Perfecting Your Post-Stream Process

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 208 - Perfecting Your Post-Stream Process

In various past entries I’ve made the case for all the automated processes I love to use on my streams. In Creating a Pre-Stream Checklist I helped you to keep your streaming tasks organized. The entry Setting Up Pre-Stream Automation went even further into preventing setup mistakes by making a plan and sticking to it. There’s more to be explored outside the pre-stream process, however. After your show is finished there are also various tasks that need doing, whether that involves creating clips, making social media posts, or downloading your episode for archiving purposes. What’s the best way to keep track of everything so you don’t forget? In this entry, we’ll talk about how to perfect your post-stream process. 

As I always say in entries like this, experience is always more valuable than mistake prevention. If you haven't done at least ten official broadcasts on your channel yet, get out there and start streaming. For more info on breaking into the craft, see the entry Surviving Your First Ten Streams.

➢ SAVING FOR POSTERITY

If you’ve been following The Twitch Playbook, you’ll know about how I use YouTube as a Twitch streamer. When I was a Twitch Affiliate, I would post my full streams to YouTube 24 hours after they had gone live. After canceling my Affiliate contract, I now simply go live directly to YouTube at the same time as Twitch. This makes it even easier to archive my content, as there are fewer steps involved. But whatever your Twitch situation looks like, using a solid post-stream process is a great way to archive your shows. 

For some reason, episodes I did of the 
first Yakuza Kiwami 5 years ago
still get viewed today.

The above-mentioned entry Setting Up Pre-Stream Automation went into detail about some of my process in setting up a YouTube video. Since I go live directly to that platform along with Twitch, it means I do some of the archiving steps before my stream, rather than after. But once the show is over, there are still a few things to do. I find a nice moment from the just-finished stream and take a screenshot. I then add that screenshot to a templated thumbnail I’ve created in Photoshop beforehand, adding a little unique title about the episode and the episode number. I then add that thumbnail and descriptive title to the previously broadcast Twitch and YouTube streams. Once this is done, I add a little green check mark ✅ emoji to the end of the episode title. This is a signal to myself that the formatting step for this episode is complete. 

The ‘check mark’ step might seem redundant, but considering the lifestyle I lead, it’s proven itself to be one of the most critical elements on my shows. On a day I’m traveling across the country for business, I may do a Duolingo show from the airport terminal. On another day I might be going live from Tokyo. Or I could be home, but need to run out to a restaurant immediately after the stream. The day after that I might still do my shows but be so pressed for time that I don’t have time to format them yet. So now it’s two days later, which means I’ve done six streams, none of which have been formatted. Until I had a system in place to make it very easy to see which shows are completely finished being archived, I would often lose track of which ones needed to be worked on. 

But why archive your shows at all? I’ve spoken in past entries before about how many things you can do with your old streams, but we'll go into it a bit here too. You can learn from them by seeing your old performances, you can pull clips for highlight reels or channel intros, and of course it can allow viewers to discover or rediscover your old content if they didn’t see it live. I’ve found that old VOD archives of my streams on YouTube would sometimes gain a good amount of popularity out of nowhere. When a game’s sequel gets announced, a stream I made of the previous game might rise in views, or a certain type of food I ate on stream in Japan would garner a huge amount of interest in the corresponding video. Sometimes a stream in which I played an old PS2 game gets attention, presumably because there aren’t many other videos showing that rare game to be found. These spikes can happen the next day, or sometimes years after I released the video. You never really know how or when stream archives will affect your channel, but I’ve always found that these comprehensive, nicely formatted, and well-organized archives have been a major benefit to my streaming experience. For more info about how to archive your own shows, see the entry Archiving Your Twitch Streams. 

➢ MAKE IT YOUR OWN

Archiving is the primary purpose for my own personal post-stream process, but there are many useful things you might want to do after your show. If you like to grab clips of your shows, or even edit those clips into highlight reels that you show every Friday on stream, it’s useful to become disciplined about grabbing those once the stream is finished. In the entry Clipping and Highlighting Your Streams, I talked about my process for marking clippable moments during my show, so I could take the time to properly save them later. If you like to clip your streams, this technique will help to make your post-show process much more efficient. 

Shoutout. Get it?

Many streamers also like to make social media posts after their show is off the air. I personally do this in a barebones way, writing a Tweet that simply describes what happened on stream and posting an embedded link to the finished episode. In the past, when I used to raid other streamers after each broadcast, I would also give a shoutout to the person I raided, as well as any other streamers who raided me, in my post-stream Tweet. This is great for networking on Twitch, as it helps others as well as yourself. Some streamers even post shoutouts to viewers who cheered a particularly high amount, or repeat subscribers who reached a major milestone. Social media is a great benefit to a Twitch streamer who wants to grow, and you can help your channel a lot by making this into a regular step in your process. 

There are all sorts of useful things you can attach to your post-stream process, and they don’t always have to be related to the episode you just finished. You could say that you’ll make one small fix to your stream each time you end a show. Or you might want to make one new Instagram post after each episode. You can even use this habit as an excuse to start another habit, like going for a quick run after each episode, or doing some pushups. But no matter what you add to your routine, I’d be surprised if you didn’t see positive results pretty soon after enacting this kind of organizational technique. So give it a try. With a solid pre-stream and post-stream process, you’ll go far on Twitch.

Plant the Seeds for Future Streams

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 206 - Plant the Seeds for Future Streams

It’s easy to think that large, singular ideas are what make the most important changes for a Twitch streamer. This new feature on the show, that new game you’re playing, or a new schedule you announced to your followers. But gimmicks like this only act as a shot in the arm for a Twitch channel. They don’t actually make you any better of a streamer. In reality, like planting a seed and continuing to water it over time, great changes on a Twitch channel are effected by making continuous small efforts each day. In this entry, we’ll talk about planting the seeds for future streams. 

➢ STICKING TO YOUR WORD

Let’s say you’ve just announced to your followers that you’re going to start streaming on a new schedule. Mondays are for horror games, Thursdays are for sidescrollers and Saturdays are when you play competitive shooters with your community. This is great, and it might even get a positive boost in attention from your community, but this announcement, while exciting, doesn’t represent any actual progress. Not yet at least. What will really decide the excellence of your plan is whether you’re disciplined enough to stick to this schedule you’ve committed yourself to. If you start missing your Thursday shows because you continuously have to work late, your promises for Thursday content don’t really count for much. 

Your plan for playing spooky games only 
matters if you can stick to it.

These kinds of things usually come back to your general discipline. Can you stick to habits once you start them? This is a difficult but necessary skill for anyone who wants to grow as a streamer, or even to keep streaming in general. Once you have built a solid foundation of discipline however, it usually carries over from one thing to another. For example, following your pre-stream setup routine consistently might make you more likely to stick to your live schedule a year from now, and that might make you better at consistently posting your content on TikTok the year after that. These are all different activities, but they all involve the same mindset. You make a habit and you stick to it. In the entry Solidify Your Streaming Habits I spoke about how I obey the systems I’ve built without question, and this has helped me to improve several aspects of my content, and keep my shows coming out no matter what. 

➢ BUILDING MOMENTUM

The book Good to Great by Jim Collins is primarily about business, but many of its teachings apply to pretty much any field. One of the anecdotes that stuck with me (at the risk of now mixing the metaphors of this entry) was his idea of the ‘Flywheel Effect.’ Here’s how he describes this concept on his website: 

“No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”

Pirate ships also have big, heavy wheels.

At first, the massive wheel (which, in his example, is 30 feet in diameter and weighs 5,000 pounds) is so huge that it takes hours of pushing just to make it turn once on its axis. But as you keep going, the momentum you’ve built up with the wheel makes it easier and easier to push. Eventually, if you don’t give up the momentum, the wheel begins spinning with such force that it’s nearly unstoppable. Collins goes on to say, “Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?” You wouldn’t be able to answer; it’s just a nonsensical question. Was it the first push? The second? The fifth? The hundredth? No! It was all of them added together in an overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction. Some pushes may have been bigger than others, but any single heave—no matter how large—reflects a small fraction of the entire cumulative effect upon the flywheel.”

When you stream on Twitch, you’re pushing your own massive flywheel. Yes, the first push is important in a symbolic sense, but that push won’t create much actual movement in the wheel itself. It’s only once you’ve stuck to your regimen and kept up the momentum that you can truly begin to see results. 

➢ INDIVIDUAL PARTS

And while your stream as a whole is churning along under the sway of this massive wheel, the individual parts are also influenced by what you do each day, sort of like a garden. There are dozens or even hundreds of little things that get done on a stream each time you go live. Are you committing to good habits when doing these things, or are you taking the easy way out? Even if your work gets done and looks good today, doing it with a bad technique may be planting the seed for negative results to show themselves later. The entry I referenced above, Solidify Your Streaming Habits, talked about something which has helped me a lot on my streams. If I skip a step in my pre-stream setup process, even if it’s not a necessary step for the stream I’m about to do at that moment, I’ll start the whole process over from the beginning. In the past I’ve had habits turn sour, and I realized that it was moment-to-moment leniency which allowed the bad seeds to take root. Like with a garden, you can’t see the results of your work on the same day that you , but they will show themselves eventually. Make sure that on your own streams you’re nurturing only the habits that will yield strong growth. 

Read Between the Lines of Your Twitch Chat

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 205 - Read Between the Lines of Your Twitch Chat

Comments from viewers are a big part of the Twitch streaming experience. In the entry Up Your Showmanship on Stream, I spoke about how you can always give a dynamic response to even the least dynamic chat messages. This is a subject worth exploring a bit more, however. Many streamers take chat messages too literally in my opinion. Just because the question someone asked only really warrants a one-word answer doesn’t mean your answer actually has to be one word. It’s your stream, and you can talk about whatever you want. This person’s question is merely a jumping-off point for whatever you want to talk about. In my view, questions on a livestream aren’t really meant to be taken literally, but rather as a suggestion for larger conversations. In this entry, we’ll look into how you can read between the lines of your Twitch chat.

Many people aren’t naturally very talkative, and this applies to Twitch chat as well. Sometimes they can’t express what they really mean. I often try to see the intention behind whatever the person said, and instead of responding to the question they asked, I respond to the question they wish they asked. Even if someone asks what you think of as a stupid question, it’s always within your power to lift them up, instead of pointing out their question’s flaw and knocking them down. The entry How to Flesh Out Stream Ideas touched on how standup comedians use the philosophy of ‘Yes, and…’ to ensure they’re always building on the jokes of others, rather than shooting down ideas. This is a hugely helpful mindset when dealing with comments on a Twitch stream. 

➢ SPINNING NEGATIVITY

I got a lot of hate when playing 
this one. 

In the past, when I used to work for another company and each broadcast would have anywhere from 100 to 1,000 concurrent viewers, the comments would fly very quickly, and they weren’t always very nice. From early on however, I decided that I would try not to shut down even the nasty remarks. I was trying to help grow the company’s brand, and I wanted to ensure that everyone felt like a part of the show. I also knew that when people say mean things, they aren’t necessarily mean people at heart. So I’d take a comment in which someone said, “You’re horrible at this game. Please stop trying,” and instead of reading the comment word for word, I’d say something like, “[viewer username] sees room for improvement in my playstyle. Definitely let me know if you have any tips!” Not with irony or condescension, but with real genuine interest.

For some reason, people would also get really mad that I had a job where I played video games for a living. They’d say, “This guy is terrible. He’s so annoying. Why did [company] ever pick him to do these videos?” and several much more vitriolic versions of the same idea. This of course hurts to hear, but I’d try to take it in stride. I recognized that these comments often had a deeper unspoken meaning, and I’d respond with something like, “[viewer username] has a great point, I’m lucky enough to get to do what I love each day and get paid to do it!” And then I’d go into a story about how I was able to build a body of work and get hired by a company to make these kinds of videos. I’d give tips for other viewers who might want to start a career doing the same thing. I wouldn’t brag, preach or put down the original commenter, but would actually thank them for bringing up such a helpful subject. 

➢ SPREADING POSTIVITY

These kinds of responses would usually have one of two effects. First, they would often get the original commenter to turn their attitude around. Many people on the internet don’t really consider the consequences of what they say, because they feel anonymous. But when you put their comment in the limelight and give them a bit of attention, they quickly realize that they’re having an effect. Believing the best in someone is also a strong motivator for change. Notice that in the above examples, even though the original comments were pretty mean, I wouldn’t treat the commenter like a mean person. Rather, I treat them as someone nice who maybe asked a question they didn’t intend to be hurtful. I ask the question hidden within their question, rather than the question itself. And psychologically, if others see the good in us, we want to meet those expectations. This causes the chatter to come around, start posting other more positive comments, and sometimes even apologize, even though I never said they did anything wrong. 

Paint the chat however you want. 

The second effect of this kind of response is sometimes even more important than the first. Because of the way I phrase my answer, the chat becomes flooded with a higher volume of positive comments than negative. In the first example, I asked for the commenter’s tips for the game. This often gets other viewers talking about their own strategies, in addition to the person I asked, and populates the chat with more constructive comments. In the second example, by talking about my own tips and tricks for becoming a professional livestream producer and video host, people are more interested in asking about how to get into that world themselves. People in the chat are suddenly engaged in talking about something far more interesting, and might even begin to police themselves. If the original commenter persists in being negative, other chatters (who are now more interested in the new topic than the previous negative one) would actually ask the negative person to stop. By creating a topic where positivity is more engaging than negativity, you’re turning that negative person into a minority within the chat. And it’s much more difficult for that negativity to gain a foothold when nobody else is on their side. 

The way you respond to a comment is kind of like planting a seed. If your most recent response is negative or dismissive, negativity is going to grow. But if you plant the seeds for interesting conversations, you’ll soon see the positive effects of that choice.  

➢ POSSIBLE AT ANY SIZE

Since starting my own personal Twitch channel, these kinds of mean comments very seldom come in anymore. The amount of viewers and chatters is much smaller, and I don’t really have to go out of my way to please everyone watching either. But the same principles often come in handy for me, even at a smaller scale. Whether someone asks a question that only really requires a one-word answer, or they make some unintentionally cruel remark like ‘You look/sound really tired,’ I’m always able to spin it into something more interesting. Don’t forget however, that just because something can be spun into a better topic, doesn’t mean that you have to spin it, or deal with it at all. I put up with a lot when I was working at that high level of streaming, and I found ways to make the job easier to take. But that kind of constant negative bombardment still takes its toll, even if you spin it to make the show itself better. In my personal streams, I don’t care as much whether every single chatter stays around. If someone is being intentionally mean, I will often timeout or ban them. Like I mention often throughout this podcast, stay true to the priorities of whatever kind of show you’re trying to make. And if you want to raise engagement on your streams, try keeping this subject in mind. It’s always better to read between the lines of your chat. 

Streaming with Heart

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 201 - Streaming with Heart

When you’re streaming, are you using all the parts of your brain? As streamers, we can sometimes get set into an overly limited mindset, where we focus too much on certain problem solving methods, and ignore all the great solutions and ideas that are floating just outside the borders of the ordinary. If we want to be really effective in our pursuits, we should try to get to the core of whatever we’re facing- whether that’s a tech issue or an overall gameplan for our channels- and approach the issue with new inspiration. I call this ‘streaming with heart.’ 

➢ CREATIVE PROBLEMS

Streaming with heart can help you with any kind of problem, but creativity is where it’s going to shine most. If you need to come up with an identity for your channel, or you want to decide how to best conduct yourself on stream, it always helps to look inwards. In beginner-focused entries like Three Steps to Start Streaming, as well as more intermediate or advanced-focused entries like How to Use Your Influences for Streaming, I’ve spoken on the importance of utilizing the things that are important to you when building your brand. Whether you’re passionate about cars, dancing, or solving Rubik’s Cubes, incorporating those things into your broadcasts will not only make your channel stand out more to viewers, but it will make you more excited to produce the shows.  

Tolkien made sure his languages were 
supported by a world, not the 
other way around.

It may not come as a surprise to many who have read his works, but J.R.R. Tolkien was a very accomplished linguist. In addition to speaking dozens of languages himself, he also loved to invent languages from scratch. His world of Middle-earth is full of them- elves, dwarves, orcs, even different factions of men like the Rohirrim have their own fully fleshed-out tongues. And though many readers may assume that these languages were created in order to better serve the stories in which they appeared, in fact the opposite is true. Tolkien was quoted as having this to say about his passion for words: “what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” 

To give you a reference point, Tolkien first started constructing one of his Elvish languages around 1911. He didn’t even start writing The Hobbit until the 1930’s, and of course The Lord of the Rings was even later than that. For J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most famous writers of all time, his books were almost a sideshow, something to show off his real passion for invented language. Would The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit still be great stories without all the languages? Arguably they would. But would the writer have been as inspired to bring those stories to life in the first place, without his passion for language driving him to do so? Almost certainly not. By utilizing his ultimate passion in his writing, Tolkien was able to give his works a place among the all-time greats. 

➢ PRACTICAL PROBLEMS

Historically, the Greeks were responsible 
for solving many of the world's
toughest brain-teasers.

You can solve more mundane problems with a similar mindset. But instead of looking deep down to bring your passions into your streams, you’d be looking deep down at the root of an issue and coming up with an inspired solution. If 99 other people saw the same problem, they may not have come up with the same fix that you did, but as long as it works for you, that’s all that matters. In the entry Keep Your Twitch Goals in Sight, I told the story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot. An oracle had foretold that anyone who could untie this incredibly complex knot would become the ruler of all Asia. Many men tried and failed over the years, and it was deemed impossible. Until Alexander came, cut straight through the knot with his sword, and fulfilled the prophecy. 

In the world of music, drummers will sometimes wear headphones in order to hear a recorded track while playing, so they can keep time for the rest of the band. Keith Moon, drummer of the rock band The Who, used to take this concept even further. His animated performing style would mean he was essentially putting his whole body into playing the drums, and in order to keep the headphones from falling off, he would duct-tape them to his head! Not the most elegant solution, but it worked for what he needed. 

➢ ANY KIND OF PROBLEM

In countless entries across The Twitch Playbook, I’ve outlined the various small and large solutions I’ve reached for problems across my streams. Whether I was recording my screen with a camera before being able to capture directly from an iPad, or lighting my streams with ordinary house lamps clothespinned with diffusion paper, I try to keep my solutions as simple to use as possible. Is it ugly? Maybe. But it works. When looking to solve your own stream problems or come up with creative overhauls, don’t look for ultra-specificity in your inspiration for fixes. For example, most of the things I did on my streams aren't going to apply directly to yours. But if you look deeper than that, into the core of the issue, you'll always find something. I often use examples from fields other than streaming in this podcast, to remind us that problem solving is universal. It’s not about the solution, but rather the mindset that led to the solution. If you can cultivate a problem-solving mind, the problem doesn’t matter. Creative or technical, big or small, you’ll be able to solve it. That’s what it means to steam with heart. 

How Long Does It Take to Master Streaming?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 198 - How Long Does It Take to Master Streaming?

As Twitch streamers, many of us aspire to reach a point where our streams no longer need to be changed or worried over- where there are no more problems occurring, and there are no more additions to make. Maybe we’re making enough money from going live to pay our bills and quit our jobs, or we’ve leveraged our streams to start a larger personal brand. The dream looks different for everyone, but the general idea is the same. It would be a point where we’ve found the ultimate final product for our content- a point where we’ve finally mastered streaming. 

In my opinion however, this is an unattainable goal. Yes, we can reach the objectives we set out for ourselves, but doing those things won’t really make us masters. There will always be something more to do, something else to fix or change, and new ways to interpret our content. Streaming is a lifelong craft. Like with any long-term pursuit, whether it’s in health, education, romance, craftsmanship, or anything else, you may start with a goal in mind, but by the time you’ve reached it, you’re at risk of losing what you built if you don’t keep going.

➢ THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE

In George Leonard’s book Mastery, he quotes a martial arts student studying aikido. “How long will it take me to master Aikido?” a prospective student asks.“How long do you expect to live?” is, as Leonard puts it, the only respectable response. This book, which I’d recommend to anyone trying to pursue excellence in what they do, goes on to explore how true greatness requires one to remove their focus from arbitrary goals and instead simply keep exploring their craft. As he says, those with aspirations to reach a certain point typically burn themselves out before reaching them, whereas those who take pleasure in the everyday act of pursuing the craft itself surpass all expectations. 

Masters learn to make the act itself into
a habit.

I’ve noticed a similar concept while learning Japanese. Most of the time, those who try to learn the language do so with a specific objective in mind. They want to be able to watch their favorite anime shows without the subtitles turned on, or they want to be like one of those YouTubers who surprises natives by speaking perfectly. But in my experience, I’ve found that such objectives don’t take people very far. They’re such far-off goals that they aren’t even practical to consider when starting out. Typically, once these students pass the beginner stage and reach the point where they’re skilled enough to recognize how long the journey will really be, they lose interest. Personally, I’ve been lucky to avoid the demotivation of long-term goals in my language learning, though it wasn’t from careful calculation- I just sort of stumbled onto a style that worked for me. I set out merely wanting to have conversations, and as soon as I could string three words together I began talking to Japanese speakers. Whether in person or online, I forced myself out of my comfort zone and constantly made a fool of myself. Every time I could say something a little bit better, it became another motivating factor to keep going. These small victories really defined my experience in learning so far. George Leonard quotes a zen saying in the book I mentioned above: “When you’ve reached the top of the mountain, keep on climbing.” In my experience, little victories are the key. If you love what you do, then every time you engage in that activity you’ll be accomplishing your goal in some small way.

➢ CONTINUING IS MASTERING

Twitch streaming is much the same for me. I started out on my personal channel being more traditionally ambitious, planning out and projecting everything with certain growth goals in mind. But after a while, I realized that if I want to do this for the long term and be happy doing it, I had to remove myself from the rat race. In the Twitch Playbook entry One Must Imagine the Streamer Happy, I compared the act of streaming to the Greek character Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a cliff. He’s doomed to never finish his task, only keep pushing. But in that entry, I spoke about how the endless pursuit is something we need to come to terms with if we’re going to truly love streaming. Even if you’ve reached a plateau where nothing on your shows is changing anymore, there’s nothing wrong with simply continuing without improvement. You never know where your journey might take you. There’s no end point, short of giving up, so why not learn to find enjoyment in the act itself? 

Those who love the climb can also 
benefit from removing focus from 
end goals.

If you’re someone who does genuinely find joy in the climb, there’s nothing wrong with that either. I’m certainly not saying you have to conduct your streams in a particular way to be happy. Be careful not to mistake the moments when I say “I didn’t like streaming this way” for me saying “nobody should like streaming this way.” And this philosophy of learning to love the craft without focusing on goals doesn’t exclude those who love reaching for higher and higher targets. For two years before starting my current Twitch channel, I worked for a major streaming brand for a living and found genuine joy in helping to build it into an even larger network. Even during that time however, doing multiple shows each day with hundreds or thousands of live viewers per episode, I knew I’d never be finished. I had targets to hit, but I realized that none of them would ever be the finish line. I had to learn to love the pursuit itself, constantly creating and passing checkpoints, not thinking about any particular end goal. And though I later didn’t end up liking this style of creation for my own personal Twitch channel, I had a blast doing it as my 9-5 job. Essentially, all of this to say I’ve been on both sides of the fence and can sympathize with either perspective, whether you like to take it easy or push as hard as you can. 

No matter what kind of streamer you are, or what kind of content you make, your channel will always be evolving. Even if you can’t see how, there are things shifting under the surface. Allow yourself to embrace the changes and small victories, without worrying too much about where you’re going in the end. Only where you’re going right now. None of us should aspire to master our various fields in streaming, only to keep pursuing mastery. In this case, the destination lies in the journey itself. In other words: How long does it take to master streaming? How long have you got? 

Pay Your Streams Forward

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 196 - Pay Your Streams Forward

So you’ve streaming for a while. You have hundreds of broadcasts under your belt, and the amount of mistakes you make on stream has dropped significantly. You’re in a pretty comfortable place with your shows. If this is the case, it might be a good time to pay back the goodwill you’ve received throughout your Twitch journey by helping others. 

Whether you create YouTube tutorials, write hardware buying guides, interview other streamers on a podcast, or just answer questions about how to stream in your Twitch chat, there are many ways you can use your experiences to help other streamers create better content. Almost four years ago, I created this podcast. It’s gone on to help more streamers than I ever could have imagined I’d reach. I’m glad to know I’ve brought so much value to so many people. What you yourself are interested in talking about, and what form your own helpful content takes may be different, but I think you’ll find a similar gratification from helping others no matter how you choose to do it. 

➢ WHAT TO SAY

If you were going to teach others about streaming, what happens if your lessons don’t all resonate with people? The first thing to understand is that they won’t. Not always. There’s no way for all of your teachings to apply to everyone. But then again, why should they? We all learn a huge amount of lessons when we stream on Twitch. Many of them can only truly be internalized when we’ve experienced them for ourselves. Some lessons you’ve learned may be too advanced for beginners, but will come in handy for more seasoned streamers. And in the case of streamers who have done it even longer than you have, certain lessons might no longer be helpful at their level. In many cases, you may simply have different goals in streaming than someone else, and one of your lessons may not apply. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for example, think about how many episodes have really spoken to you. It’s likely that number isn’t close to 100%. You probably felt some entries were more useful than others. Certain ones may even seem to make no sense at all. Maybe you feel I contradict myself, or that I take a weak stance on certain issues and too strong a stance on others. And yet, you’ve hopefully found something of value in hearing my stories and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Everything I say is true to my own experience, and it’s true to my beliefs about streaming at the time I write it. But it’s not necessarily all true to your experience or beliefs. And that’s okay. We’re all different. We all go down different paths. But there will always be certain points where our paths intersect. 

Everybody has a different approach 
to their craft.

If you choose to make some helpful content of your own, I suggest embracing that idea. What you want to teach will never be 100% applicable to the next person. But just because they don’t take all your advice doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from some of it. Rather than just advising, I also try to focus on sharing my experience. I think it’s useful to be as candid as possible about what I've done on Twitch, both good and bad. I try not to focus too much on the positive or glamorous aspects, but really show the times when I’ve failed, or felt bad about what I was doing. This hopefully helps others to get a realistic impression of what it’s like, without being overly preachy. I also try to explain complex concepts, both technical (like setting up a greenscreen) and spiritual (like losing motivation when overpromising) by using examples and stories I personally find inspiring. I can’t know what others will respond to, but I can know what I would respond to if I were listening. And I try to go by that. If I start getting excited about a metaphor or anecdote in an entry, I know I’m on the right track. 

Whatever you choose to make, you don’t need to approach it from a solely altruistic point of view either. You’re choosing to sacrifice a chunk of your time making something outside of your streams, after all. Yes, it’ll help other streamers, but you will also find it helps you just as much. In the entry Chronicle Your Twitch Progress, I spoke about how you can better understand streaming by writing about streaming. What’s going well on your streams? What’s not going well? Where is there a specific issue? What might solve it? You’ll find there’s a lot of power in writing, or even just talking openly about things like this, because your own thoughts become more lucid when you clarify them. In addition, this educational side-project can help your Twitch channel if you want it to. Plenty of YouTubers and Twitch streamers have made names for themselves by helping up-and-coming creators get off the ground. If you want to make this educational project part of your brand, it can become a powerful source of growth. 

➢ WHAT NOT TO SAY

You can take whatever approach you want when helping other Twitch streamers, but I would advise against a few particular avenues. Denigrating other streamers is not a very nice thing to do. It’s certainly rude to do this to someone’s face by mocking their content in their own chat, but it shouldn’t even be done indirectly. You’ll notice for example, that I take care never to use the content or styles of other specific streamers as negative examples in this podcast. I may talk about paradigms in streaming I don’t like, or traits to avoid, but I simply don’t believe in talking badly about someone else’s work. Everyone is in this together, trying their best to create whatever content is meaningful for them, and we shouldn’t be putting each other down. After all, the whole point of this project would be to lift other streamers up. It wouldn’t make much sense if you were making someone feel bad in order to do it. 

Even if you think you're being helpful, 
don't offer advice where it isn't 
specifically asked for.

I also strongly advise against offering your advice where it isn’t asked for. Many streamers, especially new ones, feel the need to criticize other streamers in their live chats. This unhelpful kind of advice typically only serves to grate on the recipient, and make the advisor look bad. If someone asks you what you think, that’s one thing. If they didn’t ask you, it’s rude and presumptuous to try to impose your own will on them. If you find the line between solicited and unsolicited advice difficult to manage, you can’t go wrong with simply creating content instead. When you make something pre-packaged of your own, like a video or podcast that’s intended to help others, people will come to it specifically because they’re looking for guidance. Like you did when finding this podcast. I’m offering my opinions and experiences here, and telling you what I think is good or bad, but you signed up to hear those things. I’m not entering your stream’s chat and rattling off what I think needs to change about your channel. For more of my thoughts on giving unsolicited advice, see the entry How to Learn from Other Streamers (And How Not To).

➢ SHARE YOUR WISDOM

If you’ve been streaming on Twitch for a while, you’ve had all sorts of experiences. You’ve faced challenges and you overcame them. You’ve started projects, abandoned others, changed your channel’s course and revised ideas. All of these things have taught you valuable lessons. Why not share those with others? Who knows who you might help by doing so? You might even help yourself. Pay your streams forward. You never know what those seeds of positivity might grow into. 

Streaming When You're Out of Ideas

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 195 - Streaming When You're Out of Ideas

As streamers, we typically try hard to ensure that our content is staying fresh and interesting for whoever wants to watch. This means coming up with new features for our shows, new ways to engage with our audience, and all sorts of other new stream ideas. But eventually in our journeys, we all reach that dreaded point where there’s seemingly nothing left to try. What then? How do we press forward when we can’t see any promise of change in the future? From what source do we dredge up our inspiration? In this entry, we’re going to talk about streaming when you’re out of ideas. 

➢ LET IDEAS FIND YOU

So you’ve stagnated. You haven’t done anything new or particularly exciting on your channel in a while, and you don’t have any plans to either. The first, and probably most important thing to remember throughout this whole experience, is that this is okay. Many of us are naturally ambitious, and it’s hard to switch off this part of our brain. But we don’t need to be going at full-speed every single day on our channels. Sometimes it’s enough to simply enjoy the ride.

And the really interesting thing? Once we rise above the need for change, that’s often when we come up with the best ideas. They say that the most effective way to remember something you’ve forgotten is to stop thinking about it. And this same kind of unconscious state can help us come up with great concepts for our Twitch channels too. It seems absurd, but oftentimes it’s the very search for new and interesting ideas that prevents us from coming up with anything new or interesting. But if you can allow yourself to switch off and fully experience what you’re doing for a while, you’ll find ideas rushing back in. 

The sea is a scary place.

Creative people have found this technique effective for ages. In the 1800’s, aspiring author Herman Melville took a series of jobs as a sailor on merchant vessels and whaling ships. Though this would seemingly be completely unrelated to his goal, he went on to adapt these experiences into parts of his most famous stories, including Moby Dick. Throughout the 1980’s, Quentin Tarantino would watch movies insatiably. Eventually he’d go on to make movies like Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but that far-off destination was not yet anywhere in sight. While working for five years at a video store, he would consume every film he could, and talk about movies nonstop. When later asked if he went to film school, he would say, “No, I went to films.” In the excellent new documentary Moonage Daydream, the filmmakers explored how David Bowie forced himself to uproot his life and move to other countries, in order to spark new creative styles. It’s not necessarily apparent how Los Angeles, England or Berlin would have specific influences on an artist’s sound, but the prolific musician made it clear that he didn’t think too hard about it. He couldn't even identify what it was that did it. He would simply allow the city life to wash over him, and the character and texture of his surroundings would find their way into his work. Anyone familiar with Bowie’s various changes in musical style can understand just how successful that strategy ultimately was. So if you’re out of ideas, try simply living in the moment. Like for many legendary creative minds before you, you may find that ideas present themselves, without even having to seek them out. 

➢ MINE YOUR EXISTING IDEAS

Normally on stream, it’s possible to simply keep going, even if ideas don’t arrive. But sometimes you’re actually forced to come up with something new. Maybe the circumstances of your life have changed. Maybe you need to use different hardware or slower internet settings. In situations like this, a new idea might be a bit more pressing. I haven’t faced anything quite this urgent on my Twitch channel, but I have experienced it in other places. Most notably, this podcast. Every week, no matter how many ideas I have, or how good I think they are, I need to come up with something to say about Twitch streaming. I’ve mentioned in entries before that I never thought this podcast would go on for as long as it has. I wrote nine episodes before releasing, so I could establish some kind of consistent tone. And in those nine episodes, I ended up covering almost everything I had to say. At that point, I couldn’t imagine reaching episode 25, let alone episode 195. Throughout these past few years making The Twitch Playbook, I’ve constantly been challenged to come up with new ideas to talk about. And it hasn’t always been easy. 

Twitch streaming is a really rich topic, and there are so many facets to it. But once I had done an entry about motivation, or gaining followers, or finding time to stream, I had crossed another major item off the list. I quickly found that I was writing myself into a corner. What else could I talk about, once I had covered all the major topics? 

Look further into the nooks and crannies 
of your streams. 

Eventually, it came to me. I didn’t always have to look for the biggest topics. I could dig deeper into ones I’d already covered. This revelation helped my writing immensely, because I was no longer constrained by the need to always find a landmark subject to write about. This podcast was ultimately about my own experiences in Twitch streaming, not a step-by-step instruction manual. I found that, the more specific I got about my own experiences, the more helpful the writing started to feel. Because it was coming from a place of really having been there. I could do an episode about streaming while traveling, knowing that I didn’t need to cover every single thing in that one episode. I could focus on the mindset in one, equipment in another, software after that, and so on. I’ve gone on to tackle the subject of finding motivation in about a dozen different entries at this point, but they (hopefully) don’t feel repetitive because each one focuses on a different aspect of overcoming that hurdle. A strategy from one of those entries that worked for me and worked for someone else might not work for you, but a strategy in a different entry might. I’m also able to reconsider ideas I’ve covered, make new entries to clarify on hazy points, or even just come up with new ways to explain a difficult concept. These are all things that I wouldn’t be able to do if I kept covering only the biggest topics. And then, the same strategies I’ve used to drill down deeper into subjects for the podcast have also greatly improved my Twitch streams. I often examine the kinds of streams I’ve been doing, and see if I can’t extrapolate on the nuggets I really like. In previous entries, I’ve explored how I went through many different styles of art streams, foreign language learning shows, IRL broadcasts and more. The evolution of all these stream concepts came about by taking small parts of my existing stream ideas and expanding them.

Sometimes, in order to come up with new ideas, we must stop thinking about coming up with new ideas. Other times, you may not realize just how many ideas are waiting to be plucked from your everyday life or existing streams. Whichever method you explore, remember that the most important thing is to keep streaming. Even if you have to go live without anything new on your channel for a while, don’t let that get you down. As long as you’re still on the air, you’re going to be just fine.