In case you were unaware, Twitch is no longer the realm of a couple of video game enthusiasts playing World of Warcraft and obscure indie games all night long. Streaming video games has become a gigantic business: Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion in 2017 and the service is the fourth-largest source of all peak Internet traffic with more than 100 million monthly users. Wildly popular frontline games like Fortnite and League of Legends have audiences that exceed those of primetime TV shows. Better yet, they have none of the limitations associated with broadcasting and distribution since there are at least two million streams that are active at any moment with over 105,000 different games being streamed worldwide.
With the ever-growing importance of video, especially live streaming video, in content strategy here’s why you should consider working with Twitch streamers in lieu of or in addition to traditional influencer marketing and pivots to video.
Twitch Influencers Can Have Massive Reach
Official Twitch partners have an incredibly underestimated reach if you’re outside of the gaming and eSports worlds. They can expect to earn low to mid six-figure incomes from regular broadcasts with a blend of sponsorships, fan donations, advertising revenue, paid placements as influencers, and in some cases tournament winnings (more than what most of the people who make games can expect to see in their lives!) While it sounds beyond our wildest dreams to play games for a living, growing and maintaining a Twitch following is incredibly hard work that requires a consistent streaming schedule and you need to have an entertaining personality capable of engaging literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on a regular basis.
The most popular Twitch streamer, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, has over 11 million subscribers at the time of writing and steadily gains tens of thousands daily which is more than what many TV channels and major publications have achieved on social channels and elsewhere. While an outlier, other prolific Twitch streamers entertain hundreds of thousands of fans and some also have significant reach on other channels. Popular Mexican streamer Fernanfloo doesn’t just have over 750,000 Twitch followers, he also has over 30 million YouTube subscribers: roughly a quarter of the entire population of Mexico and the United States.
If you’re looking to expand your reach outside of your home country, finding the right Twitch streamer to work with is a fantastically easy way to do so, especially with the massively booming eSports communities in Latin America. Portuguese and German language streams are also quickly gaining subscribers.
Twitch Streamers Are Not a Monolith
Twitch streaming is open to anyone and the most popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends, CS:GO, and Call of Duty among other frontline titles tend to yield the most “super streamers” with millions of several hundred thousand subscribers. However, don’t consider subscriber numbers alone when deciding whether you should seek out Twitch streamers to partner with. Not only can someone with 10,000 subscribers opposed to 100,000 have an incredibly devoted fanbase and would be happy to see you sponsor their favorite streamer, but what about their streaming style and the types of games they play?
Games themselves aren’t a monolith and neither are the people who play them, let alone those who do so for a living. Some Twitch influencers are solely content creators while others are professional eSports players and your product would align differently with both types, or not at all. As Twitch streaming continues to evolve, talent agencies are springing up to sign on streamers most likely to gel with major sponsors rather than relying on audience-building and charisma alone.
It’s also a matter of product fit. If you’ve got a product you want to market to children and parents, you should research whether that streamer is family-friendly or not. Swear-ridden sarcasm works well for some brands while some streamers could end up raising some eyebrows and turn people off from wanting to interact with your brand further. Working with Twitch streamers can also encompass more than simply sponsoring their streams or advertising your products during ad breaks. Like it or not, today’s superstars that young people are paying attention to are going to be found on Twitch or YouTube Gaming than they are in movies or on TV. Actively involving them in your content strategy with blog posts, infographics, and other visual and written content will help build trust in their fan bases more effectively than just flashing your brand’s name on their Twitch page.
Make sure you turn to WriterAccess for the additional heavy lifting describing your potential Twitch partnerships and the subsequent content that needs to be created in addition to the streams themselves!
Rachel P is an indie game developer, writer, and consultant. She is also a content strategist here at Writer Access and would be happy to help you with keyword maps, customer journey maps, and buyer personas in addition to writing for you. If you would to like to hire Rachel to devise a content strategy for you, please contact your account manager or send a direct message.
