How Twitch Screenshots Can Feed Your Marketing Strategy
Find out how screenshots can help you derive valuable insights from Twitch, which can be very useful for your marketing strategy.
There is no denying the impact Twitch has on the gaming community, both for players and companies. Monitoring Twitch, its content, and players are crucial when working to boost your games' reach. So let's explore how we can use this platform to our advantage when crafting our marketing strategy.
Twitch 101
But first, a little history. Twitch was born in 2005 as Justin.tv, a platform that allowed people to broadcast live, very similar to how Twitch works today. In 2011, its name changed to Twitch TV, and viewing numbers increased.
But why Twitch? After twitch gameplay, a type of game tests a player's response time.
Twitch's success caught Amazon's eye, and they bought it in 2014.
Like Youtube, Twitch owes its success to its creator base. The streamer lets users decide their moves on the game and share their comments and suggestions. As a result, users become fans of these streamers, who interact with them, making the stream a whole entertainment experience. Fans even make donations to their favorite streamers via this platform.
So, it is no surprise that Twitch is the most significant opportunity to expose a game or product to the community.
Being part of the Amazon family has its perks: not only advertising but Prime Gaming, a subscription where users can link their Twitch account and get faster access to games and in-game loot. That means greater exposure.
Nowadays, you can't miss Twitch in your strategy. However, before launching or planning any promotional actions, you need to take a 360° look at the platform to make informed decisions.
What to track on Twitch
Main page
Like any other content-sharing platform, the main page will show what's trending. However, the streams on the main page have a much bigger chance of being seen by users.
Twitch main page
You will be able to see what's live right now, categories, and recommended channels.
That gives you an idea of what people are looking for and what the platform thinks is interesting.
On the top left corner of the main page, you’ll see the “Browse” button, which will lead you to the Twitch directory. This tab concentrates all the content on the platform.
Twitch directory
The Twitch directory displays its content's main categories: games, IRL, music, esports, and creative. You can click on each one to discover more. For example, clicking on games will show trending games and streams in that category, whereas music will show genres and music streams.
Under the main directory, you can see trending categories or live channels and filter by "recommended for you" or viewers.
That is another way of finding trending streamers for your Twitch influencer strategy and themes and games.
Game pages
Apart from the entire directory, you can go deeper into each page for more specific content. For example, in the gaming directory, choose from one of the featured games to find total viewers and followers.
Twitch channels
You will also find live channels and different tags like "multiplayer" or "LGBTQIA+." You'll see videos and clips, which can be filtered by language, past streams, highlights, and uploads. Clips are small bits of a live broadcast that users can select and save as a highlight.
It's key to track how your games are doing on these pages and those of your competitors, not only in terms of the number of followers but also regarding the streamers creating content around them.
Following
Another important aspect to track on Twitch is individual streamers. You can check each one separately or follow those streamers you'd like to keep an eye on and concentrate them all on your following page.
You can track followers, activity, chat, past streams, their plans for future streams, and more.
Some streamers add plugins to their profile to display subscription leaderboards, sponsors, and console information. That information is also key to keep in mind, as it can give you insights into their performance.
Teams
According to Twitch, teams are a way to unite and connect streamers. It’s a feature of the Twitch Partner Program.
Twitch teams
Teams group streamers, showing a list of channels on the left, and feature a live video player for those who are live right now. Below that, the description of the team is displayed.
They benefit streamers because they get to promote their brand and gain greater social interaction. In addition, streamers can join forces to create a bigger community, hosting multi-streams and sometimes creating parallel products like podcasts.
Tracking Twitch teams can be useful when you have a streamer of your liking to see who they're related to and what they're up to. Of course, the streamer you're interested in can have a good reputation, but checking out who they work with is essential.
Archiving Twitch content with automated screenshots
Content on Twitch can give you very valuable information to feed your influencer strategy. But tracking each page can be a lot of work.
With Stillio, you can automate screenshots for each Twitch page, updated daily, weekly or monthly, even up to 5 minutes for the best plan. You can take screenshots of particular streamer pages, your following page, or the entire directory and save them directly to your Dropbox or Google Drive for a quick snapshot.
That is useful not only for your products but also for a Twitch competitor analysis. You can check Stillio whenever you want, and the info will be there.
Moreover, you can set Stillio's capture locations to different countries, allowing you to detect key influencers in each region.
You can also set email notifications when a new screenshot is available to get the information in time.
Pricing starts at $29 for daily screenshots of 5 URLs.
Conclusion
Don’t just think of Twitch as a streaming platform, but as a powerful information source. Stillio helps you gather all the data you need to make informed decisions in one place.