How To Build Your Channel Brand

A good brand makes your channel more memorable and more attractive to potential sponsors down the road.

While these may not seem like important things early on in your streaming career, getting started early on will definitely set you up for success later.

As a new streamer you won't really need to think about things like sponsorships or featuring other streamers on your channel, but getting set up early to be able to do these things will put you in a much better position when you are ready to.

Branding Tips

1. Choose Your Channel Name
2. Work on Your Channel Graphics
3. Set a Schedule (and stick to it!)
4. Develop Your On-Stream Personality
5. Use Social Media to Build Your Community
6. Feature Other Streamers & Content
7. Keep Developing Your Channel
8. Approach Sponsorship Opportunities
9. Don't Feed the Trolls
10. Channel Analysis

Planning Your Brand

Your brand is a lot more than just your logo and graphics. When you're setting up your channel brand, you should be thinking about the following questions:

• What type of content do you want to stream? Gameplay, Music, Art, Just Chatting, Variety or something completely different?
• What games do you plan on playing?
• How do you plan to build your community?
• What makes your content different to everyone else's?

Answering these questions will help you to determine the direction you need to take to make your brand and channel successful.

Choose Your Channel Name

Try and pick something catchy and meaningful!

Although this is top of our list, it's not necessarily the most important thing you need to think about. It's definitely worth putting some time into but, ultimately, it's your content, personality and dedication that will leave a lasting impression and keep viewers coming back.

That being said, make sure you take your time choosing your name. Choose something that means something to you. Try and make sure your chosen name is available on Social Media too so you can secure your branding and, most importantly, make sure your name represents your brand.

Work on Your Channel Graphics

Your logo is one of the first things people will be exposed to when searching for your channels. Having a logo that sets you apart from other streamers will help to give your potential viewers an instant peek into what to expect from your channel and your content.

Make sure the logo you choose (or have commissioned) represents the type of content you plan on streaming. There's no point having a serious eSports logo if you're going to be primarily doing music streams!

One of the best pieces to have designed early are your Twitch Panels. These are relatively simple to design or have commissioned and can really have an impact on the design of your whole channel. You might not take much notice of them yourself, but you'd be surprised by how many people make a point of checking out your panels!

Set Up a Schedule (and stick to it!)

Your schedule will help you and your viewers!

You've probably heard this a thousand times already, but setting a schedule is a really important part of streaming. If you hear those words and think "I don't want to be tied down to a schedule", then streaming probably isn't the right career path for you.

A well defined schedule has multiple purposes. Firstly (and most obviously) it lets your community know when to expect to see you on stream (even better if you set up your schedule to let them know what content to expect!)

As well as keeping your community informed, your schedule helps to keep you on track and helps prevent burnout, especially in the early days.

Remember, you don't need to stream every day to be successful, and you don't need every stream to be a marathon 24 hour event. Stream regularly and for a few hours at a time, and make sure to leave time for networking, creating other content and (most importantly) relaxation.

Develop Your On-Stream Personality

Whether it's a reaction to something that happens in the games you play, something someone says in chat or the way you greet your viewers at the start of your stream, take notice of small things you do or say that get a positive reaction from your chat and work them into your stream routines.

If you have a pet you can think about making it a part of your shows on incorporating a "pet cam" on your stream, you could even use a channel rewards system to allow you viewers to automatically switch your OBS scene to your "pet cam" for a certain amount of time.

Think about your community name too and how you will welcome new people to your channel when they follow or subscribe. Popular Twitch streamer CohhCarnage has called his community The Cohhilition, tying his community in with his channel branding.

Don't be afraid to think outside the box and do things your own way. There's no right or wrong way to be you on stream. Just make sure you're concictent with how you act and interact with your community.

Use Social Media to Build Your Community

Get used to being on Social Media a couple of hours a day!

Confining your content to a single patform like Twitch or YouTube isn't enough to build and maintain a community any more. In order to keep growing your channel you're going to have to branch out and explore other avenues to share your content with potential viewers.

Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and (more recently) TikTok are great resources to share and advertise your content. If you get into the habit of clipping and highlighting your content on Twitch or YouTube you can share these highlights across your social media channels to help build up your following (and maybe even go viral in the process!)

No matter what social channels you choose to incorporate into your brand, make sure you keep the visual style consistent across all your channels. This will help you to build up your brand's recognition.

Feature Other Streamers & Content

This is a concept that's often overlooked by smaller streamers, but collaborating or featuring other streamers on your channel is a great way to connect with other communities.

Don't think that just because you're a small streamer nobody's going to want to collaborate with you, just make sure to work with other streamers who are around the same level as you and (preferrably) create the same kind of content.

Collaborations don't have to be directly on-stream either, work with other streamers to share ideas and learn how they do things. Share some of the unique things you create on your own channel and learn from some of the things they do or create differently. Collaboration should be mutually beneficial, not one person trying to pull someone else's community away.

With that being said, make sure the person or group you choose to collaborate with have both your and their interests in mind and plan on-stream collaborations well in advance so you have time to work out how everything will work.

Keep Developing Your Channel

Keep tweaking and developing your content!

Remembers we said to create a schedule and make sure to leave time for other things? Well that includes working on your brand and channel content.

Set aside some time each week to go back through any clips that have been made of your channel that week (or create some from your VODs) that you can use to highlight some of your best content. This is social media gold dust, but it does take some work to put it all together.

Make sure to keep an eye on what other streamers are doing and what trends are emerging on your platform. There's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other streamers and doing things your own way (just don't rip off what someone else has done).

If you're not sure how someone did something or you want some advice from someone, don't be afraid to reach out and ask them about it through their social channels or Discord or Guilded servers.

Approach Sponsorship Opportunities

When you think of sponsorships you probably think you need to have hundreds of thousands of followers to even think about aproaching a potential sponsor, but that's not necessarily the case.

A lot of sponsors look more at the type of content a streamer puts out, rather than basing their decision solely on how many viewers a channel has. Sponsors want to work with people they feel will positively represent their brand, so you could have 100k viewers every stream but still behave or interact in a way that isn't attractive to a particular sponsor.

This is especially true now that content creators are actively being called out for negative behaviour. Nothing makes a sponsor drop a partnership faster than someone getting called out by 50% of their target market!

Focus on creating content and conducting yourself in a way that's attractive to the sponsors you want to approach. Talk about the equipment you use on stream as if you were trying to sell it to your viewers, this show potential sponsors how well you'll sell their good or services!

Don't Feed the Trolls

Trolls aren't worth wasting your time on... trust us!

Trolls are an inevitable part of streaming, content creation or just social media in general. No matter who you are or what type of content you put out, you'll inevitably come across some people who's whole purpose is to put you off your game and get a reaction to you.

Your first defense against these internet assholes are your Moderators, the best of the best in your community who understand you, your brand and your content and will help you to control the chat and zap the trolls before you even have to think about dealing with them.

When you're just starting out it's easy to make anyone who comes into your channel a Mod, but make sure the people you give that power to are people you trust. Think about setting up an application or interview process to make sure the people you have controlling your chat are the right type of people and understand what's expected of them.

Channel Analysis

As a small streamer you might think your channel stats are a waste of time, but that's definitely not the case.

You should make a habit of checking out you stats at least once a week. This will help you to see what days and times are your most successful for streaming and further refine your schedule. You'll also see what type of content retains more viewers, so you can start to tailor your content more towards what your audience are sticking around for.

You should also take time to check out the stats of the top channels streaming similar content to you. Check out when their viewership peaks, what type of content they do well with and be sure to watch the VODs for some of those streams to see how they're interacting and what they're doing to keep their viewers engaged.

Conclusion

Cheers to you, Content Creator!

Don't be afraid to try new things and put yourself out there! Creating content, whether it's on Twitch, YouTube or anywhere else on the internet is always going to be a learning process no matter how big your audience is.

You're going to make mistakes, and you're going to have times when you feel like your growth has slowed down or stalled. This is all part of the process of being a content creator. If you try something and it doesn't work, switch things up!

There are thousands of successful creators out there. Don't be afraid to learn what and how they do things and apply them to your own content.

Most importantly, whether you stream as yourself or with a persona, be genuine. Interact with your audience as if they were there in the room with you and take constructive feedback on board.

Your brand isn't set in stone. Don't be afraid to tweak things, change things up and keep things fresh. And absolutely lean on your community for advice and feedback. They're there because they enjoy your content and your personality and, most of the time, they want to help you to succeed so they get to see more of you!

Have you got any of your own tips or advice for building up your brand as a content creator? Drop a comment below and let us know!