin to see things pick up much quicker than you’d realize.

The reason why you want to find a good balance for how often and how long you stream is for brand awareness (how people discover you), brand recall (how well can people remember you), building your community, fan loyalty, and ultimately retention.

Streaming too much can hurt!

Streaming too little hurts just as much as streaming too much can. This isn’t a general rule and very much is a case-by-case basis, but rather an observation of patterns that I notice smaller streamers more often than not have.

As you begin to find your audience, you’re going to start to realize slow and steady growth that will eventually become exponential (I’ll explain more on that in a hot minute), but notice a trend with successful streamers with such balance: hours streamed and hours watched dance

This isn’t a strict pattern to replicate, but an interesting trend that I realize can be a key to a much more consistent retention (how long you can keep eyeballs on the screen)

These stats tend to intersect and pass one another forming what I call a “helix curve”…

The helix curve that measures how much you stream vs how much and how long your audience (and new audiences) watches you is a better goal to measure audience loyalty on Twitch. High retention and high engagement tends to get you recommended more on Twitch, which helps a lot

Note that your journey is not going to be as clean as this, some are much slower, others much more explosive and volatile, others much easier and quicker. While this isn’t a race, it is, however, a matter of proving that you don’t need to simply stream more to grow

The majority of your traffic is going to come directly from Twitch (unless you’re coming from somewhere else with a massive audience, then it’s a game of averages and diminishing return to convert an audience across platforms), you have to prioritize your goals

Prioritizing your goals looks kinda like this:

Before: spend thousands of bucks on fancy stuff, simply stream, hopes and dreams

After:

1) Create a cohesive brand and design that stands out on its own merit

2) Ramp up consistency with streams as you build your audience
(Cont)

3) Improve the production quality, pacing, other skills you need to have an entertaining stream that entices people to ENGAGE

4) Reward your followers for engaging and continue to nurture your audience, humble yourself and spend time with them

(Cont)

5) If possible, engage and expand new audiences on different platforms and have your existing followers follow you across different platforms. The social media strategy generally consists of “When in Rome” + good branding + improving what others do with your own spin

5) [cont] In general, STAY AWAY FROM FOLLOW 4 FOLLOW/“Networking Threads”, stay away from following “social media hacks” (none of them really work), and actually network when you can through a genuine, authentic attempt at friendship with people. It’s an opportunity worth taking

5) [cont] Something something what matters the most in our journeys are the friends we make along the way. This cliche unironically is exactly what’s needed to grow. But remember to keep a balance and don’t be disingenuous. Get to know people for who they are

In short, a good Twitch strategy is a multi-pronged, comprehensive approach where you need to understand what it is you want to do, how you want others to see and remember you, and how consistent and of decent quality you can be with your content to create expectations

I can make another thread to give more specific content-focused advice. But for now, take what you see here and take your time. Streaming isn’t for everyone and sometimes, it just ain’t meant to be. For many of us, it is. We can grow into amazing creators if we put the work in

If you’d like help figuring out who you are, you can schedule a consultation with me where we will have one on one time to handle your branding, your marketing needs, your management, and if need be, any PR needs ko-fi.com/tessavt/link/H…

#VtuberSupport #Vtuber #VTuberUprising

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