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The Complete Guide – Social Media for Streamers

Whether you’re a seasoned pro streamer or an absolute newbie looking to carve a name for themselves, there’s one tool you need to utilize properly to have a chance at streaming successfully.

Social media.

If you haven’t already realized, social media is pretty much the single most important tool when it comes to promoting your stream. Pretty much every single person, from 8-year-old schoolkids to 88-year-old grandmothers use social media constantly to connect with friends, family and everything that they love.

If you’ve paid ANY attention to any of the big names, you’ll soon realize that social media is a key part of every single streamer’s toolkit.

So how do you use social media to promote your stream? Which options are best for you, and what’s the best way to use each one?

Read on to find out.

Social Media 101 – Streamer Edition

When you’re considering social media, there’s one key thing to keep in mind.

Branding. Building yourself a personal brand and pushing it out there.

You’ve probably heard that term thrown around everywhere. You might even be getting a bit sick of it by now. After all, it seems like everyone and their dog has a personal brand to manage.

But for streamers? It’s the key.

The reason is simple. When it comes to streaming, a lot of the time, it’s not about the game.

It’s about the person.

It’s about personality, and interest, and fun. People connect with people.

This means that the more people know you, and the more you let people into your life, the more your viewers become invested in your success. This is one of the reasons that chats are so vivid and alive in big streams (well, most big streams–I’m looking at you, copypasta spam). People love to feel like they’re part of a community. Something special. Something secret.

You can foster that. It’s a choice. And it’s actually pretty simple to do, if you do it smart.

Step 1

Make it worth joining your social media.

If you only post stream updates, why should anyone care? They can follow you on Twitch, YouTube, or Mixer for that.

Instead, give people who join your platforms things they can’t get anywhere else. Photos. Competition offers. Maybe offer prizes or sub games for a certain amount of follows.

There’s so many ways to make it awesome. It just takes a little bit of creativity.

Step 2

Make people feel like a community

There’s a reason people stick with a community online. Hint. It’s right there in that sentence.

People want to feel like part of a community, so do everything you can to foster that ‘in group’ feeling. Stack up sub bonuses, make sure you’ve got emotes. Have sub days, maybe, or find a way to bring your fans on-board with community content and exclusives.

There’s so many good ways to do this. If you want a masterclass, go check one of the major-league streamers and see exactly how their branding ALWAYS includes the fans.

You can do this, even if you’re much smaller. Go wild, and have fun.

Step 3

Consistency.

Consistency is such a huge deal when you’re an online personality. There’s nothing worse than following someone, only to have them ghost on you. People very quickly lose interest online. Here’s how to do it.

Make a content plan. Post regularly, on a schedule, but don’t overdo it.

Don’t go crazy. No one wants a huge pile of spam in their feeds. One or two updates a day will keep you in people’s minds.

Don’t be a robot. No one like content that seems like it was churned out by a machine.

People want to understand who you are. That means be real. Or at least keep your persona consistent.

Which Social Media Platform is Best for Streamers?

Twitter

When it comes to choosing which social media platforms to focus on, Twitter is the brainless first choice.

It’s by far one of the most important platforms to focus on, because of the absolute ease of use, the fact that most streamers and viewers already use the platform, and the fact that the format lends itself perfectly to streaming.

With Twitter, you can combine alerts that tell people you’re going live to get them in your stream, with a bunch of short, punchy, effective pieces of content that are easy to plan but highly effective at getting people on board.

Here’s what you need to be doing with Twitter:

Telling people you’re there

First things first, Twitter is an awesome method to drive traffic to your stream, whether through capturing new viewers who see your tweets, or the main method, using it to alert your followers that you’re going live so they check in when you’re online.

Because it’s so easy to tweet that you’re going live and share a link, there’s absolutely no reason not to do this every single time you go live and start streaming.

Interacting, simply and easily

The very nature of Twitter is tiny pieces of info, delivered often. This makes it ideal if you have any of the following personality traits.

Philosophical and thought provoking

Humorous and comical

Smart and insightful

Cocky and charming

A world-class king of memes or GIFs (don’t worry, we won’t judge you)

With Twitter, you can share tiny little fragments of your life, pieces of information that will grab attention and let people know a little more of the real you.

Think of it like fishing. Each tweet is a little hook, designed to pique people’s interest and get them to comment, share or like. The more interaction you get, the better it is for your accounts, and your stream, right?

You just have to set the hook.

Twitter is also awesome for interacting with viewers. Throwing up a question or a poll, whether it’s mid stream, as a stream ends ready for next time, or when you’re not actually live and looking for an answer, is a great way to keep your community involved and together.

Networking

Lastly, Twitter is awesome for relationships with people higher up the totem pole than you right now.

We’ve all heard of people whose streams exploded in popularity because they were hosted by someone popular, or they were featured on some hype play compilation. But that’s not the only potential positive relationships that can be fostered. Twitter is also wicked to grab attention from industry leaders, game designers, sponsors and journalists.

The best way to do this is to be useful to them, before asking for some collaboration or favor down the road. This “pay it forward, and collect the rewards later” mindset is a common networking theme (for one of the best books on this concept, check out “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty” by Mackay). Follow people who are relevant to you and your stream, then when they tweet something that you think is awesome (and don’t fake it, if they share an article, then actually take time to read it before you share it) retweet it and add your input. Over time, you’ll make yourself known, and they’ll start to pay attention.

Once you’ve got a relationship, no matter how small, it becomes that much simpler to work together.

Tips for using your Twitter

As previously discussed, going live tweets with a link to your stream are your best friend (but should not be the only, or really the primary, use of your Twitter account).

If there’s one huge trick for massive engagement you should know, it’s this. According to the data, tweets with images get an average of 150% the engagement against tweets with no images. We’re visual creatures, after all. Give people something cool or funny to look at and they’re far more likely to pay attention, engage and remember what you’re tweeting.

Caught your eye, right?

Learn your hashtags. If you’re playing specific games or you’re part of a specific community, there’s gonna be a list of tags you should be using. Use them. Sounds obvious, some people still don’t do it.

Twitter giveaways are a great way to force engagement. For example, sub games or sub giveaways for a certain amount of retweets are a time tested trick to get people throwing your tweets far and wide.

When you start playing something new, especially if it’s a smaller, indie game, tag the developers. Some streamers and YouTube stars have specifically made it big off the back of one game designer tweeting them out.

Q&A’s are an awesome tool to get people engaging with your Twitter, whilst letting them know who you are.

If you’ve got a few followers that give you a lot of interaction, then remember who they are. Make a list if you have to. If people take the time to interact with you, then interact with them.

Don’t just plug your stream. No one wants a constant stream of ‘X is going live’ in their feed every day. If all you do is spam your stream, I’m going to get bored an unfollow faster than you can say “going live.”

Don’t @ people unless you need to. If you didn’t know, when you @ someone, the only people who see that message are the person you’ve mentioned and both of your followers. For everyone else, that tweet might as well be a ghost, which means you’re going lose huge amounts of outreach. After all, how many followers do you share with the average other twitter user?

Use twitter polls to grab people’s attention and make them feel like part of the community. There’s two ways to do this. First off, you can end your stream with a poll which affects your next stream. This gives your viewers something to do when you’re not about, and makes them more likely to come back.

Second, you can livetweet during your streams, which drives traffic to your stream and also drives your viewers to directly engage with you. It’s a way for everyone to come together and feel like an actual community. Plus, livetweeting is really easy. If you’re not already doing it, you should be.

Finally, use smart tools to find your audience. There’s a whole bunch of tools that you can use to find keywords, check your engagement and find new sources of viewership to mine. Followerwonk is a great tool that lets you search for twitter profiles based on the keywords they use in their bios. If you’re trying to get known for a particular game, or you’re looking for people to squad up with, that’s an awesome time saver. Moz is also an a pretty sweet SEO tool that offers the same sort of features, with a 30 day free trial. Ideal for when you’re just starting out and might not have the funds to splash out on everything.

Discord

If there’s one piece of advice we’d give to every starting streamer, it’d be this.

GET YOUR OWN DISCORD SERVER. DO IT YESTERDAY.

Discord is absolutely free, and such an awesome way to foster community. We’re not going to go in depth here, because we have an article on this exact subject. It even tells you how to start your own Discord server, and what to use it for in the early days.

Read our in-depth guide on how to set up your own Discord Server.

Facebook

When it comes to social media, Facebook is the big one. But for streamers, this isn’t quite so true.

Facebook is still useful for streamers, but it shouldn’t be your main focus. Unless you’re planning on streaming on Facebook. But then, why are you doing that? (We’d recommend considering between Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube. We wrote articles comparing the three sites HERE and HERE)

The first piece of advice is, don’t use your personal Facebook account. Instead, create a brand account. You’ll learn why later, but the general reason is that your IRL friends aren’t going to give you the sort of boost you need when you’re starting out.

Second, don’t use Facebook’s boosted posts function. According to the stats, it’s not worth it because it generally doesn’t work for streamers.

Facebook ads – flushing money down the drain

The main reason to avoid Facebook though is it’s actually terrible for getting known. Facebook’s own algorithms make organic advertising is pointless unless you run paid ads, and the sort of impact you’ll get organically is minimum. Post outreach in general is low (your posts aren’t even shown to every person who has “Liked” your page.

If you’re insistent on making this work, Facebook Groups are the way forward. Think of it as a staging post for all of your fans to meet up and link out to your other platforms.

What we will say is, Facebook is great for:

Long form posts

Facebook is awesome as a place for longer content. Almost like a blogging platform. Even though you should have a business account, use it like a personal one. Share, comment, interact. All that good stuff.

Facebook is also pretty good for hosting contests and events.

Generally though, focus on other sources of traffic. You’ll get much better returns for the same investment.

Reddit

Reddit is an awesome tool, despite the ‘reputation’ it might have in some circles (both deserved and undeserved). Used correctly, Reddit can skyrocket your reach and impact ridiculously, amazingly fast, which is doubly impressive because it’s absolutely free and anonymous if you want to be.

The formula is simple. Reddit is terrible for sharing who you are personally, but great for branding and sharing moments.

You should focus on becoming a face on /r/Twitch and the subreddits associated with whatever you stream.

Links to clips are popular on Reddit, as is getting features on some of the bigger subreddits. AMAs can also be really popular, especially if you’ve got a bit of personality and once you have a dedicated following.

Instagram

You know what Instagram is. If you don’t, where have you been for the past decade?

Nevertheless, Instagram is an awesome tool that any streamer can use to connect to their fans, on a more personal level. Used the right way, Instagram is an awesome tool, but it has to be used correctly.

Unlike a lot of other social media platforms, Instagram should be used for specific things by streamers. And these things are , not so strangely enough, exactly what Instagram was created for.

How you should be using Instagram for your streaming career:

If you’ve ever followed anyone major on Instagram, you’ll soon realize that they’re basically sharing the awesome moments of their lives. It is a visual storytelling platform.

Instagram is designed specifically to be aspirational. It’s a way for you to show off all the cool things that you love, that you love to do, and that you’re doing right now.

A lot of huge streamers use Instagram for specific things. For example, Lirik’s Instagram is entirely pictures of his cat and Ninja’s is a combination of Fortnite clips, pictures with his wife, and dog pictures.

This isn’t saying just post pictures of animals. It’s an example of ways you can use Instagram to focus on things outside of your stream and show a little more personality without actually showing off personal info.

One thing to consider is Instagram’s text limit. Compared to a lot of other social media platforms, it’s enormous, and you can use it to tell stories, drive people where you want, even shift merch and other business opportunities.

Don’t be afraid to go long with Instagram. It’s that sort of platform. People tend to browse it when they’re bored at work or school, commuting, that sort of thing. Giving them something to sink their teeth into will probably be appreciated.

People want to see your personal life, so great advice for Instagram (and life in general) is to try and lead as interesting a life as possible, and share as much of it as your are comfortable with your viewership.

If you’re travelling somewhere cool, post it up. Having a cool meal, snap away. Meeting other people that your fans might recognise (as of writing, TwitchCon is only a month away!) definitely slam that up there!

Most importantly, post your face. After all, Instagram is basically a food and selfie generator now. People connect to people.

What we’re saying is, Instagram is all about the story. You’re trying to brand yourself. Make your life interesting and have a unified idea across all of your content and a plan for releasing it.

You should have a clear idea in your head of the image you want people to see. How you want them to think of you, then create stories and pictures around that image.

Like all social media, you should definitely be interacting with people and following people in your niche, who do what you do. If you didn’t know already, Instagram shows stuff to people because they’ve interacted with each other. The more people you pay attention to and actually interact with, the better your chances of seeing stuff that’s relevant to you, as well as other guys and gals seeing your awesome content.

One last thing, don’t use Instagram to announce streams, competitions or other stuff. It’s not the place for that content, and there’s so many other options available to you. Instagram is the more personal and intimate of your social media platforms. (Ironic, I know.)

How often should you post?

When it comes to posting on Instagram, frequency doesn’t matter as much consistency. People don’t expect masses of posts, especially not from a streamer, but they do like to know roughly when and how often you’re going to post.

Once you’ve found something that works, you don’t have to stick to it. Don’t be afraid to mix things up, both in posting schedule and in the types of content you’re putting up. Who knows. You might stumble across some new secret technique that no one else is using.

How to use hashtags

If there’s one thing you need to understand when you’re hitting Instagram, it’s the importance of hashtags. Check out what’s popular, either by:

Seeing what other people like you are using, and mirroring that

Using a hashtag ranking tool. A quick Google search will turn up tons of these.

Never be afraid to throw out some of your own, too. Get a big enough following and you could start something trending. That’d be awesome, no?

Business accounts and you

if you’re going to be serious about Instagram and use it as a key part of your social media strategy, it might be worth investing in a paid business account.

Business account lets you pay for services like boosting to get your posts in front of the eyes that matter, as well as a whole bunch of useful tools for analytics and other things.

The quickest way to grow your brand

Everyone these days talks about branding as if it’s some kind of magic bullet.

Well, let me tell you that branding as you might have imagined it, trying to treat yourself as some sort of commodity and acting in a certain way so people tune in, is basically a load of crap!

Gonna keep saying it. People connect with people, and people are pretty good at telling when someone’s being fake.

Let’s take one of the biggest, most abrasive personalities out there right now. Dr Disrespect.

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying the man has a consistent image. That is branding.

But the thing is, if you or me tried to act that way, it wouldn’t work.

I’d be lucky if I looked this sane.

Why, because he’s basically taking what’s already there, and turning it up to 11.

That should be your branding strategy as well.

I’ll say it again, because it’s important. If you take one piece of advice from this Goliath monstrosity of an article, it should be this.

Take who you are, and amplify it.

You see, social media is pretty much the best way to grow your brand, but only if you use it to grow into the person you already are.

All the way up to 11

All of your social media, across every single platform, should be a unified whole. A coherent personality, a singular voice. No matter where people go and what people see, it should be you staring back at them, unadulterated and unashamed.

You know who you are. You know who you’re like, and what you stand for. What’s important for you might be very different to what’s important to me. You’re probably good at different things and know entirely different subjects.

And that’s the key.

An introverted, philosophy loving dude is going to have a very different social media profile from a extroverted, gregarious woman.

There’s no faking that.

So, in short:

Consistently portray who you are,

Have a plan of action,

Know what you want to talk about

Know what you want people to see, and how you’re going to go about it

Social media and finding sponsorships

The last major advantage social media gives you is the ability to link up with decision makers. Whilst you can’t expect to just bomb into their feed and get noticed straight away, used correctly social media is an awesome way to get on their radar and get noticed.

One devious little tip we’ve seen mentioned more than once is to use LinkedIn to find who you need to be talking to. It starts by finding someone on another platform, then searching the company on LinkedIn to see who you need to talk to.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to get on to your social media and find the decision makers. When you’ve got them, interact with them in some way and get on their radar. When we say interact, we mean it. If they release a video, you have to actually watch it, then share it and comment.

It’s the same with articles and other content. The idea is to establish an actual relationship, so when it comes time, they genuinely want to help you out.

Do this right, you won’t even need to ask for anything. When they get opportunities, they’ll remember you’re around and add you to their lists.

Using personal accounts (non-gaming-related) to boost your stream

We’ve read a lot of recommendations that you could use your personal contacts to help you kick start your streaming career.

For example, whenever your stream goes live, throwing a link up on to your personal social media accounts after telling friends and family to watch, follow, sub and all that goodness.

In our opinion, this isn’t worth it.

Yeah, it might be a burst of initial traffic, but it’s bad for two reasons:

The first is, this traffic isn’t going to be sustainable. Your friends and family will always help you out, (at least, they should) but like all things, they’re going get less enthusiastic about it as the days and weeks roll on. What might start as 20 to 30 people following and watching your stream, even if in the background, will fall off fast.

Second, it’s not organic, and the viewing figures and habits will reflect that. Streaming has been going long enough now that the algorithms are getting pretty smart. Twitch and other streaming websites know what a legit stream viewer looks like, and what’s fake. While these viewers aren’t fake, it will still register as an anomaly, which is not an auspicious beginning for your stream on a new streaming platform.

That’s why view-botting died an absolute death (minus some edge cases with embedded streams, which is beyond the scope of this article). There’s no point in getting this quick burst of growth, for it to all be taken away from you just as fast.

Build your stream organically and naturally. You’ll thank yourself in the long run.

In Conclusion

You made it all the way though!

Now that you’ve managed to read this whole guide, it’s time for a shameless plug (we wouldn’t be following our own advice if we didn’t push our own brand, now would we?). Whilst you’re here, you should follow us on all of our socials. There’s already a bunch of guides that can teach streamers like you the essentials you need to get started, with even more inbound over the coming few weeks. Make sure you add us to see exactly what we’ve got coming.

Twitter: @LSGuides