I think it is fairly obvious advice on Twitch that if you broadcast regularly, you'll be better off with a schedule that you stick to. You want your viewers to make your channel a part of their regular routine, and if you make it easy for them to find you live, you are facilitating that in the best way possible. But, having a schedule isn’t enough. New viewers won’t know it, and even regular viewers can easily miss you going live. And with viewer misclicks and random un-follow bugs, having multiple ways of reaching your viewers will always be a valuable thing. This is a brief reminder about the major ways you can keep your viewers up to date on your broadcast.
This is the simplest and most obvious step, taking precedence above everything else. A follow provides potential email updates and on-Twitch popups for viewers who are watching other channels when you go live. However, it is easy for a new viewer to forget to actually hit the follow button. A simple reminder about once an hour and before you go offline doesn’t put undue stress on your audience and should catch most interested viewers. Some viewers will be chat in a channel having a good time, only to reappear months later saying that they forgot to follow. Reminders help.
“If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to click the follow button below the stream,” is sufficient for a verbal announcement. If you use a chatbot, consider creating a repeating announcement on a recurring timer to the same effect. Just remember not to overdo your announcements, as excessive self-promotion will alienate many people.
Consider implementing an automated, on screen pop-up in the upper right portion of your broadcast that reminds viewers to scroll up and follow the channel. Implement a reasonable timer on the feature, say 15 minutes or more, and you have a simple reminder that should annoy relatively few viewers.
You should already have a Twitter account. It’s a great opportunity to network with other broadcasters and keep in touch with your audience.
If you’re already using the Twitch Channel Feed feature, you can easily tie this into your Twitter announcements. As you post to your channel feed before a broadcast, use the Connect to Twitter button to share your channel feed post on Twitter, along with an automatic link back to your channel. Just remember, messages longer than 140 characters will be truncated when posted on Twitter.
If you’re looking to get more reach out of a going-live tweet, include an @ to the game’s developers or any relevant PR contacts. A few retweets from the right people drastically increase your reach on Twitter. Including a gif of gameplay or some game art will also improve engagement. As an example:
“I’m going live playing Super Awesome Game from @AwesomeGameDev #GameRelevantHashtag Watch on Twitch.tv/MyChannel”
A huge number of PC gamers use Steam on a daily basis. Creating a Steam Community page for your stream serves as a great landing point if you play games with your viewers. More importantly, any community members who are using Steam to play a game will see any announcements you make on screen as they play.
Creating a Steam Community is relatively simple. Once you have a Steam Community, you can schedule events by going to the events tab and clicking “Schedule an Event”. Be sure to include the game you’ll be playing and a link to your channel in the event information. Schedule the event to start around the time you’ll be going live.
I’m not a huge fan of Facebook for networking or reaching your audience, but almost everyone uses facebook for some purpose or another. At least a few viewers out there would appreciate a daily update post shortly before you go live.
Discord is the new kid on the block when it comes to building a community around your channel. It has customizable text chat channels, voice communication rooms, and Twitch integration. If you happen to be using it, provide regular announcements in a specific announcement thread or your general chat. A quick live notification with a noticeable graphic should be enough to catch the eye and remind your viewers that your channel is online.
Include a link to your channel in your announcement to make it as easy as possible have your viewers reach your channel. Also, include an @everyone or @here in your announcement. These will alert any of your Discord channel users to your message. @here will ping any users that are currently online on Discord. @everyone will ping all users, including offline ones. This creates more clutter, but leaves an alert waiting if they come online mid-broadcast.