How to manage a Twitch community

Growing your twitch channel once you start having enough viewers to think about making a living out of it is a lot about your online community management skills.

Outside of your entertainment job when you are on camera, keeping your viewers interested in your content and gravitating around you is the key to success.

Now, delivering the best community experience to your fanbase isn’t such an easy task. It is no wonder why most popular streamers have a community team helping them across their various social media platforms.

In this piece, we will explore how to develop your community-building skills, and get you on your way to being a great community leader. The next step to most successful streamers!

Make your stream a community experience

The first thing to managing and growing a community on Twitch is to solidify the foundations of it. These foundations are the early adopters, those viewers who have been with you through your whole journey and that you can rely on.

As such, we need to keep these special viewers entertained and interested so we can rely on them when needed.

Keep the current viewers active

Make your channel points relevant

Channel points have been introduced in order for loyal viewers to turn into your stream on a daily basis.

Most streamers ignore those small perks, but they actually can be crucial in keeping your viewers invested as they give the viewer a sense of progression and something to go for while watching you.

Some easy perks for channel points are offering to coach, playing with the streamer, or deciding on the music for example.

Have a community challenge once in a while

Another way to use channel points is to spend them on community challenges. While more demanding for both the streamer and the viewers in terms of time investment, community challenges are a great way to work towards a common goal.

Also, keeping the community updated on how the preparation for the challenge is going gives you something to share on a daily basis and build a sense of continuity.

Promote your most active viewers to channel moderators

While moderating can be seen as a responsible role, it has been proven that the best mods usually are the most loyal viewers.

Rewarding your most faithful allies with a distinctive role, and promoting it on your channel, like having a small celebration for it will enhance the sense that those who get invested in the stream won’t go unnoticed.

Promote interaction in between viewers outside of the stream

Your community doesn’t stop being active when your stream goes offline, the interaction can continue on social platforms, even with you not taking part in it.

Because of this, it is important to put other people forward, usually active members of the community, so that the community feeling does not rely entirely on you being there or not.

This will be key to keep your discord server active, or to have your name mentioned across social media.

Attract new viewers to grow the community

Use your most active viewers as examples

Outside of simply promoting them, viewers that have been here for a while are a good indicator of what works or doesn’t for you. Both in terms of content and in the community type you are building. Because of this, keeping in mind how you turned these regular viewers into active members of your community is a great way to gather information on how to attract new ones.

These “building viewers” will also help newcomers to get started within your community and interact with them in the chat, adding a new layer of interaction to your content.

Use Hosts and Raids

Outside of the sense of community inside your stream, it’s important to embrace the whole Twitch culture of building a community of streamers.

Through hosts and raids, you can direct your viewers to specific third-party content and control their wanderings on Twitch. Also, as the streamers you raid will likely raid you back someday, you know you will be getting new viewers who heard your name already and enjoy a similar type of content you offer.

Albeit scheduling conflicts with the other streamer, this is a great way to create a bigger community formed from the 2 smaller ones you had before.

Twitch Drops are the new streamer’s job interview

Whether it is time-based drops or event-based drops, having access to those is a great way to have a new audience check out your content.

Keep in mind though, that these new viewers aren’t here for your content specifically, so a good thing to do on these special occasions is to spice things up in order to be memorable.

Twitch Drops are also a good way to get in touch with your active community, interacting with them to see if some community challenge or special event could be something they would like for the occasion.

Mix up the content occasionally

While at first, a twitch channel growth is very connected to its content, once you start feeling the sense of community building and the support of your audience, mixing it up can be good.

Trying out a new awaited game, accepting games requests from channel points or community challenges, for example, can be a good way to see if you could grab the attention of a few new people by showing up in another category on Twitch.

Think outside of your Twitch experience

The most popular streamer platform is where the magic happens. But in order to keep on building a successful community, being active and posting relevant content on a regular basis on other social platforms is a requirement every streamer has to fulfill.

Likewise, being able to rethink your content from time to time in order to keep yourself relevant will do wonders for your longevity on the platform.

Build your various Social Platforms

Finding the right platform for you

Depending on the content you provide on twitch, not every social media platform is suited to be an extension of your twitch channel. In order to appear as quality content, it is important to find the platform with the right audience

For example, Twitter is the platform for Esports. Instagram is more suited for artists or visual content. TikTok tends to be great for lighter topics and playful content…

What to post about

Social media accounts from streamers tend to be focused on their content, which is absolutely normal, but very limiting.

These platforms can allow you to be much more open. Sharing and discussing very different topics, not related to your content will attract people from other horizons and can be a good way to grow a new audience. Be careful about off-limits topics, which usually have the opposite effect.

Social platforms are also a way to share different, much less time-consuming content than streaming, which tends to attract people with a lot of time.

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The best time to post

The perfect time to post depends a lot on your content and your streaming schedule.

A good posting time usually is before your stream, which reminds people about you and can entice them to tune in to your team.

Outside of this one, think about the profile of your audience and when they could have a break in their day. Lunch breaks, Bedtime, and travel times to get to work are 3 times in the day when people tend to check social media a lot.

Post to create interaction

Social media allow you to go further than simply presenting your content to the world. It also is a way to have community discussions if you post engaging content.

Discord is a great platform to get some feedback from active users who are used to your content while creating interaction.

On social media, you will gather people from different horizons, so make your posts less specific content than you would to a targeted audience. Creating interaction is key for these platforms’ algorithms to spread your content to wider audiences.

Create an everlasting presence online

Social engagement is about being present

Before they actively search for your content and make it a habit to check out your page, gaining casual viewers’ attention time can be compared to a grind.

Every time you appear in their social feed, or they see you while browsing twitch, a small reminder pops in their mind. After enough reminders, people tend to do a shortcut that your content must be good if you keep popping on their timeline, and will eventually check you out.

Even if you don’t have the capacity to create a huge moment that will attract the masses, sending daily subtle reminders on various platforms will lead to more people checking out your content in the long run.

Open your outer interests

Eventually, everyone gets tired of the same thing day after day. Even if we might still like it, the feeling of discovery being gone is enough to trigger boredom.

Outer interest will allow you to stay relevant to your community as you will be able to reinvent your content enough to not look like you hit a wall. At the same time, you will be able to touch new audiences in those closeby interests.

Monitor and keep conversations alive

In order to stay on people’s radar, you want to know what are the talking points when your name comes up and have the good conversations last for as long as possible.

Monitoring your online presence, also called social listening, will help you gain precious feedback from outside your community, or from members when they aren’t restricted by your community guidelines.
Keeping the conversation alive should be something subtle, don’t grab the attention trying to direct the conversation, instead look to bounce off what others have said to regain their interest.

The goal isn’t to be the one who talks, but to be the one talked about.

Be authentic, consistent and grateful

These are the big 3 traits that are making personalities last on social media:

• Being authentic will talk to the need for connections people have when they are joining a community. You might be a public figure, it’s important to show a part of yourself in order to create the chance for people to identify to you.
• Being consistent is the key to building a strong online reputation. Your communication and the way you engage with your community have to be the same accross the various social platforms
• Being grateful is a way to validate the fact that the whole thing is an exchange and you acknowledge the time and money your community members are putting into it.

Conclusion

Managing a Twitch community goes way further than simply your stream. When you turn off the camera, your viewers are getting stimuli from other sources, and the chance to discover other content creators in the process.

Solidifying your twitch community will go a long way into building a successful career, mostly because those stimuli will become opportunities to spread your name instead of losing some viewership.

In order to get there, it takes a lot of effort, both during your streams and outside of it, where both universes have to work together in order to create the most entertaining personality while sharing it efficiently with the world.

Frequently asked questions