SamiShake
Twitch
In 2017 I launched a gaming and personality driven Twitch channel called SamiShake. Building a following is a huge part of running a successful Twitch channel, but so are retention and engagement which I cultivated in the following ways:
Presentation
The first step in building a community from the ground up was providing an aesthetically pleasing, organized landing page. The About section included:
List of commands viewers could use in chat to encourage engagement
A schedule to showcase stream consistency and when viewers should expect to find me
Links to socials
A list of perks for each subscription tier
A donation list to acknowledge viewers who contribute
A link to reaction gifs that viewers were encouraged to use on other social platforms
Buttons, banners, logo, and emotes were commissioned from different artists but kept cohesive enough so that my brand would be easily recognized.
Social Media
On the channel, I delivered consistency, charisma, and an aesthetically pleasing viewer experience, but pushing growth further meant branching outside of the Twitch platform into social media. In order to appeal to my demographic, learning and understanding Facebook & Instagram algorithms became a staple in growing my channel.
By experimenting with different post types and captions, I was able to develop a strong knowledge on what made the largest impact on the metrics that mattered in order to get my channel recognized. I took this time to also play around with paid vs organic reach so that I would be able to understand the pros and cons of each strategy, as well as when it would be beneficial to implement each one.
Understanding and learning about my demographic, and what kind of content they enjoyed seeing, gave me the chance to pivot my approach in what I created and shared for future posts. Consistency with observing analytics gave me the tools and knowledge I needed to continue fostering channel growth.
Networking
The second most important skill was networking. By networking with other streamers, it allowed me the opportunity to reach a new audience that was familiar with the platform. I was able to learn new strategies by observing how the streamers interacted with their fans, and applied this knowledge to how I ran my channel.
I would also spend time seeking out streamers with a larger community, who appealed to a similar demographic, to gauge interest in doing collaborations.
Submitting “fail” clips to well known YouTube channels dedicated to showcasing “Twitch Fails” was another way to capitalize on channel growth. By doing this, viewers were able to learn about and seek out my channel for a chance to catch these hilarious moments in real time.
Within the 7 months of streaming through consistency, promotion, networking, and engagement with viewers, I had gained 5000 followers, and 29.5k channel views.
