The amount of live streamers continues to grow rapidly as it becomes more and more accessible. If you want to keep pushing and growing your viewer base here are a few suggestions to make it happen in 2017.
The Consistent Schedule
This won't be the first time you've heard it, yet having a consistent schedule that is easy for your viewers to remember helps significantly in the number of return viewers you can expect as well as finding those long-term regulars.
While many viewers do just jump on to twitch and see who's online, there are boatloads of viewers who will know your schedule by memory and make time to watch it. If you never stick to a schedule and set a precedent that you stream randomly then you are more likely to attract new viewers but will have a harder time keeping them.
More Collaborations
Collaborations seem to be the best way to build awareness of your lives stream. They are certainly a step up from a host and can do wonders for long-term viewer numbers if you are not streaming to the exact same audience and time-slot.
There is also the initial short-term boost that you can expect from bringing two audiences together and working up a larger room than normal.
Collaborations on Twitch are quite popular and you would do yourself a service by organizing a collaboration with another streamer every month or every quarter. Try reaching on to a dozen people on Twitter and you'll be surprised by the response you can get.
The best advice would be to come up with a plan or theme for the collaboration show and then present it to someone with some dates and times. Especially if you have the smaller stream then you should put in more effort but that is the price you pay to work your way up the Twitch ladder.
Better Offline Content Options
You want to get people addicted to your content. If you are offline then you want them watching VODs or playlists of old stream sessions.
Make sure you are highlighting the best portions of your stream to YouTube and promoting them in your chat room with a bot. Just drop the link every 60 minutes and you'll be surprised how many views you get and those will turn into subscribers.
It's up to you if you prefer to just keep your best content on Twitch but YouTube is such a naturally complementing platform to Twitch especially with the live annotation they now provide.
Add a Chatroom Loyalty System
Implementing a loyalty is a no-brainer to me. You don't really even have to give anything away. You can simply start with rankings for your regulars so they feel something by spending extending amounts of time in your chat room. Even just being able to differentiate from a new viewer is something nice for a regular to have.
You can use Ankhbot, Deepbot, and Vivibot. Those are three that come to mind.
In the future you can use it for giveaways or special merchandise you give away for points. Again, you set the amount so it doesn't cost you much but gives a lot of value back to the viewers.
One thing I really like about this is giving points away even if you are offline and they stay in chat. Then you can host more when you are offline to a greater effect!
More Engaging Social Media
I know I know, it's tough with a streamer schedule to also get on social media and put in the time there. But this is where your loyal viewers can be reached and engaged and are happy to have your presence felt. Just pick one platform but do it up right.
Whether that is Twitter, Facebook Pages, Instagram or Snapchat, make sure you are perceived to be social online if you want the maximum returns on all of your other platforms and content creation efforts.
These platforms are just so good at driving traffic to your content especially Twitter for streamers. It's so easy to build a small but dedicated following. Then when you are live you can blast twitter and pick up some extra views that way.
