- What do you suppose the best livestream platform is?
In general, not just games.
Could it be YouTube, with its millions and billions of
viewers, or could it be twitch which was originally built
just for live streaming.
Like anything, the answer is it depends,
but I think I have some guidance and some opinions that
may help.
Hello, I'm Dan and welcome back to vidIQ.
We are the YouTube tool, academy, and channel
that helps educate you on your YouTube journey.
And today I would like to ask you this: Have you ever live
streamed on any of the platforms?
YouTube, Twitch, mixer whatever it may be,
let us know in the comments and as always don't forget
to subscribe.
As you can imagine there are a lot of opinions out there
about the best site to stream on.
YouTube, Twitch, Mixer any other number of sites that are
popping up these days.
As they are the two biggest players in this game, I'm gonna
focus pretty much exclusively on YouTube and Twitch today,
but basically anything I say about Twitch you can apply to
the other live streaming sites in some way or fashion
because a lot of them are really similar in there strategies
for growth.
YouTube is a whole different animal because they added
streaming a lot later on after they kind of established
themselves as the authority in video.
And in recent months they've invested quite a bit in
becoming even bigger players in the streaming game.
So today, now that it's 2020 and these investments have been
made, I would like to talk about YouTube vs. Twitch
or sites like Twitch.
Which one makes the most sense for you to broadcast on?
Before we dive into anything, I want to first break down how
Twitch works differently than YouTube.
I used to stream on the site quite a bit,
and I have some insights.
For starters, the biggest thing I can tell you
is that Twitch works completely different from YouTube
from a point of discoverability.
On Twitch more viewers equals more views.
That's because live streams are organized in a list fashion.
Where the person with most viewers is at the top and the
person with the least viewers is at the bottom
as you scroll through the list.
Now recently Twitch did add tags, which allow you to find
people in new exciting ways, for example if you're someone
looking for family friendly content, you can search for the
family friendly tag and then all the streams who list
themselves as family friendly will show up to you.
At the end of the day though the most common growth strategy
for Twitch, that you'll here the most from people is A.B.C.
which isn't complicated.
Always be casting.
Your channel is only really showing up as long as you're
active on it
So, always be casting is something that gets preached quite
a bit.
The nice thing about streaming though is once it's over,
it's over.
You don't have to go doing a bunch of keyword research,
you don't have to edit any videos,
you don't have to make a thumbnail, you're stream just
lives on the site for I think, a couple of weeks
until it's deleted and you move on to streaming the
following day or week or whatever your schedule dictates.
With this method of growth, that means the longer you stream
(the more hours you put in) the more rewards you can
potentially get.
The more you stream, the more people that slowly show up
over time, and again the more people you have the higher
you climb in that ranking.
And you can probably guess that, yes this can have a very
negative impact on your health, but same can be said for
YouTube.
It's never good to sit at your computer for extended periods
of time without food, water or bathroom breaks.
So, be safe but ultimately that's a whole different video.
Here a vidIQ we stream on YouTube pretty much exclusively
and a lot so lets talk about how YouTube handles streams
differently now than Twitch would.
Finding where to watch streams on YouTube is a little bit
different, they show up in a lot of places.
They show up within different categories on YouTube,
for example, if you click on gaming, you could find them
in search by typing things such as 'Minecraft Live',
and sometimes they'll just show up in search even if you
didn't type live in the search bar.
There are a lot of ways to get your stream discovered on
YouTube, but as for me when I stream, I see a lot of the
same names I saw in my comment section from videos I've
posted.
That means people who are discovering my live stream are
ones who are probably already subscribed to me,
which is pretty cool.
YouTube does also have a ranking system where the more
people who are watching you the more you do move up in
rankings.
The best example I can show you in these rankings is when
you go into YouTube and check out various categories,
go to the live tab and then you see all the different
channels with their different streams and you can tell how
many people are watching at that moment.
What's really cool about these categories is there pretty
well sorted, you can filter by live streams, recent videos,
and depending on your category, all sorts of stuff.
We all know that YouTube, of course, is built like a search
engine and in my opinion it could be a lot easier to get
discovered as a broadcaster on YouTube because now you can
take advantage of thumbnails, keywords, strong titles,
and things of that nature.
The most obvious way to do this, of course,
is to make videos and do live streams, which means you
get to tackle the algorithm from two different angles.
So that's it then.
YouTube wins game over.
It's the best platform.
Thanks for watching,.. of course not.
It's never that easy is it?
I wish it were.
When trying to decide where you should create your content
there's one thing you need to keep in mind, and that is of
course your audience.
I'll give you an example, lets say you're a mechanic and you
have a channel that teaches people everyday how to fix
something in their car.
Someone who watches your channel, will probably be looking
for very specific search terms,
like how to change an air filter.
So for this case, a mechanic will probably want to make
videos on YouTube, where search is more optimized.
But a mechanic could also stream on YouTube
if they wanted to, I don't think making that ' How to change
an air filter' video in real time live is gonna really be
necessarily be super valuable, but if you're in your garage
tinkering anyway, maybe you could do some Q and A and just
answer general questions about how to fix cars.
Regardless, you're staying within your niche and as long
as you plan your streams out and give them kind of a
different focus than your videos, I think YouTube would be
a great place for you to be.
But lets say your working in your garage after a long day
of recording and you're sweating, and you're tired and you
just wanna unwind and play some Animal Crossing.
Now yes, you can stream games on YouTube and yes, there is
an audience on YouTube who watch Animal Crossing streams,
but as a car mechanic channel, is that really the best call?
Is there any cross over in your viewers who like to fix cars
and viewers who like to play animal crossing?
Maybe a little bit.
But even YouTube is gonna be a little bit confused because
its ranked you as a car channel and you're an authority in
your niche and now you're playing animal crossing.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
This is a case where I would recommend utilizing another
platform, like Twitch, to do things that are outside of your
niche.
If on your car mechanic channel you've been doing things to
build your audience lets say on Twitter and Instagram
and things like that you can post a quick update and say
" Hey, tonight I'm gonna stream Animal Crossing on Twitch.
Why don't you come join me?"
Some of your audience will probably show up and the best
part about it that Twitch, because discoverability just
doesn't work the same, won't penalize you for playing
Animal Crossing one day and doing a cooking stream the next.
So to reiterate, it really depends on you and your audience
and the focus that you want to bring to them and the value
you want to bring to them.
The last thing I want to discuss today is If you're somebody
who just exclusively wants to be a live streamer,
what should you do and where should you do that?
At vidIQ during our Tuesday channel audits, we've actually
seen a number of gaming channels who practice YouTube
in this way.
They just do streams and it seems like they don't really
have an interest in making video on demand content, you know
your normal YouTube videos.
And honestly, we tell these people a lot that they should
really take advantage of the video on demand
side of their channel, and we recommend this because
YouTube can work for you while you're not streaming.
When you make video on demand content that's highly
valuable and searchable to your audience it's gonna get
people coming to your channel potentially subscribing
and then the next time you stream those numbers could go up.
At the very least, you could be highlighting section of
your broadcast that were really informative or just a lot of
fun and give them really catchy searchable titles
and cool thumbnails.
Regardless on how you want to tackle it on YouTube, the fact
of the matter is a lot of people don't look for
six hour live streams to re watch
after they've been broadcast, and to be quite honest with
you during our live streams we've actually told people
that maybe Twitch or Mixer or another platform will be a
better choice if they really have no interest in growth
via video on demand content and maybe you're watching this
in agreement and you think that Twitch would actually
be a good platform, but you're struggling to grow cause
you're just staring out, and I'll say it again always be
casting, that is a way to grow on Twitch,
but a lot streamers will tell you that they got there
start here on YouTube.
Because think about when you use YouTube.
What are the type of things you regularly search for?
You're probably not looking for a six hour live stream,
but you're looking for an answer to a question, something
high value, something entertaining and a lot of these
streamers now, the full time broadcasters started on
YouTube by growing that audience providing value to them
and deciding that Twitch was just gonna be where they wanted
to go and a lot of them stared before streaming on YouTube
was even possible.
As always, this is a choice that we can't make for you
and there's pros and cons to either side of this argument,
but I do hope that my thoughts here and opinions on the
matter helped you in some way understand how you could take
advantage of Twitch or YouTube or Twitch and YouTube
using both platforms, using Twitch as another form of
social media to grow your overall brand.
There's a lot of ways you can tackle this and I just hope
that this was helpful.
Don't forget to subscribe, of course,
and let us know in the comments:
Have you tried streaming before and if so, on what platform?
How did it go?
Let us know and we will see you in the next one.
Have a great day.