Beginner

Growing a community as a content creator is one of the most difficult things to do. Especially when starting, it’s often challenging to find networks to tap into to promote yourself, your brand, and the content you create. While it's important to stream consistently, develop your voice, and be authentic, it’s equally important to connect yourself to your audience as often as possible. One of the best ways to do this is through social media. Find some tips below on exactly how you can use social media as a tool to grow your community on Twitch, YouTube, or any other content creation platform.

The number one rule of content creation and social media is to be consistent with what you create. It doesn’t do you any good to create a Twitter account that you never post on. Instead, post your going live announcements, update your followers on what you are up to, and post meaningful content. Even if you do not yet have many followers on your social, it's important to establish consistency so that people are inclined to follow you when they come across your page. Try to post at least once a day, on at least one channel. From there, you can grow to other channels and spend time where you enjoy connecting with your community most.

Figure out which channels work best for you

If you already know which channels you want to try, there’s no point in putting effort into something you don’t think will stick. If you don’t like making videos for socials, don’t try TikTok. If you’d rather not post pictures and let people have a look into your personal life, don’t go to Instagram.

If you don’t have any idea what you will like and want to try out as many options as possible, you should do so. Start with as many as you have the time for, and then follow through with the ones that stick. Choose one or two social platforms to dive into, and master those.

Promote all of your channels to all of your channels.

If you’re a Twitch streamer, link your socials on your channel page. On the other end, make sure your socials link directly back to your Twitch. The same goes for your YouTube channel, blog, or anywhere else that you create and share content. None of your channels should live in a bubble, and your followers and fans should be able to visit all of them from anywhere seamlessly.

This one goes hand in hand with cross-promotion. Be sure to promote whatever your main form of content is specifically. All of your socials should have notifications when you go live or when a new video is posted. Make sure the notifications are posted in a timely manner, so that your community knows precisely when there is something new from you coming up. It doesn’t help to Tweet about a new video the day after it goes up on YouTube.

Whether or not you are comfortable being candid, you at least need to seem like you are. You don’t necessarily need to let your followers into the private aspects of your life, but it does not hurt to share some life updates. People will follow you and come back for more if they feel like your friend.

To do this, try to find little things to let people in on. Let your community grab onto little tidbits about you. Did you get a new puppy? Let them know. Celebrate with your supporters. New job? The same applies. Try to pick and choose things to share.

This is probably the most important tip on this list. Social media is more than just a platform for announcements, especially when you are just starting out. You have to make sure that you are engaging with your followers.

At the start, this can be as simple as thanking them for a follow on your socials. Yes, it’s a lot of work and isn't scalable to thank everyone who follows you in the future, but it could mean a lot at the start. Once you have a larger community, continue to engage with your followers as you are able. Like their comments, and even respond to those you find particularly compelling. This will create a stronger sense of community among those who choose to spend their time consuming your content, and it will help make you seem more ‘real.’

Second only to engaging with your community is to engage with other content creators. If you’re on a stream team, especially, you should be consistently engaging with your teammates. If there are other content contributors in the space that you are drawn to and have similar followings, retweet their tweets, comment on their Instagram posts, and duet them on TikTok.

You can also use social media to form relationships with them and even reach out for event collaborations. Social media is a great way to supplement the relationships you may develop through your content creation alone. It can lead to deeper and more meaningful relationships with other streamers.

Social media is generally a great way to connect with people and develop deeper connections. It lets you give your community a glimpse into your life, offers opportunities to connect with other content creators, and allows you the chance to cross-promote your content on all channels. Even if you don’t know where to start, the important thing is to start somewhere, test the water, and find what works best for you. If, at first, you don’t see any growth or traction, don’t get discouraged! Social media is hard to manage, and it will take some time to see growth. Stick with it and gravitate towards the platforms you enjoy most, and you will eventually see results.

How to leverage social media to grow your audience

, an initiative to develop upcoming CS:GO players. These player will receive mentorship from coaches, mental health experts, and more. 

Gucci and FaceIT has selected ambassadors to promote the values of the program by offering monthly, one-on-one, mentor sessions with the participants. 

missharvey is Gucci Gaming Academy's ambassador

Futbolist announced Lea "matrix" Ransquin as their fifth player. 

matrix is a young prodigy in the VALORANT scene, being signed at the age of 16. She is based in Belgium and is excited to compete in the 2022 VCT Game Changers EMEA!

matrix joins Futbolist's Valorant team

Zainab “zAAz” Turkie was signed to G2 Gozen on October 19th, 2021. During her time on the roster, she has claimed three VCT EMEA Game Changers Championships. But her dominance did not begin with Valorant: Zainab competed in CS:GO on teams like XSET, Team Secret, and Beşiktaş Esports, claiming over nine first place finishes from 2007 to 2020. 

Zainab has proven to be one of the best female FPS players in history. 

zAAz announces retirement

Everyone wants to be a streamer. There are millions of people streaming online, with even more joining every day. It’s a career where people can incorporate their passion for video games and work on their schedule. It isn’t easy getting started, though. Being stuck with very few viewers is one of the worst feelings for new streamers, and sadly it can last a very long time, especially if they aren’t implementing strategies to foster growth. “How do you grow, though?” you may be wondering. Here are a few strategies that I have found helpful in getting out of that initial slump.

The most important and most effective way to get off the ground when you are first starting your career on twitch is simply to ask for support from the people you already know. It’s almost impossible to get noticed by any potential new viewers when your channel is sitting on the most disheartening number, zero. Your stream will be at the very bottom of the list for whatever game you are playing, and won’t look enticing to anyone who doesn’t already know who you are. Therefore, the key to getting any traction is to take matters into your own hands and get that viewer count up through your friends and family.

You would be surprised how many of your friends wouldn’t mind at the very least opening your stream up in the background on their computer so that you benefit from another viewer. Simply go to them and tell them about your stream and ask if they would mind watching. You don’t even need that many, just enough to get you away from that pesky number zero. Once your stream is no longer suffocating under that number zero, it will begin to climb the ladder of streams in the game you are playing, and it will look more inviting to any new viewers, leading to organic growth.

This may sound like a frivolous step as looks are primarily superficial and speak very little to the quality of the content of a stream. However, when potential new viewers are scrolling through Twitch looking for a new stream to watch, they can’t see who you are and how good your content is. They only see the title, the game you are playing, and a thumbnail simply showing what your stream looks like. Making sure all of these things are good and reflect the quality of your stream is extremely important to drawing in those potential viewers.

Your title should be interesting and reflect the content of your stream, whether it be funnily or excitingly. Avoid titles like “Stardew Valley Playthrough Part Six.” Make your title something someone wants to click on. Similarly, your stream should look attractive as well, if possible. It’s surprising that the snippet of what your stream looks like helps. In my opinion, this doesn’t translate to a requirement for one of those overly expensive UIs with animated parts. Instead, it should be something simple that makes you stand out. For instance, if you are a vtuber, you could have an interesting model or outfit, or if you have a regular webcam, you could have an interesting outfit or costume. You could have a running joke UI element that stands out or a pet or mascot cam. The possibilities are endless.

The game you play is just as important as the way your stream looks. If you play a game that is too popular, it will be difficult to find your stream in the sea of other streamers, especially if popular content creators already play that game. If you play a game that is not popular enough, then no one will be looking for streams of that game. Of course, it is best to play the games that you enjoy the most at the end of the day, but if you have multiple options of games you can play, you want to find a sweet spot right in the middle. This will take a lot of trial and error, but you will know when games work for your stream and when they don’t, and then you want to stick to those that work if you can. Twitch isn’t a matter of constant variation. It’s a game of throwing stuff at a wall, seeing if it sticks, and then if it does, continuing to throw that same stuff at the wall until it stops sticking.

Be an active part of the Twitch community

Being involved in the twitch community not only as a streamer, but also as a viewer, is extremely important and cannot be neglected. You have to consistently involve yourself in the community if you want to see growth and improvement in your steam. This has many benefits for the overall quality of your stream. First and foremost, getting involved in the community will lead you to make friends who share a passion and drive for the same career. Having like-minded friends will allow you to learn from each other and improve.

You can learn many things about bringing in new viewers and content creation from other streamers. You should never get disheartened by seeing other people seeing more success than you on Twitch. Instead, you should embrace it and ask how you can learn from it. There is always something you can learn from other streamers.

Simply being involved in the community and being a consistent face in the chat of various streams in the Twitch community, and more specifically the community surrounding the area of content you seek to specialize in with streams of similar size to your own, will help grow your stream as people see you and recognize you from other streams. Do not ever advertise yourself in other people’s streams, though. This is not just rude but is also against the rules of most twitch channels. Just get involved and make friends, and this will help you grow naturally!

Another community is key that you are a part of, and that is your own! A fantastic way to keep viewers involved and returning is by having a fun and exciting community that welcomes them with open arms, and you are the leader of that community! The only way to get your community to thrive and have fun is for you to get involved in it yourself. Plan fun events like movie nights or game nights, join Discord and talk to people, get involved in the chat, send memes and videos, and anything else to get the ball rolling. It may be difficult at first, and you may be having movie nights by yourself for a while, but eventually, people will get involved. You have to make sure that there is something there for people to get involved in.

Once that number of viewers is a community instead of just a number, your stream will start to grow, and that is when you will know that you’ve gotten somewhere. You may not have hundreds or thousands of viewers watching you at one time, but you have a community that enjoys watching you every time you stream. You have a community that hopefully welcomes new community members with open arms. So where can you go from there other than up?

I hope that all of these tips can be used to help propel your stream to where you know it can be, and I hope that this is the beginning of not only a career but a true passion. There is one last thing I want to say, though: good content is the key to organic growth at the end of the day. All of the tips in this article are meant to help propel you further, but you have to make sure you are focusing on making your content fun and enjoyable. Otherwise, the viewers you could be gaining will simply leave as quickly as possible they arrived. What this means is different from person to person. The main point I want to make here is that you shouldn’t get lost in the view count.

These tips should be implemented to help you share something you are proud of with more people, not as a simple way to increase a number, even if that number is daunting. Good content is not just the best way to foster growth; it’s the only way to promote organic growth.

How to bring first viewers to your Twitch stream

 Esports Festival is an organization that builds competitive tournaments for women in esports from all over the globe. It hosted tournaments in Singapore, Australia, Portugal, Macau, and more! 

The organization has come back from their hiatus with their announcement of their next tournament in South Africa. Players will be able to compete in CS:GO and League of Legends at the ATK Arena. Be sure to tune in on June 25th and 26th!

GIRLGAMER Esports Festival returns!

Pinkalie and Danah played on the free-agent team Chat Banned together before getting signed by Alliance Coven. On Chat Banned, Pinkalie and Danah placed third in multiple women-focused tournaments outside of VCT EMEA Game Changers. 

During their time on Alliance Coven, they were able to qualify to the main event of VCT EMEA Game Changers Series 2 and broke into the top 8 teams. They have shown that they are competitors, and if you're a new organization breaking into the Valorant women's scene, they should be on your radar!

Alliance Coven releases Pinkalie and Danah

Valorant became available for the public in the summer of 2020 and has since released a lot of charismatic, cunning, and brutal agents to help players succeed over the enemy. These agents have unique abilities, but some are quicker to learn and master than others. Here is a quick rundown of one of the best starter agents, Sage.

Sage is objectively one of the best agents in the game. While she is a support character, once you learn how to use Sage and her kit properly, you will be able to use different push strategies, and she can be used more aggressively in certain situations. This character guide will show you why she is a force to be reckoned with.

Sage’s slow orb can be perfect for sticky situations. If you find yourself defending an area the enemy team is rushing, the slow orb is perfect for stopping or slowing their incoming pursuit. Using the slow orb will help you retreat to a safer spot and give your teammates a chance to rotate.

Due to this crowd control ability, slow orbs can be especially useful in early pistol rounds when teams like to push together. The slow orb can help turn a rush into a 1v1 situation rather than being overwhelmed by the number of enemy attackers.

For maximum effect, slow orbs can also be used in combination with an ally’s AoE attack, such as Brimstone’s Orbital Strike or Phoenix’s Hot Hands.

This is a pretty self-explanatory ability. This ability helps heal you or your teammates. While heals come in handy in this game and can be a deciding factor in a win or loss situation, it is important to know when to use this item.

It is easy to get caught up in the stress and responsibility of healing, but sometimes that can cause tunnel vision, leaving you open to an enemy attack. If your teammate is in a fight and you are nearby, sometimes the best support is with gunfire instead of heals.

This is probably Sage’s most utilized ability, so it makes sense why it would be her most expensive ability. A good barrier placement can help corral the enemy team making their movement easier to dictate.

The barrier is not only good for blocking entryways. It can also help boost your or a teammate up higher to gain better vantage points. Using the wall to boost yourself can leave you vulnerable for a brief period, so timing is everything.

If you’re wondering what the best strategy is for wall placement, gaming news and review site, check Diamond Lobby’s 

. It helps demonstrate the best Sage wall locations for every map for defensive play and aggressive boosts.

The barrier can be used in other methods as well. These methods include sight blocking and shielding. You can cut off the enemy's line of sight, so they can not blindly spray, and you can use the wall to protect teammates spotted. The barrier having this versatility is one of the main reasons Sage is a great character to jump into Valorant with if you are just starting out.

Sage’s ultimate is one of the best in the game. With her resurrecting ability, Sage can turn the tide by giving your team the numbers advantage in critical situations. While the ability is pretty straightforward - revive a teammate - knowing when to use it is what will help determine the match.

Don’t waste this ability when a round is a lost cause. Using resurrection when your team needs a crucial win is always a good rule of thumb. Sometimes, Valorant comes down to a numbers game, so having an extra man on the field can be that deciding factor. So, if you waste a resurrection on a losing round, you may not have it when you need it.

It can be used in combination with AoE abilities of your allies such as Brimstone’s Orbital Strike or Phoenix’s Hot Hands.

Get familiar with the maps and learn the best locations to place your wall.

Practice boosting yourself and teammates for better vantage points.

If your teammate is in a fight, assist them before trying to heal.

Sage is a pretty versatile agent. She has been used for defense and as a more aggressive agent. Sage is a good starter agent and can be used in many unique ways the more comfortable you get with her. She can be seen in most team compositions as she provides incredible value with her healing and resurrection abilities.

Beginner’s guide to Sage’s abilities (Valorant)

Smixie is a professional Warzone Player for Version1. Evolved Talent Agency is one of the leading esports agency for professional esports players and popular content creators. Some of their agents include xQc, Alinity, babybay, and more! 

Getting accepted into this agency is a huge accomplishment! 

DazedDreams

matrix joins Futbolist's Valorant team

matrix joins Futbolist's Valorant team

How to leverage social media to grow your audience

How to leverage social media to grow your audience

missharvey is Gucci Gaming Academy's ambassador

zAAz announces retirement