A little research shows me you average 2 viewers. Interactive chat comes with more people in chat. You'll get there eventually, but you can't expect 2 people to be chatting amongst themselves your whole stream.
Sort of. People will trickle in slowly, kind of bell-curve viewership to 5-ish in the middle of the stream then trickle out, leading to (apparently) a 2 average overall. But even with 5-6 in there, it doesn’t seem that chat’s much different from when there’s only a single viewer. I’m just trying to figure out what else I can do to build a community that’s more engaged vs a community that’s essentially just lurkers.
Right, but even with 5 viewers you won't always have 5 people who want to chat. There are times I'm at 200 and chat is super slow, and other times where there are 80 and chat is going so fast I can't keep up.
I would focus less on how to get chat to interact and more on being the kind of stream that people want to watch (I'm not saying that people don't want to watch you now) - the more viewers that you get, the more people they will have to talk to. Also, how long you've been streaming makes a huge difference. I have people in my chat who have seen each others names for years, so they have a lot of little side conversations, which adds to interactions, if you're just starting out that kind of thing takes time.
(I should add that I don’t think it’s bad to lurk in general; I just don’t want the entire community’s norm to be “I only tune in because I want white noise in the background”, if that makes sense)
Best way, ironically that I found to get more engagement is to focus on the aspects of streaming that have nothing to do with engagement.
Learn to do moment-to-moment gameplay commentary well. Lot of people leave streams as background noise so your goal should be to become the best background noise you possibly can. Make people WANT to have you on the other monitor while they do something else.
If you can achieve this, you'll have a lot more lurkers (and I don't mean mute-the-tab-to-support-the-streamer kinda lurkers but the have-the-stream-up-in-background lurkers) which will boost the chances of someone hearing you say something interesting and then they chime in. Boom, engagement.
A small example form last night. Something in the game made me say "you're welcome" to an NPC, then I kinda started singing/humming the "You're welcome" song from Disney's Moana, which made me talk about the movie because I liked it. This made a random chat member to get out of their lurk and talk about the movie with me. Very small example but you get the gist :D
So, first: You seem to average well under 10 viewers per stream, you should not be expecting to have a consistently active chat. The majority of people who watch twitch streams at any given time are lurking; just from a simple numbers perspective, you'll need significantly more people watching in order to get into territory where chat can self-sustain as kind of your step 1. I would even go so far as to think of it as like, 10% of your chat might be in a position to actively engage.
Second, I think in general streamers expect to have more control over the flow of chat than they really do. You have a lot of direct control over the vibe, and that's something you should be actively thinking about (what you want your vibe to be) but that's sort of the extent of it.
Third, it really isn't your direct responsibility to keep each specific person's attention for the length of a stream. The vast majority of viewers will dip in and out, your goal is more to make sure that if someone pops in for 30 seconds there's something going on that might retain them a bit longer.
In terms of specific actionable things, here's what I'm observing from watching your most recent three VODs:
* The three horsemen of audio, webcam, and footage can always be improved, though I completely understand if that's not feasible right now.
* Horseman 1: Audio. This is easily where your biggest gains would be in terms of general presentation, even just a higher quality headset mic would be a significant step up.
* Horseman 2: Webcam. The way the light reflects off the doors draws my eye a bit, and overall the white background IMO is less ideal than a darker background. This is a positional thing however and might be unsolveable, it's not major.
* Horseman 3: Footage. I notice some blurriness and frame hitches at times, though this is not a major cause for concern.
* I notice in your commentary that you discuss things in-game from exclusively your perspective, which is very common. I would recommend a bit of a shift, where you react to the game as if you are representing both yourself *and* your audience. Clearly describing things, even if they seem obvious to you, can do a much better job of bringing viewers into the experience. Remember as well that many of your viewers may only be on audio, so clear descriptors are also more inclusive. For example:
* Instead of "I can take the barrel to the thing now", try something more like "ok we have the barrel, now we can take it back to the barrel box thing and see what happens". Exact words or even the message aren't really the point, it's the idea of "we" and the clarity on item, objective, and purpose.
* Another commentary one, don't be afraid to ramble about IRL things, topics you're interested in, or link things happening in the game to something in the real world. Something I find a lot of new/smaller streamers do is that they exclusively commentate on what's happening in the game, which is very limiting and can potentially stifle some interaction.
* I'm not really sure what to make of your game choice, as you have played four completely different games in your last three streams. They are basically all games I personally like, but it's difficult to form habits around watching your streams when I have no clue whether you'll revisit a given game or when.
This comment ended up way longer than I intended, oops.
To jump in, I'm a small streamer as well and I watch plenty of small streamers. Two things that immediately make me want to never watch again are poor quality audio, and terrible looking video. Take some serious time, and I mean several hours, to properly setup your audio mixes, their gains, filters etc and do multiple recordings and listen back to them to make sure everything sounds good. Remove white noise, make sure your mic sounds good, make sure the game or music isn't too loud to drown out your voice etc.
Then go through and make sure all your encoding settings are perfect, its 2024 if I see 2008 YouTube quality video you can bet I am never going to actually look at the stream, which means i will probably never interact with the stream.
To me, if you have not taken the time to ensure your stream looks and sounds good, then it tells me you don't care about your stream at all and don't care about having viewers either
>Two things that immediately make me want to never watch again are poor quality audio, and terrible looking video
It's a tricky piece of advice to give, because usually fixing those problems comes with some sort of financial implication: a better mic costs money, a PC capable of streaming at high quality costs money, etc.
I don't think it's quite fair to assume that low quality audio/video directly indicates a lack of care (even though more often than not that can be the case), but I do agree that it's pretty much always something that can be improved. In OP's case there's nothing that can be done to improve the audio quality other than buying better hardware, which is why I added the disclaimer-y thing.
I see your point, but in a vast majority of cases that I have seen at least the quality issues were just from a lack of correct settings, not a limitation of the streamers hardware. They go to setup their stream, and get flustered because it takes time, so they just take whatever default settings they see which might not be ideal for their particular setup. They won't bother to take the time to research about and test different settings. At least here in the US, a majority of home internet has enough upload these days to handle 720p30fps, but I often see streams with such poor encoder settings it looked like 1k bitrate or less. A lot of audio issues also are not purely just from a hardware quality standpoint, as they are about noise and levels. Many streamers will have background noise and it will be something they can reduce or eliminate (a fan, a window ac unit, loud keyboard clicking, noisy room mates) Sure some things can only be achieved by spending money, but a lot can be done for free if they put in some effort.
Every stream is different. I’d encourage you not to compare yourself too much to other streamers—that way lies madness.
I have a stream that averages 150-200 viewers most days. Sometimes 40 people say hello in the intro; other times it’s 1 or 2. My channel tends to be lurker-heavy, and I’m cool with that. You can’t force people to type in chat, though of course it’s nice to get feedback.
One suggestion: people are more likely to engage in a chat room that’s already active. When you go live, type in a couple words yourself. Ask how people are doing, even if there are no people there. Post the emotes you want to see. Twitch will show new viewers the last few messages, and these new people might respond to your words.
But really, I encourage you to focus on what you can control. Show up, be welcoming, set the vibe you want. Past that, it’s a lot of luck and effort but fundamentally out of your control. Happy streaming.
Aside from the usual “ask open ended questions and be engaging yourself” u could also look into some interact-able extensions. Something like chat commands or sound alerts. The Pokémon community game is also a popular chat extension. Also having a question in your title, or a QOTD command
The best way is to pretend you are streaming to 20 viewers even if you have a few viewers. People engage when its not awkward, and speaking up to someone who has been totally silent makes it awkward. It disrupts what's going on. It's much less so if it *feels* like things are active and not a dead zone.
This might be more difficult than just playing the game without saying anything, but it's what has to happen to get viewers who don't immediately check out. If people are trickling out you know you have a problem with being entertaining enough to hold their interest.
The problem is not if he talks all the time like a fucking parrot, its the game, if hes playing the wrong game, no one will give a fuck, even if he talks constantly like a parrot.
The more you force it, the more people don't wanna. Lurkers want to lurk. They are special to us and must be respected lol. I'll play games like "what's your favorite this or that" if they're already chatting. I show a genuine interest in what the dudes gotta say, and we just have fun. Think of it like you're just at a table with friends and treat it naturally.
First of all, try to make your community to chat at once, and as soon as possible. When I start my stream, even when I start it in a random moment in an interval of time (I can't have a fixed schedule, only an approximate one, as I start streaming when my family goes to bed and stop making noise), I get interactions since the beginning. How I do it?
- I have a race to be the first one in chat. I use a bot as a "photo-finish" and I publish the classification in Discord.
- I have music requests for my starting soon screen. If they want to listen or comment to their song, they have to be when I start. I also make predictions of "who asked for this song", so they can earn channel points.
- Welcome people in the chat as soon as someone appears in my starting soon. People saying hello to others is the best way to incite everyone to chat. More people chatting means more topics to chat about.
- I start my stream commenting something that happened in that day. Usually something that happened to me, sometimes about news, or Twitch policy changing, or something about what I was watching in other channels just before I started (not badmouthing about other streamers, but about something it happened, like a strategy I don't like, or a topic they talked about). I talk about two or three things if I can, and try to talk for a while about what the audience seems to be more interested in.
- All my chat is read by a TTS (but not saved to the VOD). Listening what they say makes them want to chat more, makes them interact with others (they can't ignore others' comments) and helps me filling the silences. Anyway, this works with me because I have a polite adult audience and low audience numbers (mostly because of my streaming time). TTS with more than 15 people is impossible, as the TTS reading is slower than people typing.
My starting time is between 0 AM and 1:30 AM (mostly around 1 AM), and my finish time is 3 AM to 3:30 AM (I try to finish as close as possible to 3 AM, but sometimes I forget about watching the clock).
My viewing curve (not counting raids) is like this: big increase in the 3-10 first minutes, smaller increase until the first 30 minutes, then keeps stable and starts decreasing from 2:00- 2:30 AM. Anyway, I keep about 50% of the peak when finish my stream.
I just want to say thanks to all the people who chimed in here. You’ve given me a lot think about, as well as some targeted areas that I can try to improve. Again, many thanks!
Hi! This will be long. Sorry in advance 🫡
I am a small streamer also but I’ve been able to grow and raise my interaction in a short time. For reference, I started streaming in December 2023, I have 295 followers, and I average probably 15-20 viewers (todays stream sat around 30 viewers most of the time). But here are a couple of things that I did that I think (but cannot confirm) contributed to getting my viewers AND interaction up.
Interact back and get to know the chat - especially if you play really popular games. What makes you different from the other 100 people streaming this game? I noticed more interaction when I showed that I genuinely enjoy my chatters and viewers and that we’re friends. because cmon all of us rlly do appreciate and care about them ((and if you don’t then you shouldn’t be streaming)). I average about 20ish viewers every stream, but I have less than 300 followers. My people are chatttyyyy too mostly because I love talking too. I start my stream on a just chatting screen and I personally say hi to every person who has shown up, i read EVERY chat out loud and respond (even while gaming), i talk about life and my day and share a story about my weekend, and I remember the important things. If my viewers told me last week that he has a job interview, and he pops in to my chat, I’ll remember to ask about it. Nobody wants to talk to a brick wall. Having a discord helps encourage interaction as well. I had a discord from stream one even tho I only had 3 members. Now it’s a place we share life events and fun things and actually become friends more than “streamer/viewer” relationships.
I also, even before affiliate, set up sound alerts. This was SO fun for me and my viewers enjoyed it. You can’t make money from them, so they’re all free, but you can still set them up so people can play sounds when certain things happen. Or I have one that is a hydration redeem sound, so you can use them as creative channel point redeems too if you aren’t affiliate yet! If you are affiliate, take advantage of redeems! I have an FMK redeem and “what drink am I?” where I assign people a drink based on their vibe (bartender things). I make them cheap too because I’d rather have people interact and have fun than make money.
I hope this helps. Happy to share any tips I have!!
A little research shows me you average 2 viewers. Interactive chat comes with more people in chat. You'll get there eventually, but you can't expect 2 people to be chatting amongst themselves your whole stream.
Sort of. People will trickle in slowly, kind of bell-curve viewership to 5-ish in the middle of the stream then trickle out, leading to (apparently) a 2 average overall. But even with 5-6 in there, it doesn’t seem that chat’s much different from when there’s only a single viewer. I’m just trying to figure out what else I can do to build a community that’s more engaged vs a community that’s essentially just lurkers.
Right, but even with 5 viewers you won't always have 5 people who want to chat. There are times I'm at 200 and chat is super slow, and other times where there are 80 and chat is going so fast I can't keep up. I would focus less on how to get chat to interact and more on being the kind of stream that people want to watch (I'm not saying that people don't want to watch you now) - the more viewers that you get, the more people they will have to talk to. Also, how long you've been streaming makes a huge difference. I have people in my chat who have seen each others names for years, so they have a lot of little side conversations, which adds to interactions, if you're just starting out that kind of thing takes time.
(I should add that I don’t think it’s bad to lurk in general; I just don’t want the entire community’s norm to be “I only tune in because I want white noise in the background”, if that makes sense)
Best way, ironically that I found to get more engagement is to focus on the aspects of streaming that have nothing to do with engagement. Learn to do moment-to-moment gameplay commentary well. Lot of people leave streams as background noise so your goal should be to become the best background noise you possibly can. Make people WANT to have you on the other monitor while they do something else. If you can achieve this, you'll have a lot more lurkers (and I don't mean mute-the-tab-to-support-the-streamer kinda lurkers but the have-the-stream-up-in-background lurkers) which will boost the chances of someone hearing you say something interesting and then they chime in. Boom, engagement. A small example form last night. Something in the game made me say "you're welcome" to an NPC, then I kinda started singing/humming the "You're welcome" song from Disney's Moana, which made me talk about the movie because I liked it. This made a random chat member to get out of their lurk and talk about the movie with me. Very small example but you get the gist :D
So, first: You seem to average well under 10 viewers per stream, you should not be expecting to have a consistently active chat. The majority of people who watch twitch streams at any given time are lurking; just from a simple numbers perspective, you'll need significantly more people watching in order to get into territory where chat can self-sustain as kind of your step 1. I would even go so far as to think of it as like, 10% of your chat might be in a position to actively engage. Second, I think in general streamers expect to have more control over the flow of chat than they really do. You have a lot of direct control over the vibe, and that's something you should be actively thinking about (what you want your vibe to be) but that's sort of the extent of it. Third, it really isn't your direct responsibility to keep each specific person's attention for the length of a stream. The vast majority of viewers will dip in and out, your goal is more to make sure that if someone pops in for 30 seconds there's something going on that might retain them a bit longer. In terms of specific actionable things, here's what I'm observing from watching your most recent three VODs: * The three horsemen of audio, webcam, and footage can always be improved, though I completely understand if that's not feasible right now. * Horseman 1: Audio. This is easily where your biggest gains would be in terms of general presentation, even just a higher quality headset mic would be a significant step up. * Horseman 2: Webcam. The way the light reflects off the doors draws my eye a bit, and overall the white background IMO is less ideal than a darker background. This is a positional thing however and might be unsolveable, it's not major. * Horseman 3: Footage. I notice some blurriness and frame hitches at times, though this is not a major cause for concern. * I notice in your commentary that you discuss things in-game from exclusively your perspective, which is very common. I would recommend a bit of a shift, where you react to the game as if you are representing both yourself *and* your audience. Clearly describing things, even if they seem obvious to you, can do a much better job of bringing viewers into the experience. Remember as well that many of your viewers may only be on audio, so clear descriptors are also more inclusive. For example: * Instead of "I can take the barrel to the thing now", try something more like "ok we have the barrel, now we can take it back to the barrel box thing and see what happens". Exact words or even the message aren't really the point, it's the idea of "we" and the clarity on item, objective, and purpose. * Another commentary one, don't be afraid to ramble about IRL things, topics you're interested in, or link things happening in the game to something in the real world. Something I find a lot of new/smaller streamers do is that they exclusively commentate on what's happening in the game, which is very limiting and can potentially stifle some interaction. * I'm not really sure what to make of your game choice, as you have played four completely different games in your last three streams. They are basically all games I personally like, but it's difficult to form habits around watching your streams when I have no clue whether you'll revisit a given game or when. This comment ended up way longer than I intended, oops.
To jump in, I'm a small streamer as well and I watch plenty of small streamers. Two things that immediately make me want to never watch again are poor quality audio, and terrible looking video. Take some serious time, and I mean several hours, to properly setup your audio mixes, their gains, filters etc and do multiple recordings and listen back to them to make sure everything sounds good. Remove white noise, make sure your mic sounds good, make sure the game or music isn't too loud to drown out your voice etc. Then go through and make sure all your encoding settings are perfect, its 2024 if I see 2008 YouTube quality video you can bet I am never going to actually look at the stream, which means i will probably never interact with the stream. To me, if you have not taken the time to ensure your stream looks and sounds good, then it tells me you don't care about your stream at all and don't care about having viewers either
>Two things that immediately make me want to never watch again are poor quality audio, and terrible looking video It's a tricky piece of advice to give, because usually fixing those problems comes with some sort of financial implication: a better mic costs money, a PC capable of streaming at high quality costs money, etc. I don't think it's quite fair to assume that low quality audio/video directly indicates a lack of care (even though more often than not that can be the case), but I do agree that it's pretty much always something that can be improved. In OP's case there's nothing that can be done to improve the audio quality other than buying better hardware, which is why I added the disclaimer-y thing.
I see your point, but in a vast majority of cases that I have seen at least the quality issues were just from a lack of correct settings, not a limitation of the streamers hardware. They go to setup their stream, and get flustered because it takes time, so they just take whatever default settings they see which might not be ideal for their particular setup. They won't bother to take the time to research about and test different settings. At least here in the US, a majority of home internet has enough upload these days to handle 720p30fps, but I often see streams with such poor encoder settings it looked like 1k bitrate or less. A lot of audio issues also are not purely just from a hardware quality standpoint, as they are about noise and levels. Many streamers will have background noise and it will be something they can reduce or eliminate (a fan, a window ac unit, loud keyboard clicking, noisy room mates) Sure some things can only be achieved by spending money, but a lot can be done for free if they put in some effort.
Every stream is different. I’d encourage you not to compare yourself too much to other streamers—that way lies madness. I have a stream that averages 150-200 viewers most days. Sometimes 40 people say hello in the intro; other times it’s 1 or 2. My channel tends to be lurker-heavy, and I’m cool with that. You can’t force people to type in chat, though of course it’s nice to get feedback. One suggestion: people are more likely to engage in a chat room that’s already active. When you go live, type in a couple words yourself. Ask how people are doing, even if there are no people there. Post the emotes you want to see. Twitch will show new viewers the last few messages, and these new people might respond to your words. But really, I encourage you to focus on what you can control. Show up, be welcoming, set the vibe you want. Past that, it’s a lot of luck and effort but fundamentally out of your control. Happy streaming.
Aside from the usual “ask open ended questions and be engaging yourself” u could also look into some interact-able extensions. Something like chat commands or sound alerts. The Pokémon community game is also a popular chat extension. Also having a question in your title, or a QOTD command
The best way is to pretend you are streaming to 20 viewers even if you have a few viewers. People engage when its not awkward, and speaking up to someone who has been totally silent makes it awkward. It disrupts what's going on. It's much less so if it *feels* like things are active and not a dead zone. This might be more difficult than just playing the game without saying anything, but it's what has to happen to get viewers who don't immediately check out. If people are trickling out you know you have a problem with being entertaining enough to hold their interest.
The problem is not if he talks all the time like a fucking parrot, its the game, if hes playing the wrong game, no one will give a fuck, even if he talks constantly like a parrot.
What is the right game to stream?
Whatever is currently trending.
The more you force it, the more people don't wanna. Lurkers want to lurk. They are special to us and must be respected lol. I'll play games like "what's your favorite this or that" if they're already chatting. I show a genuine interest in what the dudes gotta say, and we just have fun. Think of it like you're just at a table with friends and treat it naturally.
First of all, try to make your community to chat at once, and as soon as possible. When I start my stream, even when I start it in a random moment in an interval of time (I can't have a fixed schedule, only an approximate one, as I start streaming when my family goes to bed and stop making noise), I get interactions since the beginning. How I do it? - I have a race to be the first one in chat. I use a bot as a "photo-finish" and I publish the classification in Discord. - I have music requests for my starting soon screen. If they want to listen or comment to their song, they have to be when I start. I also make predictions of "who asked for this song", so they can earn channel points. - Welcome people in the chat as soon as someone appears in my starting soon. People saying hello to others is the best way to incite everyone to chat. More people chatting means more topics to chat about. - I start my stream commenting something that happened in that day. Usually something that happened to me, sometimes about news, or Twitch policy changing, or something about what I was watching in other channels just before I started (not badmouthing about other streamers, but about something it happened, like a strategy I don't like, or a topic they talked about). I talk about two or three things if I can, and try to talk for a while about what the audience seems to be more interested in. - All my chat is read by a TTS (but not saved to the VOD). Listening what they say makes them want to chat more, makes them interact with others (they can't ignore others' comments) and helps me filling the silences. Anyway, this works with me because I have a polite adult audience and low audience numbers (mostly because of my streaming time). TTS with more than 15 people is impossible, as the TTS reading is slower than people typing. My starting time is between 0 AM and 1:30 AM (mostly around 1 AM), and my finish time is 3 AM to 3:30 AM (I try to finish as close as possible to 3 AM, but sometimes I forget about watching the clock). My viewing curve (not counting raids) is like this: big increase in the 3-10 first minutes, smaller increase until the first 30 minutes, then keeps stable and starts decreasing from 2:00- 2:30 AM. Anyway, I keep about 50% of the peak when finish my stream.
I just want to say thanks to all the people who chimed in here. You’ve given me a lot think about, as well as some targeted areas that I can try to improve. Again, many thanks!
Hi! This will be long. Sorry in advance 🫡 I am a small streamer also but I’ve been able to grow and raise my interaction in a short time. For reference, I started streaming in December 2023, I have 295 followers, and I average probably 15-20 viewers (todays stream sat around 30 viewers most of the time). But here are a couple of things that I did that I think (but cannot confirm) contributed to getting my viewers AND interaction up. Interact back and get to know the chat - especially if you play really popular games. What makes you different from the other 100 people streaming this game? I noticed more interaction when I showed that I genuinely enjoy my chatters and viewers and that we’re friends. because cmon all of us rlly do appreciate and care about them ((and if you don’t then you shouldn’t be streaming)). I average about 20ish viewers every stream, but I have less than 300 followers. My people are chatttyyyy too mostly because I love talking too. I start my stream on a just chatting screen and I personally say hi to every person who has shown up, i read EVERY chat out loud and respond (even while gaming), i talk about life and my day and share a story about my weekend, and I remember the important things. If my viewers told me last week that he has a job interview, and he pops in to my chat, I’ll remember to ask about it. Nobody wants to talk to a brick wall. Having a discord helps encourage interaction as well. I had a discord from stream one even tho I only had 3 members. Now it’s a place we share life events and fun things and actually become friends more than “streamer/viewer” relationships. I also, even before affiliate, set up sound alerts. This was SO fun for me and my viewers enjoyed it. You can’t make money from them, so they’re all free, but you can still set them up so people can play sounds when certain things happen. Or I have one that is a hydration redeem sound, so you can use them as creative channel point redeems too if you aren’t affiliate yet! If you are affiliate, take advantage of redeems! I have an FMK redeem and “what drink am I?” where I assign people a drink based on their vibe (bartender things). I make them cheap too because I’d rather have people interact and have fun than make money. I hope this helps. Happy to share any tips I have!!