- Feb 14, 2022
- 910
- 216
BEST STREAMING PRACTICES
- Make sure your page looks great: So that means quality logo/profile picture, cover, no missing data and very important: it's in the Gaming Video Creator category. You won't believe how many people put their pages into different categories.
- Always use highest bitrate -200: So if you stream in 720 60fps you can use 5800 bitrate and 8800 bitrate for 1080 60fps. I always use (maximum-200) for a stable stream without any dropping frames. Ah, and make sure you run OBS as administrator for better stability.
- Do not use copyrighted music
- Best case scenario: You get away with it a few times.
- Worst case scenario: You get shadow banned. Meaning that you get so many strikes until your page no longer has any reach and no one gets notified when you are live. If you get to that point, you might as well delete it. I know I did.
- Content ID is finicky: Sometimes you might get a copyright alert by using non-copyrighted music or even Facebook's own music. I've seen that. I would suggest using a Premium Music company for creators such as Epidemic Sounds, MusicBed or other alternatives, IF you really need music.
- Skip VOD intros: On Facebook, the News Feed autoplays videos as the viewer scrolls. Jump right into the game to draw in viewers.
- Always use a webcam and a microphone: If you ever want to grow a community. I know there are streamers without webcams, but imo if the public doesn't have any eye contact with you, they won't stay for long. Remember: followers (as a number) means nothing, returning followers means everything. People want to get to know you and befriend you, if you expect them to be there for you every time you go live.
- Don't abuse overlays: Nothing makes me sicker than a live stream with 30 overlays running on screen. What am I looking at? I don't care about last week's top donors, this weeks followers and who likes their live stream. I'm in for the game and the streamer, not latest CNN news.
- Format: Ideally you should have a clean stream. Facebook's quality is worst of all platforms, so you should keep it as clean as possible. What I do on my game scene is to have the game, webcam on the left side and latest 5 events on top-right corner. That's it. Clean af.
- Get inspiration, but don't be a xerox: Nothing wrong in watching other streamers and draw inspiration from them, but do not copy them.
- Never do follow-4-follow: Waste of time, it doesn't help and you're selling yourself short.
- Never use viewbots: This could be damaging to your page, as most of viewbots are coming from click farms in India, Bangladesh and Taiwan. You don't really want to teach the algorithm to recommend you ONLY to those areas, right? Been there, done that, had to delete page.
- You don't need to stream more than 2-4 hours: Yeah, that's right. You can still grow while streaming less. Instead of streaming 6 hours, you'd be better off streaming for 2-3-4 hours and producing content for other platforms for another couple of hours. Plus, it is better to have 2-3 hours full of energy rather than 6 boring ones.
- Take regular breaks from streaming: To avoid burning out, whenever you feel down just take a break for a few days or a week. Ideally, I would suggest taking a week off every 2 months. Everyone will understand and will appreciate you when you come back fresh and energetic.
BEST COMMUNITY PRACTICES
- Have a consistent schedule: It's best so that people know when you will be live streaming. Over time it becomes a habit for them and it gets embedded into everyone's brain that you will be streaming on X days at X hour. Make sure you advertise this as well so that people know.
- Make sure no one can post on your page: I've seen this, yeah. You can switch it off from page settings.
- Easy with the mods, okay: Don't mod anyone that doesn't know you well and is not an active part of your community. You don't want a new mod banning an older member of your community because of some jokes that he doesn't understand, right?
- Do not post anything else unrelated to gaming: Make sure you keep your page on-topic and don't post about war, vaccine or any other unrelated subjects, as Facebook can destroy you in seconds. Well, not destroy as per se, but it can restrict your page's monetisation and overall reach on grounds of sharing inauthentic content (meaning that is not yours). I had to delete a 28k followers page because of this. Poopoo happens.
- Have a chat bot: Facebook doesn't have its own chatbot, but you can use a third party one like Noxbot.gg. It can respond to commands and can be programmed to greet people in chat. For example, whenever anyone says "hi" or "hello", it can respond back. Also useful for frequently asked questions.
- Nice to have a discord, but really not: Ideally you should have this option available as a supporter perk, otherwise is way too much time consuming. That time can be used to edit clips, compilations and do other research on how to grow your page.
- Avoid as much as possible conflicts with other streamers: It always turn into shit shows and drives people away. Want to be better than your competitor? Work harder and improve your numbers.
GROWTH STRATEGIES
- Single game or variety gaming: Both works, but as a variety streamer you grow slower. Ideally you should play a game that you are really good at, create a community around that game and in time serve them other games.
- Create clips for other platforms: I'm sure you've seen funny highlights on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, so why not do it yourself? I use OBS's Replay Buffer to save last 60 seconds of footage and later edit that in Premiere Pro. Output in the right format (16:9 for YT, 1:1 for TikTok and Insta) and upload.
- Create tutorials: Are you good at what you're playing? Have you found a special weapon, a treasure or a secret? Make a video about it.
- Don't bother with multistreaming: I've done it a bajillion times, it is too much of a hassle and just doesn't have any happy outcome. Plus, it always streams at the worst bitrates on all platforms.
That's it, thanks for reading and good luck! I will be adding more bullet points as I can remember. If you have any good suggestions to add onto this list, feel free to comment below.
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