2020 brings with it a new year, a new decade, and possibly a new you. It’s globally expected for people to take this time to self analyze and create their “New Year’s Resolutions” list. As a content creator this can mean taking a look at your current content creation strategy and seeing what you can change, add, or remove to meet your new goals. Defining your goals prior to taking action will be very important, envisioning growth, improving the quality of your content, and developing yourself further as a Twitch or Mixer streamer.
We’re starting off the year going through and strategizing goals for EasternMediaGG, while doing this we realized that this is a great opportunity to create content strategy goals as individuals as well. As a team we create marketing strategies, set out timelines and focus on key performance indicators, so why can’t we also apply these thoughts and concepts to our individual streams, personal branding, digital presence and content creation? Your content creation, in the end, is a business of sorts. Your branding, environment, marketing, and plan are all vital to growing your business and achieving these goals. Below we’ll go over some of the ways to translate your thoughts and desires into making this year better than the last for your content and to solidify these ideas to improve your strategic content as we make the first steps into the new year!
Before we continue, think of SMART goals throughout this. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Keep these keywords in mind as you create your plan. For example, on your content creation platform of choice, you need to have a clear objective. If we’re keeping it SMART, saying “stream more” or “upload more” isn’t going to be helpful.
One of the first things we addressed as a team, for EasternMediaGG’s future success, was where to focus our attention on social media. Similarly, you should do this for yourself and define what you did well on social media and where you have areas for improvement? An initial step would be to decide which social media platforms are the most useful to your content. There are many options and it becomes much more beneficial to focus on 2-3 than to spread yourself thin over every platform. Your content creation platform will obviously be a main focus, whether it be Twitch, Mixer, YouTube, Sliver, or any other, as well as other social media to share your content and find more opportunities to grow your community.
The first item to consider for each of these is how often you are going to release content on these platforms. Set a goal of a certain number of uploads, streams, or streaming hours as a first goal here and stick to it. In going through my plans, I set my goal to be a minimum 3 streams weekly. This fits all our SMART criteria. If you already are streaming or uploading reliably throughout the week, set a schedule for some of these, instead! Having a consistent schedule is a huge piece of what we do as content creators so that our audience and communities know when to look for us. For Twitter or Instagram, you should be making posts daily that are directly applicable to growing your business. Twitter I am aiming to have one tweet daily specifically for the promotion of my Twitch channel and will continue to utilize Twitter frequently aside from stream and brand specific promotion. On Instagram, I’m looking to do 4-5 posts weekly to my page and then utilize the story feature more frequently, aiming for a minimum of twice per day.
Now that you’ve decided how often you’re going to release content on your social medias, decide what type of content you’re going to release reliably. This is a little less easy to predict with streaming and video creation, as game trends change and you fall in and out of games depending on the patches and player base. Personally, I will be making single player games more of a focal point, aiming for 2 of my 3 streams weekly. For other platforms, however, you can create a more predictable plan. Instagram will feature posts of my day to day or sponsor posts on the feed while the story feature will be utilized to highlight my stream and interact with my followers. My Twitter plan involves continuing what I do currently, but integrating business anecdotes, self-development, and educational posts 5 times weekly. My goals this year include trying to grow my presence in the sphere as a businesswoman, not just a content creator, which is why I’m curating more of my posts toward that. Take some time to establish where you currently are versus where you want to be and then create your plan to move yourself toward that goal with your posts. If you want to be known for your unbelievable moments, start creating and sharing more content that makes people grab their faces in disbelief. If you’re looking to be known for humor, start finding funny clips that can make anyone laugh. If you’re a designer, start posting more of your stylized pieces that you find really showcase your talents. For each of us, this part of our content plans will be very different.
The last tip is in creating your content strategy and deciding what success means to you not only in the new year, but for the long term future as well (and don’t make it a numeric value). Stop staring at your numbers as a sense of how your content is growing. Often the footprints we make are not able to be tracked with metrics we see in a Twitch dashboard or the Twitter analytics. The numbers can also be a distraction from what our ultimate goal is as creators. Building your community as well as increasing your presence overall within the sphere, while these measurables are a little hard to track, they are great goals for your content. Brand awareness is extremely important as well. Make sure to think about the “why” behind what you’re trying to put out for your content plan, not just the “what” you’re putting out.
We hope you all hit the ground running in 2020. As you move forward through the year, try and keep a copy of your content creation plan somewhere you can reference easily. Use this plan as motivation and a reminder of why you’re working so hard and doing what you’re doing. If you feel things are not working quite as you hope, take a step back and try to evaluate where and why you plan has fallen short of your goals. Please share your plans in the comments below and don’t hesitate to ask any questions about this process! Happy planning and looking forward to hearing about how this helped you achieve your streaming growth goals in the new year.
