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Growing your cooking channel on Twitch is a tough nut to crack, but not if you have the right strategies up your alley. Still, you’ll need to put in a considerable amount of hard work and sprinkle it with the right marketing strategies to give your channel the boost it needs..
With over 30 million daily active users, Twitch is one of the most popular video-streaming platforms. However, it’s a bit different from YouTube in the sense that it’s focused on live streaming, broadcasts, and other creative real-life streams. So, if you have a channel on Twitch, you’ll need to focus on live streaming and making them pop out with Twitch banner templates instead of simply putting up videos. But that’s just one bit of it. There’s a whole lot you need to do to drive traffic to your channel.
Set the right goals for your channel
The sooner you realize that Twitch streaming is your business, the better you’ll be able to come up with concrete and tangible goals for your channel. For example, as someone with a cooking channel on Twitch, you could set a realistic goal of gaining 1,000 subscribers by the next quarter or getting 10 million views in total by the end of this year.
The important thing is to be realistic about your goals. The more realistic your goals are, the more you’ll respect your deadlines. Once you’ve set your goals, it’s time to plan and devise the perfect strategy. A good strategy is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Promote your channel on your website
Having a Twitch channel isn’t enough; you need to have an up-and-running website where you can promote your channel. Of course, this is a vital step if you have a running business like a restaurant, and your Twitch channel is essentially a tool to help grow your restaurant. In that case, your website is where your sales happen, and customers find you online.
If your Twitch cooking channel is the business itself, you need to focus more on having a running website blog, where you post recipes of tantalizing dishes of a specific or multiple cuisines. This is important because live streams can be a bit cumbersome to watch if you don’t have the time or only want to watch a particular part of it but don’t know where it is.
Having a recipe laid down in words makes it easy for your followers to follow your recipes whenever they need them. Make sure you insert links to your blog articles in the video’s caption. Similarly, post your Twitch video’s link in your blog article. This will make sure there’s a loop to redirect traffic from your blog to your Twitch channel and vice versa.
Giveaways spark interest
Giveaways are another excellent way to spark interest in your Twitch cooking channel. In fact, if you’re lucky, they can even make your channel go viral on social media. Everyone loves giveaways, as it’s a chance for people to receive a free gift from you. Make sure whatever you’re giving away is valuable to your audience but not so valuable to bankrupt you.
The bottom line is that giveaways are excellent for speeding up traction on your channel. But you need to be careful not to host giveaways very often. It’ll make your channel look inauthentic and vying for attention. Always prefer growing traffic organically rather than through marketing gimmicks.
Turn toward social media platforms
Since Twitch is home to over 8 million streamers, you’re not the only one with a cooking channel there. Expect tough competition and learn from the successful ones. What are they doing that you’re not? One aspect of it is how big your social media following is. A successful Twitch channel will always have a large following on other social media platforms. Where else do you think it’s getting its followers from?
It’s important to know which social media platforms to join, though. Not every platform is made equal. For instance, LinkedIn is good for a headhunting business but for a cooking channel, you need to promote your Twitch channel on Instagram and Facebook, especially Instagram. Why? Because Instagram is all about dynamic visuals, and there’s nothing better than seeing a poster of a steaming hot burger dripping with cheese!
Instagram marketing is all about creating the right visual content for your audience. We recommend using an online poster maker like PosterMyWall to craft dynamic banners for your cooking channel in just a few clicks! To reach out to a general audience, Facebook is the way to go.
Run paid ads on social media
Once you’ve started building up traction on your social media channels, it’s time to step up your game and run paid ads (if you have the budget). Paid ads are the best way to target a specific audience, piquing their interest to visit your channel. However, I recommend using ads if you have a product to sell, say, a restaurant to promote.
The good thing about social media platforms is that they record their users’ search histories and know what a user is interested in. That way, they target your ads to a very specific audience that’s most likely to convert into your customers. Just make sure your channels are getting enough traction beforehand before you run ads. Otherwise, the chances of a paid campaign being successful are low.
A few final words
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to taking your Twitch cooking channel to new heights, the above strategies will increase your chances of doing so. Lastly, don’t forget to harness the power of SEO (search engine optimization). People use Google to search for anything and everything, so you must make sure your Twitch videos, social media posts, and website blog articles appear on Google’s first results page.
To do that, keep your video titles between 60 and 70 characters and insert the right keywords both in your video caption and social media posts. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to look for the right keywords. All in all, SEO can bring about fast results and make your cooking channel a go-to place for food lovers!
Caroline is doing her graduation in IT from the University of South California but keens to work as a freelance blogger. She loves to write on the latest information about IoT, technology, and business. She has innovative ideas and shares her experience with her readers.