Heya folks! So my background in a nutshell: I owned a web hosting and development company from 1999-2014, which I sold to a bigger company. Trying to be competitive with juggernauts like GoDaddy, Squarespace, and Wix, is like a local bookstore trying to compete with Amazon. After I sold the company, I basically became a full-time Twitch junkie and started offering help to Twitch streamers.

So anyway, I quickly discovered streamers go through the same things as any small business owner does. It comes down to marketing your brand, and one if the best ways to do that is to have a web site. Even if you have a web site, you may not be using it to it’s full potential.

This post could go in many different directions, and I’d be happy to address your situation in future posts based on your comments. For example, you may have a existing site, you may not be running WordPress, you may be running it but need some advice, or you may not have a web site and have no clue what I’m referring to about any of this. Instead of trying to tackle all of that, I’ll give you some real-world examples from streamers I’ve personally worked with. Some aren’t partnered yet, some have literally thousands of viewers regardless of the game they stream.

Keep in mind this is focused on web site stuff, although many things overlap with overall branding, marketing, and promotion. This will also focus on WordPress, which is a free and open-source platform that literally over 74 million sites use. I’ve used the platform/framework for every site I’ve developed for over 5 years.

So here we go –

• Think of your web site as the hub of your brand. It’s a portal that includes your social media, Twitch integration, latest Tweets, a list of your YouTube videos, and so on.
• Use a responsive WordPress theme so your site looks equally as good on a PC than it does on a mobile device. Google actually “punishes” search engine rankings if your site doesn’t look good on mobile. How ironic is it that of 5/4/15, Twitch’s own site isn’t mobile-friendly, while Streamersquare is.
• Although your stream overlay contains your social media links, drive traffic to your web site.
• If you aren’t partnered (or even if you are), you can gain income outside of Twitch. This includes everything from Patreon to Google AdSense, to Amazon affiliate links, to Green Man Gaming, and so many more.
• Your web site can automatically fetch your YouTube videos. BeeTube is a good example – and it’s completely automated.
• Your web site can automatically detect whether you’re streaming or not, and embed your stream.
• Run a poll on your site instead of a site like Straw Poll. Why send them traffic when you can send traffic to your own site?
• This is a whole other topic, but so much automation can be done when you go live. When you create a post saying you’re live, it could automatically post to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, even the developer’s forum.
• Utilize both Google’s and Bing’s Webmaster tools. Both will improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Forums are a great way to add interactivity to your viewers. StreamerSquare’s own forum is a great example!

Like I said, the future of this “series” of posts really does depend on your feedback and comments. I’ve summarized a lot of things and some really could be their own posts which would give a lot more detailed information. Please let me know. 🙂

Back to stealing 747s in Grand Theft Auto,
DJ