Crowd sourcing for streamers guide
My definition for crowd sourcing for broadcasters is generally getting viewers to contribute for ideas, services, promoting your brand and/or channel.
Crowd sourcing for live streamers can come in many different fashions, here are some examples:
- Streamer is playing a game for the first time and asks questions on game mechanics.
- The game community or viewers then obtain information and answer the streamer questions about said game.
- Broadcaster asks viewers to Tweet or Retweet, post on Reddit etc. stream related things.
- This can be giveaway related or some sorts of contests.
- A retweet of the stream going live, which then gets more syndication via re-tweeters follower lists.
- A twitch streamer asks community for help making images such as logos, emoticons, and screenshots.
- Many talented viewers out there and some are indeed graphic artists, sometimes asking for help can yield very positive returns.
- Emoticons if are done really well can be a subscriber perk on itself, I'm pretty sure some people sub to a couple of Twitch streams just to get the emoticon packs to use across the platform.
- Donations, Money for Equipment and other various items.
- Many streamers put up a donation goal amount on overlays be it for general funding, hardware related or future giveaways.
- Hosting, Auto Hosting, Networking with others
- This sometimes can achieve crowd-sourcing proportions depending on who you network with on the platform.
- Loyalty Systems
- Another way if done in a certain fashion can lead into crowd-sourcing, basically using the crowd to fund the loyalty rewards and scaling it up.
- PR, PR Stunts
- One of the more powerful ways of using a community is to create PR and let the viewers syndicate it out for you.
- Charity related activities
- PR Stunts - some of the things I have noticed broadcasters doing in my personal opinion is very unethical but sadly people buy this stuff up and syndicate it out on reddit and social media like crazy
- Twitch Teams
- Some Twitch Teams are used for crowd sourcing a brand, service or advertising certain streamers. When you see a Twitch Team with dozens upon dozens of streamers in the list rest assure its someone using it for this exact sort of a thing.
- Twitch Clips
- Viewers can make clips of your stream and syndicate it out via social media or other platforms.
- Use Viewer clips and combine them in a compilation to re-upload via the Upload system on Twitch.
Using crowd sourcing is getting to the point a must have in order to be successful on the platform. If you do not have good crowd sourcing skills you will have to work a lot harder in certain avenues. You need to push your brand, channel and content out as much as possible. Using the crowd to do it for you is the best way if you can do it in a organic way. As they are helping you, you have to help them in some fashion also be it by entertainment or by other means.
