How to Build a Personal Brand and Become a Successful Streamer?
When thinking about how to become a successful streamer, with a wide audience, we often tend to jump from one trend to another, forgetting completely about our own identity. We think that this will be our shortcut to become one of the most popular Twitch streamers. And of course, some people will have their 5 minutes of fame thanks to this strategy – but how to grow on Twitch (or any other live streaming platform) and become a successful streamer for a longer period of time?
How to Become a Successful Streamer?
There is no simple answer to that, but when analysing the paths of successful streamers, we can see that they have one thing in common – all of them developed a “personal brand”. So, how to build a personal brand as a streamer? Read on and find out!
- What is and how to create a personal brand?
- Identify and understand your target audience
- Establish your image
- So what’s next?
What Is and How to Create a Personal Brand?
A personal brand is nothing more than having your own identity. Something that will be recognised and uniformly perceived by a wide range of people, be it your community or other streamers.
First, when building your personal brand, you should take into account things like your own personality, image, channel design, how you communicate with your audience and even types of games you will be streaming. Your brand is a simple summary of the most important features about you and your channel.
So, how to build a personal brand and become a successful streamer? The first step is to identify and understand your audience.
When building your personal brand, the first impression is very important. It’s best to eliminate as many weaker traits as possible by working on yourself. We will be praised or criticised, based on how we are received, so it’s very important to build your own brand, especially when you are a public figure and reach many completely different people and take on various types of sponsorship deals.
However, not only then is personal branding significant, but also in everyday life, our behaviour and the aura that surrounds us translate, for example, into decisions made by other people. Therefore taking care of your own image should be an integral part of everyone. And it’s best to start as soon as possible so that you don’t be accounted for “past mistakes”!
Identify and Understand Your Target Audience
If you ever wonder “how to be a good streamer and grow on Twitch?”, the answer is: know your audience, so you can build a strong community.
What kind of people do you want to reach? What are their interests? What types of games do they watch or play? This should be the very first thing for you to do in order to start building your personal brand. Why?
The answer is very simple. In order to become a successful Twitch streamer, you need to know who you are speaking to because this will define how your live streams will look like and how you will communicate with your audience. When you understand it, you will be able to target your efforts with precision. You need to remember one thing – not everyone who will watch your broadcasts will like you and that’s totally fine! Your channel can be a hit without appealing to everybody!
Being for everyone means you are for no-one. Don’t chase being similar to a popular streamer – they already occupy the space and viewership. Instead, find the one thing that is your niche and makes you different. With millions of people on the internet, you will for sure find others interested in the same things as you. Focus on making great content for those people, be on schedule and most importantly reach out to them.
Wiktoria Wójcik, inStreamly
Tools
When determining your target group, the data analysis tools that you will find on every streaming platform will help you. Knowing your audience’s age and habits will give you an idea of how to communicate with them and grow as a streamer.
Live chat
But that’s not all. If you also pay attention to your chat, you will be able to pick out patterns of behaviours of your viewers. See what kinds of topics interest them, what jokes do they say or when they respond more eagerly to what you are saying. Everything can be helpful for you to adjust your channel to your audience.
After knowing how to identify and understand your audience, the second step to become a successful streamer is to establish your image.
Establish Your Image
If you want to become more recognisable you should think about being active on other social media platforms and be consistent with your actions. Remember, once you are working on building a personal brand to become a successful Twitch streamer, you are investing in your channel, you become a brand, hence you should be present and active wherever your target group is. When creating social media accounts, you should look for platforms that will suit your purposes best.
For starters – Twitter and Discord. This will also take some time of your day to create updates and posts, do you don’t need to also create a Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok profiles if you think that it will be too much for you. It will be more effective if you focus on fewer things at once and do them properly.
Twitter and Discord work best for gaming communities because that’s where most of your audience will spend their time. Give them a place where they can communicate with you and talk to you on a daily basis. That’s how to be a good and successful streamer: listen to your community as much as you talk to them.
Those platforms will also help you promote your live streams. Post your scheduled broadcasts there for about 60 minutes before you go live. Engage your audience and encourage them to watch your stream.
So What’s Next?
Stream and have fun! There’s no way for you to become a good and successful streamer if you don’t genuinely like it. Remember that everything you do should be followed by heart and driven by your passion for games. Don’t force yourself into something that you don’t want to do and find your own niche. Also, bring relevant branded content to your streams and count on supportive partners to help you grow – see how to work with brands here.
There is no secret in knowing how to become a successful streamer. Just be consistent, do it with a purpose, have fun and keep up the great work!