I often get asked by VTuber’s how to use Twitter. And I don’t mean ‘where is the tweet button?‘, but more about how to use it effectively. I’ve given individual feedback to a lot of people, but I thought I’d compile some tips here. Some of these are general, while some are specific to VTubers.
With that said, I’d like to say upfront; these are based upon my experiences and feedback I’ve heard. Twitter doesn’t give a lot of information directly, so some are based upon seeing trends, rather than hard facts.
Got any tips to add? Feel free to let me know via Twitter.
General Twitter Tips
- Firstly make sure your Twitter profile looks good. A nice header, include your name, write an informative bio, etc. This can give a good impression and can tell people about you.
- Want people to get in contact? Consider opening your DMs. You can change this in your privacy settings.
- Some people change their Twitter name to include a red circle emoji and LIVE whenever they’re streaming. This can help let people know that you’re live, especially if you’re very active on Twitter. People might not see your ‘live’ tweet until a day later due to Twitter being Twitter, but they might see your random meme with [LIVE] in your name above it while you’re streaming.
- If you have any concerns about the visibility of your tweets, log into another account that doesn’t follow you and search for your tweets. The various tools to check for shadowbans can be helpful, but aren’t perfect and sometimes fail if Twitter has made recent updates that affect them.
- Keep in mind that Twitter doesn’t always translate to Twitch (or another streaming platform) and vice versa. While some of your followers on Twitter can be convinced to check you out on Twitch, some won’t. Some only want to engage on Twitter, some are too busy working on their own content and some are just following and engaging because they want you to follow them and visit their stream. While some succeed in transferring much of their Twitter following to Twitch, there are plenty of examples of people who can’t become an affiliate, despite 1,000+ Twitter followers.
Time and Frequency
- Keep time zones in mind. People are more active during certain times, typically when North Americans would have free time. The VTuber community on Twitter is the same. I tend to tweet around UK evening time, to try hit Europe and North American times.
- While keeping the most active time in mind is important, also keep in mind the time your current audience will see the tweets. If you’re posting when they’re all asleep, it might gain you followers from other regions, but not your own.
- You can schedule tweets to tweet at a specific time. You can also retweet your own tweets later in the day. Both can be useful, though the latter I find to get less exposure than the initial tweet.
- Tweet relatively often. Three times a day would be a recommended minimum.
- Spread your tweets throughout the day to hit people viewing at different times and to avoid spamming people with a deluge of them all at once.
How and What To Tweet
- Use emojis occasionally and have each sentence on its own line where appropriate. This gives you easier readability, is more eyecatching, and takes up more space on someone’s screen. An example is posted above.
- Check your spelling/grammar. Small mistakes aren’t a huge deal, but frequent typos, etc give a bad impression.
- Try to mostly tweet things of value. Anything funny tends to do well for engagement. Same with high-quality art to a lower extent. Informative tweets too.
- Take part in trends where possible. These won’t always get a ton of engagement, but often do better than other tweets.
- It’s suggested that Media posts are promoted more. It’s good to include a GIF/video/picture in almost everything you tweet. If posting media, keep in mind that more than half will view it on mobile, but a large amount still view it on desktop. Pictures sized for phones may not work well on Desktop due to the shape.
- On the opposite side, tweets with links are often suggested to be promoted less. Some people put a ‘live’ tweet with an image, then a comment with the link. I can’t comment on the effectiveness of this.
- Most people don’t want to see ‘going live’ tweets. They rarely get clicked on either, which you may be able to see in your tweet analytics. There are some exceptions, but this is fairly standard. Do tweet that you’re live, but make sure you’re tweeting a lot of other things too.
- Check your tweet analytics. Find patterns in what does and doesn’t work well. Trends can help advise this, but some will be specific to you and your followers.
- When posting stream clips, remember that most people won’t have sound on. Anything that relies on the sound to be entertaining may not do well.
- Polls often translate to a lot of engagement. Not necessarily likes, RTs or comments, but people often read and click on them.
Hashtags
- Limit the number of hashtags and @ mentions you use. I’d suggest no more than 3 hashtags and 1 @ mention unless required. Apparently, Twitter reduces the exposure of tweets with many and they often look like spam.
- On hashtags, #VTuber and #ENVTuber are the most popular within the English VTuber community. #VTuberUprising is also often used. #VTuberEN is frequent too, though this is shared with other types of tweets.
- Personal hashtags (#JohnSmithStreams), hashtags for very general concepts (#pizza), or unrelated trending hashtags are not often useful for exposure to an audience you’re targeting. Personal ones can be good to group together your own specific type of tweets, but not much else.
- I don’t recommend hashtags like #smallstreamer. They can be picked up by bots, but from what I’ve seen at least, almost all followers are streamers and they rarely get any clicks. The vast majority have no interest in checking out anyone else and just follow the streamer bots to get their own stuff RTed. It’s less cohesive than the VTuber community, who do sometimes act in the same way, but overall seem to interact more outside of link drops.
Interaction
- With common tweet types for VTubers like ‘Networking Tweet, drop your PNG’, focus on making them yourselves more than participating in others. When someone replies to one of these, the original tweet (with your intro/PNG) will also show up to some of their followers, so you want to be the one posting these. These are most effective when you get a lot of eyes on them, so having a lot of followers (or using the #VTuberTwP for a near-guaranteed tweet if you back us on Patreon) can help a lot here
- With the above in mind, still do reply to other people’s tweets often and interact with them. Follow and/or look at the @VTuberTweeter timeline to find tweets to engage with. This might actually be the most important tip for gaining followers as a VTuber on Twitter.
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