The Streamer Framework

  Chat and you Chat can be an excellent place or a toxic nightmare, and sometimes it is both simultaneously.  All kinds of people will come into your stream and there is no way to predict or know what someone might say. Although you can set up bots to block certain words, there is also no surefire way to prevent people from saying bad things. Your chat is a reflection of yourself and as such, you are responsible to set boundaries and monitor the activity taking place, to help you build the kind of community you want to cultivate. No matter how enthusiastic you are about having a certain kind of viewership filled with positivity, negativity and trolls are unavoidable. Whether you are starting a community or are attempting to shape an existing one, it takes patience and dedication. Always start with the simple stuff before expanding and that is exactly what we are going to discuss today.  Rules  The first step to setting up any community is to have the most basic rules...

Don’t Fear Failure After streaming for some time now and if you are anything like me and so many others, you are thinking about making changes to improve your stream.  You might want to try a new game, change your hosting style, change your stream graphics/aesthetics, or maybe want to stream at a different time. Whatever change you are thinking about is, when the idea first comes to mind, you are thinking this concept is a great idea, and one you’ll really enjoy, but when the time comes to implement the change you can’t bring yourself to do it.  Failure We all hate failing, and that is understandable. From a young age, it has been ingrained in our minds that failure is not an option, the simple thought of it brings up many negative emotions. What most people don’t realize is that there are 3 types of failures. First, we have preventable failures, which include lack of focus, inability, attitude, and lack of understanding. These can be overcome by learning from our mistakes and...

  Staying Motivated Life can certainly throw us some curveballs leaving us unmotivated at times. We all have those days when we wake up feeling bad, or sick, or maybe we get home after a long day of work tired, and the kids want our attention. Whatever the factor, by the time your stream time comes around you simply just aren’t in the mood to hit that go-live button.  As a result, you’ll send out a tweet or write a post on your various social media platforms letting your community know how are you doing and that your stream will be canceled. You are valid in thinking you need a night off, and you can stream tomorrow, but this can be a slippery slope. I’ve witnessed so many people say I’ll just cancel today and the next day comes, and they cancel again leading to weeks, even months off while others never pick it up again.  A little background about me, I get very nervous talking to large audiences, and public speaking is certainly not my strong suit. Many mornings, I wake ...

  Why are people watching?   As you continue on your streaming journey, more and more people will start coming to your streams. It might be only one or two people to start and that is perfectly fine but as people consistently spend time in your stream, you can start identifying who is watching and why. It’s important to focus on more than simply superficial things such as usernames, the average age of your viewers, or even their location. You want to get to know what type of viewers are joining your streams and why they chose your channel. Being able to identify your audience is an important skill any streamer and content creators alike must learn. I don’t see this topic discussed enough, but we all need to know who is watching in order to understand what is and isn’t working for our channel. We covered in the previous entry titled Your Elevator Pitch that your stream won’t be for everyone but with that, it is important to know what makes people stay and why some people are b...