Andy Bundy

Category: Advice

  • Finding That Group That Wants to Watch You

    Finding That Group That Wants to Watch You

    Let’s say that you’re a content creator on Twitch and/or YouTube. You’ve done a couple of streams here or there, but you noticed that there aren’t a lot of people looking into your stream? Twitch’s current platform isn’t really made for discovery, so how do you find your audience? This blog post is my advice on how you can find your audience for your content creation goals.

    Know your Content

    If you were asked, could you define your content in 2-3 sentences? Could you tell someone what kind of content you make in a ride up or down an elevator? Before we go and look at the stats of what you’re currently doing, it might be a clever idea to think about what you are providing for your audience. This will be the “backbone” of how you go forward in your search.

    If you were to ask me what my content is, I would define my content in this way: “I create content so that I can play video games but not alone. I strive to play a lot of diverse types of games and emulate the feeling of sitting with your sibling and watching them play a game. I try to foster a sense of community and as my favorite game is Banjo-Kazooie, a lot of my content tends to lean toward games of that style.”

    Do Some Research

    Twitch is big. It’s really big. It’s hard to fathom sometimes how mind-bogglingly big it is. According to Twitch, there are over 2 MILLION streamers, with 10 MILLION Daily Active Users (source). There is a good chance that there are a handful of people who like the same content you do. I’ve been so amazed on the groups of people that I’ve come across in my time as a streamer on Twitch.

    As an example, I’ve been a part of a few different communities:

    There are content creators who also span past the few types that I’ve mentioned before. Some people are competitive eSports players, some solely do “Just Chatting” types of streams where there isn’t much if any gameplay.

    If you’re not sure what attracts your community, you can do a few things. First, you can do a quick look at your Twitch/YouTube Analytics if you’ve posted a few videos or streamed a few times. Twitch specifically has some really good ways to see what viewers you have in common with other content creators.

    Twitch actually has a really good tool that you can use in their analytics that tells you where your viewers come from, whether it’s from sites outside of Twitch (like on social media sites, etc.) or inside Twitch by notifications or other streamers. Check out their article about analytics, specifically their Discovery Analytics!

    Andy_Bundy’s Twitch Discovery Analytics Jan 2022-Jan 2023

    Another great way to find “your people” would be to go on your platform of choice and search for the games you are interested in or games that you stream. I have found so many friends by either streaming or watching games such as Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Knockout City, Fall Guys, and more!

    Keep in mind the times when you stream as well. Streaming at one time might be good for one group, but time zones exist and people don’t all watch Twitch at the same time. I have viewers from all over the world, but I only see certain ones if I stream at certain times. I also am only able to watch certain streamers because of my free time for the same reasons.

    Get Involved

    Typically starting out you won’t have a lot of audience members. Check where other people who have similar interests are gathering, whether community Discords, forums, or other mediums like that. Don’t just go to promote your stream, though. Get involved, make friends, and become a part of the community and when you do go live, you would then be able to attract those viewers from your community.

    While I do advocate to self-promote yourself, a word of caution: Don’t spam. Posting your go-live messages to streamers already live or in communities that you’re not actively involved in can be considered spammy and won’t net the viewers that you want.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, it’s not beneficial to just stream if your goal is to build an audience. Taking the steps to getting involved in communities, knowing your content, and doing your research will greatly increase your viewers and community members for the content you create!

    Do you have any other thoughts on building your audience on Twitch and/or YouTube? Leave me a comment below or discuss it in The Bear Cave Discord #creator-chat channel!

  • Overcoming Failure: Learn from Mistakes and Succeed

    Overcoming Failure: Learn from Mistakes and Succeed

    I feel like I’ve made a post like this before, but it was something on my mind and in my goal of writing two blog posts a month in 2023 I thought it would be a good way to start the year.

    “You know, it’s taken me a long time to learn. It’s okay to fall, to make mistakes. I’ve made lots…The trick is to embrace your defeats as well as your victories. You pay for both in the end.”

    – Willow Ufgood, Willow (2023)

    I knew that I wanted to write about this subject, but I wasn’t really sure where to start. Thankfully I had some inspiration from the new Disney+ show, Willow, based off the movie of the same name.

    Personally, I’ve dealt with a lot of failures and disappointments in my life. However, I’ve always liked to remember another quote from Batman Begins (2005):

    “Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

    -Alfred Pennyworth, Batman Begins (2005)

    I promise that this won’t be a blog post of just movie quotes, but those are some of the quotes that just kind of popped up in my mind as I was typing this. You may not be aware of this, but I actually took a year off of college after a year and a half of classes. It wasn’t because I wanted to, though. I had overextended myself so much that my academics suffered. I started as a Computer Science major and failed through almost all of my major classes. Even after switching majors from my advisor’s advice, it wasn’t enough and I was actually asked to take a year off to “re-evaluate” myself.

    It shook me.

    I didn’t go to a cheap college either. The three semesters I already accrued some debt, and I wasn’t going to just sit and take it as I moved back in with my parents. After about a half year of working at the grocery store I worked at in high school, I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Because of that, I took the initiative and re-applied to the college I left. Amazingly I was able to re-attend with some tools to help and four years later I graduated from that college with my degree in Broadcasting and Digital Media, focusing in Digital Film and Video!

    The story here is to say: You are going to fail. It’s inevitable. The question stands: What are you going to do with that failure? Are you going to wallow in the pity that you didn’t achieve your goal or are you going to learn from that failure and carry on? The choice is ultimately yours. Let me tell you from experience that the latter feels a lot more fulfilling.

    Do you have any stories of how you overcame a failure? Let me know in the comments or let me know in my Discord Server!

  • You Should Diversify Your Social Media Presence

    You Should Diversify Your Social Media Presence

    Last week was insane, hasn’t it? Between Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp going down and Twitch’s source code getting leaked online, it’s a good reminder that all of the content that we create could be gone in an instant.

    If that happens, what then?

    The Facebook one kind of shook me a little bit personally. I have so much of my college life and more catalogued on there. If Facebook disappears, I lose a lot of that with it.

    I’ve always been a big fan of trying out all of the platforms to see what works. I’ve been on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, and a ton more. Some have continued on and some have not.

    A Screenshot from one of my first live streams on BlogTV. (Could only find the screenshot because BlogTV doesn’t exist anymore)

    First and big example I can think of was back in 2011, I streamed on a little website known as BlogTV. It was super fun. Think of it as the “IRL”/”Just Chatting” parts of Twitch. I streamed there for a little bit but then they actually were disbanded (but later rebranded as “YouNow”…but not after clearing all of the archives from the BlogTV streams)

    I was kind of bummed because I couldn’t go back and find these old streams. However, I started realizing that some things like Twitch Streams (where I currently stream) can be backed up on somewhere like YouTube (like my Full Twitch Stream Channel)

    You have to remember too that while it’s good to backup and keep some of your content locally, you have limited space. I just recently had to delete hundreds of gigs of old live streams that I had recorded because my space was filling up. I uploaded some of them to my streams channel but not all of them, especially as some of them were bits and pieces of streams when I had incredibly old computers and spotty internet…

    Anyway, putting your clips and videos on separate platforms, such as TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc. is good for multiple reasons. First off, you diversify and backup your content. Second of all, you reach different people. Take a look at this chart. It’s the percentage of my followers based on which platform.

    While obviously my biggest follower base is in Twitter, it’s good to notice that I actually have decent bases in Instagram and Twitch as well! They’re all owned by separate people too, so it’s not like if one goes down, they all go down (like Facebook and Instagram).

    Which platforms you choose are ultimately up to you. Choose some that you mesh really well with and find a way that you can recycle your posts from one (like Twitch Clips for example) and recycle them to use on other platforms.

    Do you diversify your content? Let me know in the comments or talk about it in the #creator-chat channel in my Discord!