This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? Thank you so much for tuning in today. However you have come to this podcast, whether you found it on a network or a friend told you about it, you've been listening for a long time. If you just, I don't know if this just got airdropped to you somehow, I don't know if that's a thing, but however you got here, I'm so glad you're here. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This daily podcast is all about helping you create extra income without quitting your job. That is our single solitary mission. We've been doing it every day since January 1, 2017. It is now episode 2003, more than 2,000 days have passed. And I'm just so thankful to be able to share different tips, stories, case studies, listener questions with you.
And without further ado, let's get into today's question. Today's question comes from a listener who's getting into Twitch. Twitch, it's a popular live streaming platform for gaming, music, sports, general commentary, and much more. Even bird watching is big there. If you wanna watch birds on someone else's screen for eight hours at a time, Twitch has got you covered.
And if you think I'm kidding, I'm not. Actually, there's a lot of people who do that. Now I'm no expert on Twitch, but there are some general tips that apply to building a streaming audience across pretty much any platform. So we'll talk about that briefly. Our listener is also wondering specifically about how to bring over her existing audience from Instagram, which I totally understand why she wants to do it.
I know it's not so simple. Unfortunately, there's not just like a button you can click and everybody from one network moves over to another, but I do have a tip for that as well. So we're gonna look at that in today's episode, how to move people from Instagram to Twitch or somewhere else, as well as some general Twitch streaming tips. Detailed question in my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hi there, Chris.
This is Tess and I've been doing lots of Instagram live and I'm ready for a new platform. I'm thinking I'll go with Twitch instead of YouTube. What are your top tips to get started? Also, how can I bring over as much of my Instagram audience as possible? I know they won't all migrate, but I'm hoping at least 50% will.
That's a good number and should help me grow elsewhere or so I hope. Looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Tess, congratulations on building up your audience on Instagram. I love that you're also ready for a new challenge. Totally respect that.
So let's talk about bringing people over, but also just some general tips to get started. And as mentioned, these are not just for Twitch, but for any kind of streaming platform. What you wanna do first and foremost is be interesting. You actually want to have something to say. You want to be consistent.
You want to have some sort of schedule. Okay, I'm gonna stream every day from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Or if you can't commit to that much, it's once a week. Whatever it is, you are consistent.
You show up, you encourage your followers to show up. You also engage with your followers. The best streamers are all about creating community. So make it a conversation. The best streamers, I mean, it depends on the topic, of course, but in a lot of topics, maybe not for birdwatching, I'm not sure about that, but at least in the world of gaming or like general commentary, there is a lot of engagement with the audience in back and forth and making them feel like they're part of something.
So be consistent, be interesting, engage with followers, make it a conversation. And now let's look at that aim of bringing over your audience from another platform. That is definitely an important goal, but I just wanna encourage you to be realistic because odds are if it goes well, you're gonna have more people on the new platform who didn't follow you on the previous one. You might discover that even though you have lots of fans on Instagram, those fans actually tend to be more loyal to Instagram itself, at least in terms of using the app than they are to you necessarily. Like only a small percentage are really gonna make the leap and start using a platform that's totally new to them.
So you do wanna encourage them. You do want to post, hey, you know, now I'm on Twitch, come on over, but you don't wanna do it too much because you don't want them to feel like they're missing out, right? You want to continue to reward the people who followed you on the original platform. One thing you can do to encourage cross-platform following is to make something special for each platform. And you could have a giveaway on each platform.
You could have different kinds of updates, right? So it's clear that you're still showing up places, but there's sort of an incentive to follow you on multiple platforms. So this is hard work, of course. It's definitely gonna take time. It's not necessarily easy.
There's not a magic button, just like there's not one to magically import all of your followers from one place to another. There's not a magic button that will make unique content on every platform. But if you put the time in, it will increase the numbers of people who follow you both places. So mostly it sounds like you're already doing things right. I would keep doing more of what's working, embrace that challenge to move to a new platform.
And good luck. Listeners, if you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let us know what you're working on, what's going well, what's not. We will continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects and maybe even grow to new platforms. All right, that's it for today. Thank you for tuning in.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
