From There to Here

Branding is first and foremost the most important thing you can create to help your business, personality, or life. A brand isn’t just a color scheme, or a logo, it is much bigger than that. A brand is how people perceive you, how social interactions start, and how people react when they hear a name. I want to break this down to make it easy to understand and hopefully you, the reader gets a better understanding on how good branding can change your life.

It’s Just a Name…

While XxYoloSwag420NoSc0p3xX may be a fun name for a while, if you wanted to break into business for Twitch, Mixer or any other broadcast company your name alone could deter potential sponsors, partners, or even viewers. Your very name is the flagship of your brand, it’s the first thing someone says or sees before they go any deeper. Your very brand is dictated by the name you choose to go with and it should be something versatile, easy, or relate to your personality. My brand Admiredplague was due to many things. I wanted to be an epidemiologist (Study of viral diseases), but I also wanted people to like me. Admiredplague is the combination of what I aspired to be as a child and how I want to be seen by the masses. I wanted to be that guy everyone could refer to their friends for help or assistance, while at the same time maintaining an infectious personality. My name is what drives what I do every day, not the colors, not the logo, or fancy graphics.

Pick a name you can relate to, that is easy to create a community behind, and one that if spoken out loud people know exactly who you are. From this name you can create a persona, a gimmick, a community and that’s what is most important. Names like DrDisRespect, Lirik, Summit1G, and more are all very well branded casters. They took their name and forged a massive community, but all three of these casters are uniquely different.

Color Coordinated

Color schemes set the mood for many things. Color itself invokes emotion and that emotion can play into your personality. Orange is the color of curiosity and wanting to try something new, reds are for high energy, while blues range from content to extremely happy. Blending colors can also invoke emotion, for example black typically means tense, and overworked while White is boredom and frustration, however adding these two colors into the same color scheme can give a sense of balance and purpose. Many sport merchandise companies use black and white for this because athletes put in extremely hard work, but for many sports is relaxing or a way to release pent up emotion.

When choosing a color scheme I recommend going with colors that suit what your trying to convey with your broadcasts. Are you high energy? Are you calm and relaxed? Casters come in all forms, many rage at games and declare war on their enemies while others are relaxed and play far more calming games. The games you play and how you act while playing them should be a reflection of your color scheme.

Cult of Personality

Personality plays a huge roll into success on Twitch and many other broadcasting platforms. Viewers come to a channel to watch content, you the broadcaster ARE PART OF THAT CONTENT. If you don’t talk to your viewers you are hurting yourself. If a viewer wanted to just watch game play of something they could be on YouTube, but they are not, they are in your channel asking questions and wanting real time feedback from someone. Ignoring these viewers comes at a cost, that cost being lost viewership and stunted growth because word of mouth can severely hurt you. Ignoring one person could lead to them going to friends, discord groups, or other communities and saying “Wow this caster just wasn’t interactive”, and now you have many more people that won’t even give your channel a chance. Webcam or not you need to be actively talking no matter your view count. If you are at ZERO viewers still talk. It’s the hardest skill on Twitch to learn but the most necessary to growth. If you find yourself for days, weeks, months, with no viewers take that time to practice talking A LOT. Cover what you’re doing in game, talk about the character you chose and why, discuss your battle plans out loud… turn the voice in your head outward and say everything your thinking while playing.

As hard as this may be to type and for you to read, sometimes people just don’t have the personality to make it as a broadcaster. This does not mean give up. For some streaming in general is just fun regardless of the views. If you start to hate casting, or lose the drive you may have had when you first started, simply take a break and re-evaluate yourself and go back to what made you happy. Self evaluation can take you a long way and bring you back from a poor state of mind. Remember we all started from zero and we all have our ups and downs. Having fun along the way is the only thing that truly matters.

Marketability

Once a brand is established it’s time to market! Marketing means a lot of things including but not limited to: Social posting, Graphic ads, Sound clips, Discord posts, networking at events such as PAX or Twitchcon, and/or merchandise. Marketing your brand is the fastest way to get people to come to your channel. Simply dropping your link on websites/discords is not enough. Add some sustenance to why people should click it and come watch. If your posting your link on a social platform, add a clip from an earlier stream that relates to the game your playing. If your posting on Discord, tell others what your stream plans are for the day. Adding extra meat to your posts will generate more impressions and more clicks.

Furthering this brings up company affiliates. Most companies offer a hassle free way to sell their products and earn you a commission. Companies like Razer  and Amazon have easy to use affiliate programs with a near 100% acceptance rate. If your looking for more demographic driven affiliates look into one of my partners BottleSpark . They bridge the gap between influencers and business’s to help get them paid for showing off brands they love. It’s a great way to establish your brand and market products you already use on a daily basis to your viewers and make a little extra money on the side doing it. Look at this website, I have many partners and affiliates, but I use them all daily and was using them well before I got affiliated with them. Easier to sell a product you believe in, so if you believe in yourself…marketing should be easy!

Closing Time

This is just a small portion of what a brand really is, but I hope it gets your gears turning and ideas materializing in your brains. Branding is so much more than a physical thing, its an idea thats brought to life by you, the broadcaster. Go forth and create your destiny, color it with passion, than market the hell out of it until people know who you are by a simple catchphrase or color selection. Believe in yourself as I believe in all of you because everyone can do it, you just need to put forth the effort and remember why you started….for the fun of it!