A huge part of becoming a successful streamer on Twitch or Mixer is how you market yourself on social media. Of course the content you create will always be what holds those viewers but sometimes the hard part is using social media to your advantage to get yourself in the eyes of the right people! This article will focus mainly on utilizing Twitter efficiently. Twitter has hundreds of millions of active users and is a huge asset to you.
We have previously done a social media workshop that you can check out here! This was done close to a year ago and some things have changed based on Twitch and Twitter analytics and algorithms, however, so read below to hear our up to date report.
First and foremost, you need to understand a few of the basics about analyzing your twitter and tweets. In addition to the basics about followers and seeing the physical “likes” and “retweets”, you should understand about impressions and engagements.
Tweet impressions: The number of times users saw a specific tweet.
Tweet engagements: The number of times users interact with a tweet. This can be any type of click -- a like, retweet, profile visit, hashtag or link click, etc.
Obviously when you tweet, you want people to see your tweet and then from there engage in it. Engagements hopefully lead to follows on your social medias and organic growth. The hard part is finding that secret recipe to have successful tweets that people will be drawn to and interact with. Well, we have some helpful hints to get your posts engagement, twitter analytics pumping and more clicks on your content.
The easiest way to increase your twitter engagement is to add something eye-catching to your tweets. We are naturally more attracted to images and videos. Consequently tweets with embedded media do better in the algorithm. You can see a 150% increase in engagements by including images or videos in your tweets and about a 55% increase with the use of GIFs. It can go a long way to take a photo to put in with a going live tweet or to properly curate a tweet around a stream clip! Putting a clip from a previous stream in a tweet, especially a “going live” tweet, is an easy way to both increase engagement and introduce new viewers to your content. Emojis are also effective at this, though less so, and we suggest using 1-2 emojis for maximum increase in engagement.
The text content of your tweet is obviously extremely important as well.
Hashtags are a great way to have your tweets be more discoverable by people but make sure they are trending and relevant. Use hashtags carefully! Ensure your hashtags are words that will attract the right audience to your content and are relevant to your post overall. If you’re looking to reach a larger audience of viewers, they probably aren’t searching #TwitchAffiliate and are instead possibly searching for hashtags of games they like. Keep hashtags simple and relevant, as well. Think about what you would search for to find YOUR content whenever you use a hashtag. Also, limit your hashtags to no more than TWO in a tweet -- It has been proven that your engagement suffers drastically when you add more than two hashtags. Not only is it less visually appealing, but it makes you less likely to appear in the “In case you missed it…” areas of Twitter and lowers you in the Twitter algorithm.
On this note, it has also been suspected that tweets with more than two clickables potentially suffer and this is currently still being analyzed. “Clickables” include links, hashtags, tagging other users… anything a user can click. Be careful with this and refrain from tagging a bunch of users in your tweets as it will most likely be detrimental. Similarly, tagging a large number of retweet services or bots in your content will not lead to any type of worthwhile engagement. No one is, realistically, searching through the tweets of a retweet account to discover your content.
When possible, time your tweets to when your followers are most active. For the majority of users and areas, this is weekdays during lunch hours and shortly after people get home from work. Obviously, you should be aiming to post tweets when more users can potentially see it. By being able to pinpoint these peak hours you can get the most out of your tweets to tailor toward better engagement.
Obviously a huge part of engagement comes from people responding to your tweets. Respond to these people if you can and do so as soon as possible! If people tweet at you or tag you in a post, that can generate a conversation and also create genuine connections with users. Think about it like this -- You’d be more likely to visit someone you’re friends with than to visit a stranger. Sometimes you want to directly ask for these engagements. Putting the spotlight on the users you’re looking to engage with is a surefire way to create conversation. Put out tweets asking for opinions or asking questions to get people chatting with you. Similarly, sometimes being direct is the best route. Asking for retweets, help, or how tos are a great way to get people to focus on your tweet if you are clearly asking for an action. Be careful not to constantly be using these calls to action. If you ask for a retweet every time you tweet, people will become less likely to take your request seriously.
Fun fact: The retweet rate when using the word “retweet” is 23 times higher than the engagement rate for tweets with “RT” in them.
The bottom line is that meaningful content leads to meaningful engagement. There are a lot of analytics sites you can utilize to your advantage, including Twitter’s own built in analytics, to dive into hashtag data, engagement rates, and impressions. Take the tools you have available and make the most of your tweets! Happy tweeting and good luck!
