How to Get Your Twitch Chat Talking — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] One of the hardest things for a new streamer is having an empty chat. When you watch bigger streamers, they always seem to have someone to reply to or to ask them a question, which they in turn then can use to talk about for about 10 minutes.

[00:13] But as a small streamer, you often have no one to chat with. That can be very hard. But today, we are going to talk about a few things that can make interacting with people in your chat easier. My name is Barry Epps, I'm a Twitch partner, and in my time streaming,

[00:27] I have learned some lessons and techniques that can make it easier for you to get your chat to not be empty. I don't know where I was going with that sentence, but that's fine.

[00:40] The last one was a game changer for me, so make sure to stick around. Okay, the first lesson that I learned as a streamer wasn't why I was streaming at all. I was out in town looking for dinner after a long list of errands that I had to run.

[00:52] And I got to two restaurants that I was doubting between to grab a bite at. First restaurant was a really nice bagel place, I had never tried it before but I really wanted to. The reason for that was simple, every time I was past there, there was a huge line out of the door

[01:07] with people waiting, and it wasn't any different this time. The second restaurant was far less busy, only two people inside, and that on a Friday night. I didn't have to wait here, but I immediately got the impression that the quality of the food can't be as good as no one chooses to eat

[01:24] here. This works exactly the same in streaming. When a viewer enters your stream where people are already talking, it becomes easier to say hello and engage in the conversation. If there is no one and the last message was from a bot 20 minutes ago, not so much. That

[01:40] is why it should be a priority for you to keep your chat involved. Which say it themselves, according to their research, a viewer is 50% more likely to come back if they have talked in the streamer's chat. This highlights two things. One, you are right now in the most

[01:55] difficult part of the game. It only gets easier from here as soon as you get some regular viewers. Two, you need to have eyes in the back of your head for every new viewer that comes into the

[02:07] stream. The moment they come in and they say something in chat, you need to be ready to respond in seconds. There have been moments where I would go on my alt account, dropping on some streams of people in this community or in the discord and I would follow them and they didn't

[02:21] even notice the follow. They would look up at their alert then look back down at the game not knowing what to say or saying anything. I'd say hello in their chat and all I got back was crickets

[02:33] because not even the streamer was checking their chat anymore. Make sure to greet new followers and chatter. It is the number one rule of engaging with your community and when you do don't make it

[02:46] one of those standard greetings like, Hey bro, thank you for the follow. Or, really appreciate the follow bro. Because they just don stand out One of the best ways to get your viewers to start chatting is by engaging them with a question Which is why I used to have a list next to my keyboard so I could pick one each time a new viewer came in

[03:07] Nowadays those questions are just all stuck in my head. What's your favorite pizza topping? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Or be like a friend of mine and ask how many pairs of white shoes they own. Having these questions ready is a great way to get new viewers to chat with you

[03:21] and very soon you will see camps emerge of people who have the same favorite food, favorite football team, or live in the same country. Because you are asking new people a question, this also gives them a reason to write in your chat.

[03:35] And the moment that they do, as we saw before, they are 50% more likely to stick around or come back later. Now I do have to warn you all though, because I know this can go the wrong way. Don't have your viewer tabs open and then when a new viewer comes into the stream you see a new name appear, call them out.

[03:54] Don't do that, that is not okay. A lot of people have Twitch open to lurk during work or while they are doing other stuff and you don't want to call those people out. Just make sure to reply to those that are actively participating.

[04:09] And before anyone asks, yes, it was worth the wait. The bagels were delicious and my wife and I have been back there multiple times since. Once you start getting in some regulars, you can do something very similar to make them chatty the moment they come into your stream.

[04:23] Make a command in your stream where viewers can do exclamation point QOTD. That stands for question of the day. And it will ask them a question which you decide before every single stream. This works especially well with returning chatters because they know what command you

[04:38] have and it might help them get them chatting as well. Plus, when they are chatting, that means it becomes easier for new chatters to join in. Though there is one thing you need to remember. When you choose your question of the day, make sure it's a question that many people can answer.

[04:55] Favorites are a great way to go. You can think about the answer yourself as well before the stream, because you are almost guaranteed that you will get that question directed back at you. Another type of question that works really well is an ambiguous question.

[05:10] How many tables do you own? Is one of those questions. Then you have to ask yourself, does a desk count as a table? What about a nightstand? How many TVs do you own? Again, are computer monitors TVs?

[05:23] It is these sorts of questions, as silly as they may be, that will keep your audience chatting. Because every time somebody comes in and does that command, you will see the discussion flare up again.

[05:35] And it's also really simple to make these. If you use stream elements, you go into your chatbot, add a new custom command and call it exclamation point QOTD. And then for the message you type this string and then you add whatever you want the question to be.

[05:49] In streamer.bot, you can do the same. Simply make a new action called question of the day and then as a trigger add the command trigger trigger and make a new command called question of the day At the action you going to add an argument variable from the core submenu called QOTD

[06:07] and this is where you're going to put your question. Then you add a twitch chat send message action and set it to this. That makes sure that your username is automatically filled in every time a user uses it. And that's it. It is then your job as a streamer to keep that

[06:22] conversation going as long as possible, but even the best streamers will eventually run out of material for them to keep talking about the same topic. And this is probably the hardest part of this video. So if you manage this, then you are already ahead of 99% of all the other streamers.

[06:39] Have you ever been in one of those text conversations where you are asking questions and trying to engage with the person on the other side, and all they do is keep shutting you down? You ask them question after question, and all they do is answer with short, often only one word answers, without actually engaging in the conversation.

[06:59] It is probably one of the worst feelings in the world, because you feel like they don't even want to be there. They don't want to talk to you. That is a problem that a lot of streamers run into as well, either with themselves or their chat.

[07:12] Luckily, there's a technique for this, which is very well known in the improv world, the get and. This technique is great for conversations because it makes you accept the premise they set out, yes, and then be creative to continue the story or the discussion.

[07:27] Let's say that you are playing Valorant, and a new viewer comes in and says, hey, they set out a new hero that can throw homing rockets all over the map. Don't just go, no, that's a terrible idea. Accept the idea and then add something to provoke more conversation.

[07:42] Yeah, imagine that. You'd never be safe again. Wouldn't that be way too overpowered though and lead to them always being picked? That way you are acknowledging their idea and then continuing your discussion by adding a new topic to talk about.

[07:57] This also naturally leads to topic association, which is an incredibly good skill for streamers to have. If you have been talking about a new Valorant hero for a while and eventually the discussion naturally dies down,

[08:10] everyone has said what they want to say and there is nothing more to talk about, Then you need to already be thinking about what the next topic is going to be in the back of your head, so that you can steer the conversation into that direction.

[08:23] There are many places you can go with these topics. They might have added a new gun recently. Why not talk about what you think of the new gun and how that one is also overpowered? Or maybe you know a bit more about game development and have worked on a hero shooter like Valorant before.

[08:38] And now you can talk about how a release cycle looks for a new hero. How long does it take to go from concept to release? And how many people are involved? The list goes on. Once you master this skill, you will notice that chatting during your streams becomes a breeze

[08:55] and will feel far more natural But there is one crucial moment of your stream and it can be to make or break And this is one I struggled a lot with myself in my early career The first 30 to 60 minutes of

[09:09] your stream are crucial to bringing new viewers, because this is the time that you are usually able to have a chat before getting too deep into the game. But this is also the time where your chat

[09:21] is quietest. People are still waiting for the notifications, haven't noticed that you are live yet. Joining in at their day end, you know the drill. Having some early birds, people that join

[09:33] your stream right away and are there for the first hour is crucial because you can show immediately that you are having a good conversation already and when new people join in, they can see that too. It also means that when someone who has been in your stream before but isn't a regular yet can

[09:48] see that they can immediately join back as well. A great way to entice your early birds to join is by having something special for them, like a command or channel point redemption that they can use during the first 30 minutes of your stream, which recognizes them as early birds. And when

[10:05] people start to mean that they were early birds in your chat, mean with them. Encourage people to be there early. There is something special about being there in the first 30 to 60 minutes and

[10:17] getting a chance to chat with your favorite creator. But you can encourage them even more. Take a counter that tracks how many people have redeemed the early bird command or redemption. At the end of the month, the people with the most early birds join a giveaway for a game or a gift card.

[10:33] And if you can't spend any money, give them a special hashtag early bird discord role. They appreciate being recognized and you appreciate them being there. So it is a win-win. All this time we've been talking about how you can get people to talk more and how you can continue your conversation once it's started.

[10:51] But how do we even find something to talk about? This was for me the biggest change I made to always have something to talk about on stream. In fact, I have two. One that's always on my desk and a tiny one that's always in my coat pocket for when I need to make a quick note while I'm on the road.

[11:07] Every time something happens that I think could be a fun talking topic for the stream, I will write it down in one of the notebooks. And then when I stream, I have a whole list of things I can choose to talk about. So usually I pick something that happened to me that day, and then I pick a deeper topic,

[11:23] such as how you can grow your channel or how to set goals for me to chat about during this stream. And once I've talked about them, I just cross them off my list. Making a cheat sheet in a notebook makes it easy for you to remember what you want to talk about,

[11:36] which means that you should never run out of topics to discuss. And when you do, you can just look over to your cheat sheet and pick a new topic. But just being able to talk to chat is not going to help you grow if you are not making good content.

[11:50] If you want to know how to easily make amazing content by just remembering a single word, then check out the video right here. And as always, stream better, stream smart.