Streaming - The Proper Approach

On the surface Streaming is easy!  You sit down behind your PC, turn on OBS, load up your game of choice, and hit "Go Live".  Doesn't seem hard at all!

For some this is satisfactory enough, but most want to build a community, get their viewership up, become big, and be well known.  This is where the challenge lies.

First, you must know the audience you are trying to attract.  Most viewers seeking out streamers to watch are simple enough to understand: they want to be entertained, to kick their feet up after a rough day and hang out with someone who will entertain them and forget about their day-to-day.

Next, is to understand your motivation to stream. This is far more complex and requires a level of honesty with yourself.

Is it to entertain, to interact, to make money, to be popular, to escape?  All of these are not inherently bad as motivators, but each one has their own strengths and weaknesses.  With some being much more challenging than others.  Acknowledging these strengths and weaknesses will maximizing your chances of success.

• To Entertain (Easy Mode): If you are in it to entertain you will find success easier than most as both you and an audience's desires out of a stream line up perfectly.  Usually these streamers find a community quickly, but gaining a large following might be slow and steady.  When this is your main motivator, things like drops in viewership or no new followers mean less to you.  You are solely focused on putting smiles on people's faces and even if one person's day was improved because of you then your entire stream was a success!  This makes you happy and in turn brings out your best content.  Your margin for success is usually massive and landing on that failure square requires some doing to even fall on.

• To Interact (Normal Mode): If you are in it to interact because you feel lonely and just want some people to hang out with, this will be a struggle at first and periodically throughout your streaming journey.  Your margin for success and failure is a 50/50.  If you got people to talk that is generally a success, but if most of your stream is quiet that's when the creeping thoughts of "this was a failure wasn't it?" start nipping at you.  Often these streamers find the most success when they make lists of self-starting conversations that don't require the need of chat's presence.  Such as talking about your favorite food or favorite con story.

• To Escape (Normal Mode): If you are in it to escape the mundane routines of life, streaming can be a great outlet and this new experience outside the norm is refreshing and fun!  Those with this motivator will usually start off strong and have great success early on, but then struggle later down the line if their community is not where they want it to be as the honeymoon period of streaming being new starts to wear off.  For these it often helps to have rotating themes and gimmicks to keep things fresh and new.  Coming up with seasonal extravaganzas or new wildly different types of games can usually stave off the stale.

• To Make Money (Hard Mode): If you are in it for the money, this is a supreme motivator, but with it comes the hardest start up to remain motivated over an extended period of time.  People with this motivator need to treat streaming like a business and look at the data frequently as to be in the know on latest trends.  Outside of good data points that month, everything else is a failure.  To keep at it and eventually find success you have to roll with the punches, have extreme mental discipline, be a good marketer, have the mind of a sales person, and maintain a certain level of content quality whether you are feeling it or not.  But those that can steel themselves and ride that hurricane, you can find extreme success.  Just never forget that your audience seeks entertainment.

• To Become Popular (Hardest Mode): If you are in it for the popularity, views, and fame, this can be a strong motivator, but it is also a rough road.  This path is by far the most difficult.  You will find yourself struggling all the way into the endgame.  We all want to be known and the thought of having your name pass the lips of hundreds or even thousands of people all around the globe, it is a dream!  But what those with this motivator fail to calculate is how hard it is to get to the top of that mountain.  Failure is around every corner.  Drop in views, failure.  1-3 new follows, failure.  Only a 2 person bump in viewership, failure.  No one liking or retweeting your social media posts, failure.  Success only comes in the form of significant number increases.  After awhile it gets tiring and then the destructive tendencies start creeping in.  The idea of riding on the backs of those who are much higher on the ladder becomes tantalizing: forgoing personality, content quality, and networking all for the chance at shortcuts.  For those that don't succumb to these destructive methods, making it to the top reveals an extremely lonely experience.  While these streamers have fans, they find they are lacking closeness and warmth that they believed popularity would bring them.  But if they can overcome all of that, they can finally rest with the victory they managed to achieve!

Know who you are, know why you are doing this, know the audience you are targeting, and you will know success.