20 New Content Ideas To Grow Your Stream in 2020

 

Newbies and pro streamers learn how to unify together on stream. It’s the beautiful part about having live stream options like Facebook Gaming, Twitch and YouTube – live is candid. You can’t make mistakes, but if you do – you need to learn how to do them well enough to be considered valuable for others to “learn from your mistakes.”

That being said, every streamer looking to grow their audience, build their stream and strengthen their content marketing need to develop their storytelling skills in order to achieve better results. Whether that’s for higher viewerships, increased followers, faster content production or climbing the ladder of the top Facebook Gaming streams.

 

From competitions and marketing ideas, to freebies and active engagement concepts, we divide and conquer our 20 amazing content concepts to grow your stream, gain new followers and advance your career with powerful live content marketing strategies.

 

• Table of Contents

  Build Your Initial Who, What, How and Why Content

You’ve got to start with this. Building your video matrix of who you are, what you do, and why you do it, is critical as a foundation for you to build your persona, your online reputation and set you towards the right path for building your profile online. The key benefit here is that you get to define what your winning streams are because this content doesn’t necessarily need to be long, it just needs to be engaging and honest.

 

Who Are You?

 

What Do You Do?

Why Are You Even Doing This?

 

Not to put it bluntly, but stating who you are, how you add value to the community and why you have the motivation to do it, is a powerful foundation for you to build even greater content. You’re looking for your “otaku’s” the followers that lead. Your fans can only get to this point if they understand what drives you, and how you’ve added value to their lives.

 

• Ask Me Anything Sessions

If you’ve grown up with the internet as most streamers these days have, you’ve probably joined a couple of AMA sessions on Reddit and found thread comments in the thousands. One of the “oldest tricks in the book” for complete trust building, helps you solidify your Who, What and Why video content.

 

Note: Trolls are about, so be prepared. These can be productive in minute groups with people that you trust, your most loyal fans, and even having friends on stream and having them Q&A you live as questions pop in. At the end of the day, just have fun with AMAs. You can spiel products, reviews and promote anything during this time, just keep the focus on you, and follow the pareto principle of 80/20 between your AMA content and promotional content in-stream.

 

• Full Training Webinars

If you’re not a great teacher don’t worry, that’s the beautiful part about being live, it’s all candid. If you’re not quite “full stream alchemist” either, this is a fun activity to get you familiar with how to build your presence online, and take the authoritative step.

 

With most successful streamers we’ve encountered, many of them have what we’ve assumed was always a “natural leadership” mentality. But that’s not the case. Many of them started out by giving lessons on how to take advantage of specific playstyles, showcasing hidden easter eggs in games, building in games and developing characters. Full training webinars take that one step further, and gives you the competitive edge with keeping engagement: you’re adding value to your audience.

 

• Host Special Guests

The name of the game to grow your stream with someone else. The goal is to stream content that resonates with your mutual audiences, and hosting the streams at the same time. Pairing this together with building your own discord group, or having an email capture or follow on Twitch / FB Gaming, means you get to develop your audience as they come. Sharing is caring.

• Product Reviews

You don’t need a sponsor to do a product review, and you don’t need new gear to review either. A clear example is LinusTechTips. Sure they have sponsors, but they had product reviews first. Product reviews are your chicken to your golden egg dilemma. If you’re a mobile gamer, review your phone, headphones, or even Internet Service Provider. If you’re a PC or Console gamer, look at your accessories, and what’s available to you.

 

• Mini Workshops

Remember how we mentioned full training workshops before? Well, this is simplified, bite-sized content that is easy to digest. The real benefit here is that a workshop can be just 30 seconds of how to do something, or a parody. Have two goals in mind: entertain and educate. 

 

You can break your major full training webinar down into smaller chunks and split them across several live streams one after the other to help you find what topic sticks the most.

 

• Game Reviews

It’s as much about playing the game, as it is about having an opinion about it. If you’re streaming GTA V for instance, let’s talk about the modding community! Is it good? Is it bad? What do you think? What do you think of Volarant? Is it a TF2 or Overwatch Clone? How about Fortnite? PUBG ripoff? Well.. let’s not say that too loud.. Your opinion matters, and your audience is willing to hear it, as long as you’re entertaining.

 

• Invite Random Live Audience Members To Join You In-Game

 

If you’re streaming multiplayer games online – why not introduce a member of your audience to join in a game one on one, or in a co-operative battle against Lord in Mobile Legends? Express a little bit of caution when letting them speak on your stream though, and be brutal when it comes to moderating who gets to be on your feed. #qualityonly

 

• Got A Pet? They’re great live.

Don’t have anyone to stream with? Pets are great to have on camera. They’re rarely ever camera shy, won’t contest you, won’t highlight your gameplay flaws or critique you. But they will give your audience another layer of commentary and talking points about your stream with little to no effort.

 

Just be sure to keep them out of harms way, never hurt or put their lives in any danger, and for the love of all things Jeff Kaplan, never give them an opportunity to exercise on your keyboard, otherwise you’l;alksdjlaksdjwer324 end up with somethomqwe1jasdlaskj else.

 

• Build Checklists With Your Fans, Then Achieve Them.

Challenged to come up with a checklist of to-do’s with your fans? Building a checklist is as simple as listing out ideas, giving them a gut-feel score of success out of five, and knocking out the lower 20 percent.

 

With or without a fanbase to help you build the list, you can easily come up with ideas if you base it on a single game, or time limit. Keep your factors limited, and you’ll be able to ideate quickly before heading to stream. Just be sure the make it a celebration with your stream for that ATH good vibes.

 

• The Honest Truth

If you’re new – state that you’re new. Highlight your experience and make sure you’re comfortable with your gameplay style. The truth can bring out the best in your persona online, and steers clear from the need to have multiple personalities, thus making it easier to manage your interactions on stream.

 

Your audience is there to support you, and roaming viewership can be new followers when they decide to enlighten you. The ultimate goal here is to gain the attention of fresh viewers, convert them to followers and keep them coming back for you. 

 

• Try Something New

If a new game releases, new strategies are ready for testing or you’ve always itched to play Planet Zoo, your online persona may give your audience a clear idea into the flexibility of your talent. 

 

There’s no harm with trying out new games or tactics during your live stream, and it gives fresh talking points between you and your audience. 

 

The goal for trying out new things is to bring out a stronger micro-demographic of your audience who appreciate the same gameplay as you.

 

• Explore IRL Moments That Inspired You

If you’re stream is being broadcasted to local communities, it’s always a great idea to make them feel included with something they can relate to. 

 

Whether that’s recalling a moment at your favorite ice cream bar, or visiting the local arcade for some skee-ball, bringing out the local delights to an international audience is a great way to improve engagement from your local community.

 

• Surprise Impromptu Live Streams

 

If you’re regularly casting from your PC setup, with beautifully crafted lighting, and a tidy background, don’t forget to remind your audience you’re human too. 

 

Impromptu live streams out and about, when you’re getting fresh gear, or when you’re about to step into a meeting with a new sponsor can bring out the best in your audience to show their support.

• Trendsetter: Share Your Opinion On Industry News

Staying up to date with the latest news is always a venture worth exploring. Being open about the industry means you’re for the players, not the corporates, and that is a sentiment held dear to most fanbases.

 

Even if the trend is outside of the industry, being able to link and refine the impact of media and news to support your messaging will help you build a stronger personality online, with data to back up your perspective. It’s important to never lead with false information, and call out flat earthers who may say otherwise on your stream.

• Showcase Your Setup

 

It’s really that simple. Keep your webcam on, or stream from your phone. Take the time to guide your audience through your setup, why it’s build that way, why it’s configured to your preferences and explain how you came about to building your PC, your way.

 

• Schedule An Activity On Your Stream, With Streamers Teaching You

What do Henry Cavill and Terry Crews have in common? They’ve both streamed their PC builds online. Henry Cavill with his all night long AMD raid, and Terry Crews with his impromptu Intel build.

We had a live Q&A from Terry Crews via Twitter, asking for help as he connected with his son over a PC build. We saw Henry Cavill playing you guessed it, Witcher III. 

 

The real question here is, are you team AMD or team Intel?

 

• Event Live Streaming and Commentary

Running fresh out of ideas or finding some of these too challenging? Hosting a live streaming even coverage over a game isn’t that difficult. It just requires a bit of skill with Open Broadcast Studio, and building a story about a stream.

 

If you’re reviewing a live match between two teams, learn a little more about the teams prior, or if you’re truly savvy, you can have a separate screen open on your computer with a quick Google about each player as the game commences and progresses. Just be sure not to miss out on any live action that may unfold.

• Host A Giveaway

When you’ve got a big enough stream that can help you accelerate the growth of your audience size, it also gives you the opportunity to reach out to sponsors and partners to highlight their products and services. 

 

We’ve partnered with some top streamers online and hosted dozens of giveaways from our partners like Logitech and Blue Microphones with great success and positive feedback.

• Create Stream Journeys

 

Now that you have everything listed above, it’s time to create your own checklist of activities to do live, and treat this as your content strategy. A stream journey is similar to story telling, and sets the path for building your own repeatable, and scalable marketing campaigns.

 

For each stream journey that you create, follow the simple guide of giving each item it’s own gut-check feel that we mentioned in item 10 of our list. 

 

Pair this with another column to define how difficult it would be to produce results, set yourself a goal with a reward in mind. We’ve created our own checklist as an example for you to download and change. Get started by downloading the checklist, and giving each item a score. 

 

Set the dates and launch yourself into building 20 new unique pieces of content your fanbase will love. Ready?