we're gonna we're gonna have some fun stuff to talk about tonight it's gonna or today tonight
why did i say tonight it's 10 in the morning for me well let's go ahead and hop into today's lesson
shall we collaborations where you get together with someone or some people to work on a project
together and hopefully make a something that you couldn't make by yourself but that you can as a
group collaborations take a bunch of forms there's you know gaming collabs which are probably the
most common among streamers there's podcasts talk shows you know interviews and the great thing is
the same principles kind of apply to all of them so it doesn't really matter if you're looking for
a gaming collaboration a podcast an interview all of these can follow the same points of how
to reach out to people when you should do them and what you should look for but to talk about
all this i've broken this down into it looks like six points for the day we're just gonna go ahead
and list those out right now so number one is when should you collaborate number two is who
should you collaborate with number three is how do you approach them four is preparation like how do
you prepare for a collaboration once you've got one in place five i'm gonna put this as read the
room while you're in the collaboration and then finally follow-up which is something that i have
been historically absolutely terrible at so keep in mind i i am not perfect at all of these in fact
i have flaws with many of these and the only reason why i'm giving you you know basically a
ted talk on these is because i have made mistakes and i feel like i can help you avoid making the
same mistakes that i have all right so let's hop into this number one when should you collaborate
well honestly you need to know how you feel about things how you work what your typical responses
to things might be before you start working with other people once you know what you do and you
know what they do you can discuss the best means of combining those two things to make something
even better the subsection of this part is don't collaborate when you're just starting out because
again you don't really know what you're doing yet now people can have differing opinions on
this that's okay i just in general believe that when you're first starting out everyone's first
instinct is like gotta play with other people you know group up we gotta have a good group dynamic
but if you don't know what your own style is yet how can you expect to mesh well with others
and as always if you guys have any thoughts when i'm saying any of these please feel free
to chime in you know whether you think i'm right whether you think i'm wrong i would love to hear
your thoughts anyways because that's what this is all about it's all it's all about a group
learning experience that leads directly into our second point is finding the right people to
collaborate with you gotta do research don't just reach out to people you've never talked to before
you gotta talk to them you gotta watch their streams you gotta watch their content you have
to try and get a sense of who they are before you ever reach out because honestly i didn't do this i
know i always talk about my among the sarah but it's the best example of mistakes that i've made
i reached out to a bunch of people i just saw they were youtubers like hey that's enough you
should come join the game but because i didn't get a good grasp on their personalities there
were personality conflicts and it did not end well but that's why this research phase is so
important you need to be able to take the time to find people you like identify what you like about
them and more importantly identify what you can bring to the table for them some of the things
i've written down are like people that do similar topics games community all of these can be good
indicators of people you can collaborate with one of the biggest points i want to add to this
is who you want to build a good relationship with because honestly the best collaborations are the
people that you can come back to time and time again you know you work with them well they're
excited to hang out with you you're excited to do stuff with them and you make each other's content
better because of it and honestly group dynamics are some of the most fun content to watch so let's
say that you found someone you want to work with how do you talk to someone you want to work with
i mean obviously the answer is to comment on the fluffiness of their cheeks but you know if you're
a normal person after you how do you approach someone you want to work with my number one
advice and keep in mind this is advice that i had not followed until somewhat recently you have to
interact with them before you reach out with the idea of a collab honestly so many people myself
included reach out and be like hey you're a gamer i'm a gamer we should just play together and the
person i'm reaching out to is like hey who the heck are you like i don't know who you are why
would i want to why would i want to do stuff with you there's a lot of different ways to interact
with people online and the best way in my opinion is to become a regular in their chat or on their
comment section or on twitter wherever they happen to be posting stuff just interact with it interact
with it in a positive manner eventually they will learn your name i'll be honest i've gotten plenty
of dms from people who have never said a word to me they've just joined discord and immediately
messaged me and that's really off-putting your first interaction with someone should never be
trying to get them to do something for you at least a really sad taste in everyone's mouth if
you're not being a good person to them before you've started working on something i'm really
worried about doing stuff with you down the road just just gotta say it's a little off-putting it
takes time to build up that kind of rapport it's something that i know a lot of people
aren't patient enough for i promise you if you take the time to really get to know the people
that you want to work with it's just going to be better even if it goes terribly and like the end
result isn't what you wanted the fact that you took the time to reach out to them appropriately
is something they will never forget and they will have a good opinion of you afterwards add on to
our second little point here for interactions don't use people don't just reach out to people
with something that you want that makes you a complete and total jerk don't do that you have to
do something that benefits everyone please please please don't do what i did because i i was guilty
of this acne among us sarah i tried to get a whole bunch of big v tubers together just because they
were big i didn't do my due diligence i didn't try and interact with them i just wanted them
there because i thought it would improve the views and to no surprise people don't like being talked
to like that they don't like being used for views they don't like being used for anything if you're
gonna reach out to someone because you think that they would be a great addition to your stream how
are you in addition to theirs why should they work with you what do you add to that you gotta think
about that intent matters so much but again this all ties back into that first point got to take
the time to interact with them and learn if this collaboration is even a good idea once you've put
together a good value proposition you know it's like hey i think we'd be good together for this
reason i wanted to do this with you we could do this for you you know there's a good value
on both ends that's when you contact them and the reality this situation is is even if you've done
all these steps people are going to say no people don't always want to collaborate they don't always
want to do things with other people at that time that's okay don't take a no as an offense just
shelve it you know maybe talk to them again a month or two down the road ask how they're
doing maybe they'll pitch back to you a different idea and you can start the collaboration process
that way they saw that you were willing to give them something that they wanted to do and that
you wanted to do and so now they're like well i don't really want to do this but could we do this
you can then start working back and forth and by the way this goes both ways if someone approaches
you with something that you don't want to do right now it's okay to say like hey i'm just not really
interested in this right now but i appreciate you reaching out to me just be respectful about it and
everyone will be happy and honestly if someone gets angry at you for saying no i'm not interested
in this right now you dodged a bullet because if they're upset that you didn't want to collab
because of whatever you've got going on man that that was a recipe waiting for disaster all right
so let's go ahead and move on to number four shall we let's say you've reached out to someone they've
agreed that it's a good idea you want to work with them they want to work with you you've set up a
date you're set up an activity how do you prepare because if you think you can just reach out to
someone and say hey we need to do this and they say yes we should don't don't don't just assume
it's gonna happen please please do not do that streamers for some reason v tubers especially seem
to be the most fickle people on the planet when it comes to actually executing things on a specific
date especially if it's a group event you have no idea how many times those things fall through
outside of just checking dates here's a few things that i really think you should check up on
who is streaming because there are a lot of different notions of what a collaboration is
especially when it comes to streaming this actually happened with me our first collaboration
there was a big miscommunication because i had assumed we were all just gonna be streaming the
game that we were playing together they were under the impression that i was just gonna play games
with them on their channel caused a little bit of tension i'm like well why wouldn't i just stream
this as well and there's nothing wrong with either method by the way the point is is you should
kind of figure that out if only one person is streaming it then you should probably be in
that person's chat because then you can interact with their chat while the stream is going on and
while you're there and so you're not just hearing a disembodied voice talk to someone you can't see
if you're all streaming then talk about you know chat etiquette in a group setting there's a finite
amount of vocal space if multiple people are talking things get muddy and you end up just
talking over each other communication is key here and in tandem with this i don't i don't actually
know how if you spell etiquette is it adequate i think it's something like that maybe there's
only one t here i'm not sure etiquette is very important because you know some streamers would
ask that you don't swear on stream because you know that's not that's not their brand and that's
something you have to be cognizant of if you're working with them just talk about the expectations
what you're gonna do find out what the general vibe of the group is what's generally okay and
make sure that you're all up to date on that next one which probably should have been the first one
double check time time zones and dates oh my gosh you would not believe the number of
collaborations that have burned because of this if it's like a week out double check a week out
check three days before check the day before check the day off i don't care if you're annoying
you're gonna make this mistake at some point in time it's gonna happen double triple quadruple
check because that way at least if something falls through it wasn't your fault moving on to point
d if you're playing a game install and run the freaking game beforehand i cannot understand this
one how do people not get this if you're going to play a game with someone and they're like hey
we're gonna play apex tomorrow i legitimately have had people show up to a collab and they're
like oh i need to install the game and it's like 10 minutes before it starts oh my gosh what are
you doing like come on and more importantly run the game get into it make sure it works with your
streaming setup please please please just do the bare minimum to make it work and make sure it's
okay if something explodes after that whatever but don't hold up groups because of this oh my gosh
it's so infuriating it's like you saying yeah you were coming to this collaboration but you
decided it wasn't worth your time to make sure that you weren't wasting everyone else's time
i get really heated about that one all right let's let's move on let's move on to the next point here
check with everyone all the time reach out make sure everyone's on board because there's nothing
worse than being the host of something and half of your group doesn't show do your part
as a participant the moment you know you can't make it to something let them know they will
thank you so much for any amount of advanced time to find replacements to have backup people if
you can't make it sometimes collabs just explode again this all boils down to communication please
just communicate it saves so much time it solves so many problems point number five is what should
you be doing during the collaboration try and follow the host's lead on things follow the other
members leads you aren't the only star don't act like it this cannot be said enough you should be
sharing the spotlight with everyone who's in that collaboration don't try and make it all about you
you got to make sure that they feel like they're a part of it include them in what you're doing
just make sure that everyone gets a chance in the spotlight this is a pretty small point
but it's very important and now the last point this is where i think so many of us
fail with collaboration you should never just collaborate with someone once and then never
talk to them again that leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth talk to them afterwards you
should interact with them you should let them know how it went let them know what maybe should be
improved or if you're the host reach out and see how everyone feels and what you could have done
better collaboration should be a reoccurring thing for you if you want to work with someone once
chances are you'd like to work with them again take the time to reach out every once in a while
you know ask how they're doing follow up with them build that relationship like word gets around
if you're a jerk people will find out about it if you're fun to work with if you're respectful if
you treat people as a value that also gets around you gotta treat people how you wanna be treated
and following up after you've done something with someone is so important build those relationships
be good to each other be nice to each other and things are gonna go very well for you there's our
presentation on collaborations today hopefully you all learned something hopefully you all enjoyed it
walked away with uh new knowledge and all that and again most of these come from my personal
experiences i've made many of the mistakes by not doing these points and i've had bad results
because of it so just be good to each other you'll you'll be so much better off in the long run