Twitter is a place where people come together to express their ideas, thoughts and opinions in an open environment. Twitter allows YouTubers, Twitch streamers and other types of creators to engage with their audience on a deeper and more personal level. The platform helps its users to connect directly to their audience. For content creators, having a Twitter account is important because of that personal connection with fans and subscribers.
Being active on Twitter beyond promoting your Youtube channel or Twitch stream can significantly boost your channel’s engagement. But how can a creator use Twitter in a way that’s beneficial to their channel?
How creators use Twitter
Along with having channels for content, having a social presence on platforms like Twitter helps expand your reach and boost awareness of your content and brand. Here’s how:
- Keeping your audience informed: Twitter allows creators like you to let your followers (and non-followers) know when you’ve uploaded a video or that you’re about to go live. You can also use Twitter to give viewers updates on future projects or simply let them know what you’re thinking.
- Direct your audience to your best content: On Twitter you can pin important tweets to the top of your feed, allowing you to constantly promote whatever you want. You can use your profile’s link bar in the same way. These are areas that can help drive your audience to important videos or websites.
- Interact with other creators’ communities: Twitter allows you to comment on other creators’ posts. If they like what you have to say, you’ll receive attention from their community, which may entice a few to check out your content.
Helpful (and unhelpful) features for creators on Twitter
Not only is Twitter helpful for content creators to keep in constant contact with their audience, but the app also offers a few creator-centered tools that have gone somewhat unnoticed. Are they worth your time?
Super Follows
Super Follows is a Twitter feature that creates a paywall for specific tweets, giving only subscribers access. Twitter says it’s a way for people’s most engaged followers to help them earn money. However, most successful creators today don’t use the feature. Many of them use Twitter to gain as much engagement as they can, and locking tweets behind a paywall can be counterproductive to this. For many, paywalls can work when you’re offering your audience something of great value, like posting behind-the-scenes content on Patreon. Twitter’s much more limited in what you can post. Twitter limits you to 280 characters per tweet, and videos can’t be longer than 2 minutes and 20 seconds, unlike on YouTube. Right now, creators see more value in using Twitter for engagement and awareness and not as a place to post exclusive content for cash.
Twitter Communities
Like Facebook groups or Discord communities, it’s always great for creators to have a place for their communities to engage with each other. Twitter Communities can work as one of those places. However, the downside is people can only join if they’re invited by moderators. Community members can invite others, but they’re limited to just five invites. While it’s possible to build a community, it’s a bit more of a hassle due to its invite-only format compared to platforms like Discord, which allows creators to have an open community that anyone can join.
Twitter Create
While Twitter limits your tweets to just 280 characters, you can post various other types of media on Twitter, like videos and livestreams via Twitter Create. Essentially, this tool allows you to manage the content you post before you post it, track the performance of your content with analytics and monetize with Amplify Pre-roll and sponsorships.
Twitter Spaces
Twitter Spaces is a feature that gives its users a chance to have a live audio conversation and broadcast that to a live viewership. What’s great is you can bring in other speakers into your broadcast, making it a live podcast-style show. They can be recorded as well and reuploaded for content elsewhere. Twitter also lets creators monetize their Spaces broadcasts via paid tickets to the broadcast.
How these creators utilize Twitter
Many content creators have been using Twitter to get closer to their communities in different and unique ways. Let’s take a look at two creators killing it on Twitter.
MrBeast (@MrBeast) is one of YouTube’s biggest creators and has a huge community on Twitter. However, his success didn’t happen overnight. MrBeast is a master at marketing his content and getting people engaged. While he always promotes a new video when it comes out, he’s also very personable and shares major channel milestones with his audience. He always works to show his appreciation for his fans. He isn’t all business and discusses things that he cares about, like helping as many people as he can.
Valkyrae (@Valkyrae) is a popular streamer/creator on YouTube and is also quite popular on Twitter. She, like MrBeast, promotes content she’s involved in. However, she also likes to share and retweet more personal posts. This includes fun outings with her fellow streamers or well-shot photographs of herself. All the while, she provides some hilarious commentary alongside her posts.
Build your Twitter community
As a content creator in 2022, it’s your job to take advantage of every social media outlet available to you. This will help you build and expand your brand and channel. It is crucial not to stay stagnant. So, no matter what kind of content you share with the world, utilize social media to reach your audience.