Improve Your Viewership: Things You’re Forgetting About While Streaming

May 20, 20213 mins read

In the early days of streaming, it used to be enough to just get a stable stream up and running to attract viewers. Now you need to make a schedule, promote yourself on social media, create clips and highlights, and more. These are the things we want to talk about today, all those things you might be forgetting to do while you stream, things that could improve your viewership over time!

Creating clips

Unless you’ve been really disciplined with your phone, you know that everyone is gravitating towards short-form content these days. All the major streaming platforms have adopted a clipping or short clips type system. Why is this?

Well let’s be real, in any stream that is hours long, there’s a lot of dead air. So when you’re trying to improve your viewership, you probably don’t want to just tweet out the link and people come in when there’s nothing going on or you’re eating lunch, so it’s good to add clips to give people context about your stream.

Now clipping your stream while you are live is hard to do, but if you’ve grown an audience or have some good moderators, you can ask them to create clips of any moments they see. After the stream is over you can review these clips and make your own from the VOD. Some platforms will even let you download the clips so you can use them on your other social media accounts.

An Xbox One controller is being held in front of a wide monitor, gameplay could be one way to improve your viewership.

Get your social game right

Social media is a key to improving your viewership, and it’s not just posting the same clip across all the platforms and calling it a day. You need to be able to tailor your strategy to each platform and the various formats on the platforms. It’s not just a clickbaity tweet, but also making a story, fleet, or whatever form of content. Now while your phone makes this quick and easy to make, you can also use your streaming software to create this content.

We’ve made an assortment of videos for creating content for social media platforms, but the gist is, find out the resolution for the platform, set that up in your streaming software, and record some content to post on socials.

Some platforms unlock special tools when you reach a certain follower count, like being able to add links to Instagram stories, so be sure to take advantage of this as your reach grows. Take time to research how each platform’s discovery algorithm works, using things like hashtags, keywords, and descriptions to get those eyeballs you need in the beginning.

Get Up

Now depending on the kind of streaming, you’ll be doing, you may be sitting at your desk for hours on end. Now all the youngsters out there probably won’t worry about this too much, but for all us grown folk out there it’s important to get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour. This might not be something to improve your viewership, but, it’s certainly something you’re potentially forgetting to do while you’re streaming!

Now if you have a smartwatch it probably already reminds you to get up. But if not you can use macros to help remind you. Basically, all you need to do is set up a break scene that triggers every hour as a reminder to stand up and walk around. You can find out how to use Macros in XSplit Broadcaster here.

It can be a fun activity to do with your chat. Get up and take a few IRL laps. Your doctor and back will appreciate it in the future.

A large gaming chair is sat at a desk with two monitors, a PC, a microphone, a webcam. On the wall behind it are pictures of esports players winning cups. A DSLR camera is on a tripod next to the desk. The desk, is a standing desk, don't forget to stretch when you're looking to improve your viewership! — Photo by ELLA DON on Unsplash

There’s always something to talk about

Talking is the name of the game with streaming. Unless the content is actually watching paint dry, you always need to be talking about something even if no one is there. What you’re selling is you at the end of the day and the content will help improve your viewership.

If you’re having problems talking after the first 30 mins or so of the stream, then try to help yourself with a bit of prep work. Try to visit Reddit, forums, socials, or wherever you get your news and take note of whatever interests you. Copy the links or write the article headline in notepad and take a look at it when you are running out of things to talk about.

Also, keep a big jug of water nearby as it’s hard to keep the energy up when you’re dehydrated.

Check your analytics

One last tip I think a lot of people overlook when looking to improve your viewership is checking their analytics! Data is everything.

Now some platforms have more robust analytics than others, but you should be able to check at least where your viewership is coming from. Is it coming externally from your social media posts? From your followers? Does certain content perform better than others? Do you get more viewers at specific times? This is all useful data you can pull to help inform what direction you can point your content towards, so do try to take a look at it at least once a week.

As you can see, just streaming isn’t as simple as it used to be. This may seem overwhelming, but as long as you’re having fun creating stuff, it isn’t too bad! Let us know in the comments below what your pre and post-stream rituals are when it comes to improving your viewership!