Seriously, what more do we need to be happy than Overwatch?
As the gamer community reacts to so many changes in the industry, it's important to enhance your cast to grow alongside those trends as well, especially as Twitch grows more saturated with content through each passing day. With so much movement in viewership, it's wise to have a variety of plans and ideas handy to build momentum for your channel through the ever-changing phases in the market. However, time is precious, so here are some simple goals that can serve you well in building a stronger brand on Twitch.
Maintain an Idea Journal
One of the best practices I've taken from my Entrepreneurship major is to constantly exercise the creative muscles in your brain. While our class was assigned to write down two new business ideas for every week of the semester, this applies even more strongly towards making content. Picture your cast like a farm - you can only grow so much if you plant a few seeds. If you only have one crop, you're limiting the value of you own.But what would happen if you plant twice as many seeds? What if you plant a collection of very different seeds? Your farm will have much more life and serve much more purpose than it did before! Not every seed is going to grow, but even if they don't they'll prove useful in teaching a lesson or maybe even sparking some excitement when things get dull.
Last year I began writing down one new idea for my cast each day. Some of them were long and complex, others were as simple as a focus point or graphic description. Through them, I had some fun crazy streams that my viewers really enjoyed, like turning competitive elements of games into an Olympic Challenge, or setting up a cheesy romantic overlay for a special Valentines Day show. While my new job has taken up a lot of my casting time, I still have over a hundred ideas written from last year that I can look through to inject new life and energy into my stream when it feels necessary.
And if you start gathering one idea per day, you'll have dozens to choose from by the end of the month. It's a great resource to have if you want to really make your cast stand out from the crowd.
Be More Involved and Engaged
Another really easy way to build your Twitch brand is by taking a little bit of time each week to get more involved with the streaming community. It's very difficult to grow a following if you keep your personality and your voice to yourself. If you only show yourself when you're live, you limit the chance of viewers building strong ties to your brand to those select moments in time. While you won't build an immediate return on it, participating in other Twitch chats and social networks are well worth it to build your circle of friends beyond your streaming schedule.
One thing to keep in mind about where you want to be more involved is to find where your most relative audience is most active and engaged. Every channel and platform caters to different gaming communities, especially with the huge variety of them present on Twitch. Based on game genre, console and much more, there are hundreds of different gaming communities that share similar tastes and interests. Discord and Curse have more defined communities while Twitter also provides an active and more public form of interaction with many game lovers. And there are still many more platforms to explore, so finding new ways to share the joy of gaming, entertainment or anything else is a great way to build presence and make new friends.
Live to Learn
We're auspiciously living in a time when the gaming industry has immense potential and opportunity. E-sports are drawing massive attention, filling stadiums and getting televised by major networks. Indie games are getting more support and exposure than ever through community interaction and helpful tools like kickstarter. And the ability for broadcasters to be part of the gaming industry and help build followings for new games and old favorites is becoming more valuable to developers of both big and small titles.
As casting takes on a larger role in the gaming industry, it'll be useful to have more knowledge of different elements that add onto the overall experience. Understanding game design elements and identifying opportunities for growth are ways which streamers can give tremendous value to developers while getting their community more engaged and proactive with such an insightful perspective towards gaming.And especially with genres that you aren't used to casting, being prepared with some knowledge and relevant ideas can be incredibly helpful to keep your content consistent despite the unfamiliar gameplay.
With how much Twitch has changed over the past few months, nobody truly knows where the future of streaming will be. And with such unpredictable viewership patterns, its risky to have really direct and specific plans for your cast's future. That's why the three resolutions I've written above strive towards channel growth through small simple steps - they all help in building a stronger brand and hardly require any investment in time or resources. By taking any of these approaches, you can build an exciting future for your channel that can adapt to any changes that take place with the platform.
