One of the most important milestones streamers will reach in their careers is to collaborate with brands and sponsors. Content creators who make a full-time wage typically make most of their money through sponsorship deals to their channel. It is important to know what it takes to build your channel in a way that companies will want to work with you.
This post will go over six things you should do to ensure that your Twitch or YouTube channel will be noticed and appreciated by the right sponsors for you.
Network With Other Streamers
Not only will networking with other streamers help you build up your audience and community, but it is a good chance to “practice” working with and collaborating with other brands. Content creators will often find that other streamers aren’t the right fit for their channel or style. Learning to see these traits is an important skill that you can build even before you receive your first sponsorship opportunity.
Collaborating with other streamers or joining a good Twitch Team can also potentially provide valuable feedback on your channel branding, your overall content, your audio and visual standards, and your overall content. Ask people to review your work and give you advice on what you can improve. Don’t spam requests for this attention in Discord servers or Facebook groups. Instead, try to create relationships with other growing streamers whose content you enjoy. Offer to give them feedback in return. The more you can improve your branding and content, the more likely it will be that people will join your community, which will open you up to bigger and better sponsorship deals.
Create Content on Multiple Platforms
Many brands will look at your overall social influence when deciding on how they want to work with you. It is a good idea to grow your brand over several platforms that can funnel into each other to extend your reach.
Twitter and Instagram are very popular choices for streamers. It is easy to connect with others playing similar games and communicate with your audience. Growing discord communities is another popular choice that allows you to have another place to display unique content for your viewers.
You can also consider multistreaming to two or more platforms to build a larger audience. Several content creators have already started to broadcast to Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming at the same time and have utilized the best practices in growing on each platform. This also acts as an “insurance policy” in case one platform closes, such as in the case of Mixer in 2020, or loses popularity.
Never Break The Stream Platfrom’s Terms of Service
Brands want to ensure that they are working with people who respect the rules and won’t potentially cause issues down the road. If a streamer gets banned from the platform, the sponsor will may lose some of their investment. For this reason, always make sure that you follow the terms of service of your streaming platform. These rules may include:
- No viewbotting
- Playing royalty-free music
- Staying within dress code
- No discrimination
While you might think that it is only important to follow the guidelines after you have gotten sponsored, many brands will look into a streamer’s history to ensure they are the right fit for their brand. Often the temptation to bend the terms comes from the desire to grow your channel larger in a saturated market. The good news is that there are several ways you can find an audience within your niche and funnel them back to your stream.
Create a Pitch Deck
A pitch deck is a presentation or portfolio that introduces who you are and details aspects of your business model and your social media following. A well-designed pitch deck can impress potential sponsors and show your professionalism. Look for your in-depth stats on Rainmaker.gg and include past reviews that you’ve done with game keys from publishers.
If you get a pitch deck made for you, make sure that there are elements you can edit (such as your stats) as they improve over time.
Don’t Promote Products You Don’t Believe In
Viewers can sense if you don’t believe in a product or if you are only promoting it because you are being paid to do so. While most followers understand why you need to “sell out” to continue producing content, they prefer to hear about something you truly enjoy or that could potentially benefit them if they purchase it.
The second thing you should consider is that if you promote a less-than-quality product, your following will lose some respect for you. In time, your influence will mean less to other sponsors as your audience will be less likely to engage.
Avoid Predatory Brands
Is a deal too good to be true? Then it probably is. There are many fake companies looking to steal the data of your users. Make sure that you do your research, ask others in your niche for their experience with a brand, or even consult an attorney.
