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Creator Camp

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New Viewer Retention Personal Branding Engaging Viewers Social Media Strategy Extensions Introduction to Twitch Analytics

New Viewer Retention

Engaging Viewers

In general, community members like it when creators interact with them. In fact, users who chat in their first visit are 50% more likely to come back to that channel. Here are some easy ways to get first time viewers engaged:

  • Respond in stream when your community talks to you on chat
  • Welcome and mention new people to your channel on stream
  • Encourage community members to talk to and mention each other, helping to foster a sense of community among your viewers

Viewers are most engaged in the first 15 and last 15 minutes of your stream, using strong calls-to-action (also known as CTAs) periodically while streaming can be very effective. Examples of this would be:

  • Prioritize verbal reminders to follow and turn on notifications
  • Set up alerts for your overlay to acknowledge new followers on screen
  • Set up chatbot to remind viewers on a timer to follow and turn on notifications
  • Add the Dynamic Follow Buttons Extension as an overlay or component
  • Display “follow me” text call to action on offline banner and/or panels

Examples of strong CTAs:

  • “If you’re enjoying my stream, hit the follow button above and turn on notifications”
    • !follow - “Enjoying the stream? Don’t forget to follow and turn on notifications to know when I go live!”
  • “I’m going to be live tomorrow at 5pm Pacific, so don’t forget to turn on notifications if you want to be automatically reminded”
    • !schedule - “I stream M-F at 5pm Pacific. Turn on notifications for a reminder when I go live”
  • “Did you know you can subscribe to my channel for free if you connect your Twitch account to Amazon Prime?”
    • !prime - “Connect your Twitch and Amazon accounts for a free subscription every month. Learn more here ”

Twitch also offers a number of tools to help creators increase the engagement in their chat, and increase the likelihood that a first time visitor returns to a future stream.

Polls

Polls are a quick and easy way for you to ask your community a question in chat.

Streamers can start a poll at anytime and viewers can begin to vote on their option.

  • Channels that run polls have 10% more viewers engaging when chat is visible

Polls are a simple solution to increase engagement on your channel

Channel Points

Channel Points is a customizable and channel-specific points system that allows you to reward members of your community

  • Channels with a large audience that have channel points enabled saw up to an 18% increase in time spent by viewers on their channel.
  • Channels with a large audience that have channel points enabled saw up to a 13% lift in chat participation among their viewers.

Megacheers

During a MegaCheer event, viewers that cheer a certain amount get exclusive emotes and randomly gift emotes for other viewers in the channel. The larger the MegaCheer, the greater the number of gifts given to other viewers.

  • Streamers that talk about a Megacheer event when it’s happening may see up to a 30% increase in Bits usage in their community.

Extensions

  • Engagement Extensions help viewers become active participants in your stream 
    • Sound Alerts: Be a part of the channel experience by using Bits to play streamer-selected sounds on stream
    • Crowd Control: Viewers can help or hinder a streamers progress in a speed run by using Bits
  • Content matched extensions lets viewers spectate their favorite streamers as if they were playing the game so that streamers can focus on playing the game competitively
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