Why You Aren’t Seeing A Return from Going Live
So you’ve been GOING LIVE for the past 3-6 months and you’re still only playing to 4-5 of your best mates. Wheres the growth? Why doesn’t anybody care? Should I keep going?
These are all great questions but don’t really help you come to the right conclusion. The question you should be asking is am I doing enough to make my stream the best it can be.
Pressing that GO LIVE button is literally the last thing on a long list of how you should be preparing for every stream.
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Every stream you do should be like planning a small scale event. For your stream to succeed it needs to have a purpose and a goal.
Your fans need to understand exactly why they are clicking the link to your stream. What hole in their life is it going to fill. Why are they investing their free time in you.
When you’re playing at a venue it’s not so much of a worry as the onus is on the venue to have the necessary distractions to entertain the guest. But for a livestream the focus is squarely on you.
Here are some tips to help you get your streams back on track.
BE CONSISTENT
Just as a venue opens every week Friday, Saturday, Sunday 8pm-3am you need to be just as reliable. Find the days and times that best fit into your life and create a schedule.
Big Tip here is to start off small, don’t over extend yourself. If you get a few months in and you realise you have more free time then you first thought add some extra slots.
Turning to your current viewers and asking when would be another day they’d like to see you, can also yield great results.
Not everyone is waiting for you to hop on to stream after 8pm on a Saturday. A lot of early morning and midday stuff also works as well depending on the type of music you play.
The more consistent you are the more your fans can organise their lives around what you’re up to. If they know that you’re going to be live every week at a certain time they may even start to have the opportunity to let the people in their circle know.
HAVE A MIC
Streaming is not the same as a nightclub, keeping the music going non stop with pitch perfect mixes isn’t totally essential.
Your fans aren’t sitting in a big group with their friends, most of the time they’re just chilling at home or work by themselves.
Talking to people in the chat whilst you play is going to be one of the main ways you keep people watching. But make sure you have something interesting to say, don’t just talk for the sake of it.
It’s best at the start to keep it around things that flow easily and you are super knowledgeable on. i.e. the music, clubbing, hows your day etc. No need to be a chatterbox just go with the flow. If the chats already going in a suitable direction just go along with it.
No one expects you to be amazing at this straight away, you’re a DJ not an MC. But practise makes perfect so every time you go live make sure to have that mic handy.
PROMOTE YOURSELF
This doesn’t mean spamming the link to your stream to every single person that’s in FB Chat. We’re talking about identifying your target market and making sure they know all about the what, when and why of your stream.
What kind of music are you streaming? Who is it interested in that music?
When are you streaming? Who will be free to watch your stream at that time?
Why are you streaming? Why do you go live?
This final question can be a hard one to answer as so many DJs just feel like going live is something they should be doing but don’t fully understand why they should be doing it.
The WHY can be anything for anyone. From to keep myself sane…to I want to grow my fanbase. But you’ll find when you ask yourself the question and you identify the exact reason WHY, promoting your stream each week will become much easier.
It’s when we identify the WHY that we can communicate our message to the people that might be interested.
A small example of this is “Join me at 9pm tonight to share in my passion for Dirty Ass Hip Hop”. The viewer knows exactly what they’re going to get with that sentence.
A passionate DJ that likes to hit the WAP. :)
Your success as a streamer doesn’t just depend on what you do on your streaming platform. Your activity across all social media platforms plays a vital role in the growth of your stream.
CONCLUSION
The biggest takeaways from this is to avoid treating your stream as if it was another gig at a club. Streaming is an opportunity to connect on a real and authentic audience that you can turn into life long fans.
As opposed to playing in a venue you don’t have to stick to a certain music policy you have complete freedom to play whatever you want. It’s a real chance to share the tunes that you never thought you’d be able to play anywhere.
But make sure to take the time before you GO LIVE and put the plans in place to make it the best damn stream it can be.