Oh, hi. I didn't see you come in. Well, no matter. Let's sit down and dig into part four of my whoknowshowlongthisis series of articles about streaming.

In my first article I spoke about advertising, but I've thought of more because sometimes I suck at pre-planning. This article is going to focus on promotion. There are a variety of tactics that people will use to drum up interest in their stream and get their name out there. I wanted to talk about three of the common ones.

The 24 Hour Stream

Many times I'll see streamers doing the 24 hour stream when a new game comes out. Now, full disclosure. I've never done a 24 hour stream (my personal best I believe is 14 hours), and I think that they can work in some ways to get viewers. However, most of the time the last 4-6 hours of the stream the streamer is losing, or has already lost, steam. They're fighting to stay away, they're not very talkative or responsive. It's not an easy thing to pull off. You'll see on this subreddit people who ask advice for their first 24 hour stream. My advice is you're going to get more mileage out of a 12 or 16 hour stream than a 24 hour stream. Viewers still known that you're not going anywhere for an extended amount of time. You can still make it an "event" that's not a normal every day occurrence. And f you've never done a very long stream before, for your own sake, do not make a 24 hour stream your first choice. You need to build up to it, and to make sure you can do it. You do not want to promise something you can't feasibly deliver.

The Charity Stream

Another idea small streams will have to get people in the door. Many of the times I've watched it, it's been a pretty big failure for the time invested in planning it. Most of the general population won't care about the word charity in your headline when looking for a stream to watch. Even if you combine the Charity Stream and the 24 Hour stream. If you stream 24 hours and make 10 bucks with a max concurrent viewership of 7, you're going to be happy you have 10 dollars to give to charity, BUT you're also going to have a lot of negative emotions because it didn't hit an internal goal you may have. That the event was a failure. That you're embarrassed. Etc.

If you're going to do a charity stream, do it because you want to. Do it because its a problem that you care about, or is close to home because someone you know was affected by it. Then promote it wherever you can that allows it. Maybe the subreddit of a specific game. The Steam discussion board of a game (BET YA FORGOT THEY EXISTED. Some people do read them). Reach out to the dev/pub of the game and ask if they can retweet your tweet at a certain day/time. Tag them in it. If you know the community lead for that game (if there is one) - tag their personal account. Yeah, it's annoying for them I'm sure, but it's also their job. But whatever you do, do not do a charity event for purely promotional reasons. There is nothing wrong with doing good things and hoping it gets paid back to you. It's human nature. But don't make that the reason you do it.

Giveaways

This is something that big streams sometimes rely on to drive people into their channel. It's basically the bait at the end of the hook, hoping to reel in new regulars. Now, it can work. But, you run the risk of having people show up just for free shit. And if you're not giving anything away, many of them won't be around. So it does help your numbers in one respect, but they're not people that will improve your community. I dare say some of the people you attract could hurt your community thanks to INTERESTING PERSONALITY QUIRKS.

I think, personal opinion here, giveaways should be used to thank the people who support your stream, instead of used to drive new random people to your stream. You foster ties to people who have supported you. If you have a bot with currency, you can use that to put an entrance gate on who can enter some giveaways. For example, they have to have the points you would accrue watching for 2 hours. Maybe you have 3 copies of the Division and people who have watched 20 hours of the stream can join. These are just some ideas. Now, I do suggest doing free and clear giveaways just because I don't think it's wise to always have a barrier to a giveaway - But I wouldn't give a 60 dollar game I paid for to a random person unless my stream was well established and it was budgeted. On limited funds, I'd much rather that game go to someone who was kind enough to share a considerable amount of their time with the stream. A random person may come back since they won a game in a raffle, but you already know a regular is going to come back with hopefully strengthened bonds.

Once again, we're not a giant stream, and these tips are all based off personal experience/opinion, so keep that in mind. If you have any questions about these topics, questions in general, or topics you'd like to to talk about in the next installment, feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks again, and remember to be good to each other.

Previous Posts

Part One
Part Two
Part Three