In order to get the maximum exposure and viewership it is important that you stream on Twitch at the right time. But “What exactly is the best time to stream on Twitch?”, is the big question.
What is the Best Time to Stream on Twitch?
To get to the point, I would like to say that the best time to stream on Twitch happens to be between 7 am and 11 am for almost all time zones. This is because, at these hours, you are likely to have the least bit of competition from other streamers giving you an edge and resulting in better viewership that leads to growing your Twitch channel fast.
I must mention here that most streamers prefer going live in the early evenings and thus, there should not be many streamers going online earlier part of the day reducing your competition. At the same time, it is important to remember that Twitch viewers are likely to browse and explore new creators when their favorite streamers are offline.
In other words, if you are a streamer trying to find a foothold, then it is best for you to stream in the early hours when most established streamers are offline.
Read on to find out more about various factors that may affect your viewership and based on these factors you may choose the best slot of time to get go live with your stream…
Tips for Picking the Best Time to Stream
While deciding on your streaming schedule, you need to take a couple of factors into account. Such factors could include your personal brand and how popular it is, your current Twitch following, and the content you want to stream. Not just this, you must also try to find out when your competitor is streaming.
Considering these factors, here are a couple of options for you to choose from:
1. Choose the right time for your time zone
Here are some important things to keep in mind:
- First of all, you need to choose a time that suits your geographical location. For instance, if you are located in the US and most of your audience is also in the US, then it is best to choose a time when most of your viewers are likely to watch you. Regardless of the time zone you are in, the best hours or when there is a massive influx of viewers watching live streams is between 12 am and 9 am.
- However, this also happens to be the time when most streamers go live. What it means is that you would be having a lot of competition at these hours. Thus, if you are a new streamer, it is best to opt for a time between 11 am and 2 pm. If you do so, you will have less competition from established or pro streamers and should be able to get a larger chunk of viewers trying to explore interesting content creators.
- Another great option is to split your stream into two sessions. This is what a lot of streamers do to get a larger chunk of viewers. This is perhaps the best method if you want to target two different audiences. For instance, if you have viewers in both UK and US, you can split your stream into two segments and try to capture both audiences.
2. Choose the right time for your game
The time that you choose also depends upon the game that you stream. For instance, party-based or tabletop games have the highest viewership in the evenings rather than in the mornings.
As a streamer, you must stream in the evening hours when you are likely to get maximum viewership. I must say that this is a kind of niche targeting that not only comes with less competition (since not many people would be doing that).
3. Choose the right time for the Viewer ratio
One of the best tools that Twitch streamers tend to use is Twitch Strike. What this tool does is that it gives you the date in terms of the most active streaming period for a game along with the most viewers at a specific time for a game and then it gives you a ratio based on these two.
You can check when this ratio is the highest to find out the best time to stream a particular game.
What to Do if You Can’t Stream at the Best Time
There are times or rather circumstances when it is not possible for you to stream at the peak hours. What do you do in such a case to grab a sizeable audience?
In such a case, here are some important tips that can help:
Leverage social media to gain traction
Social media can be a big asset for most streamers. If you have a good presence on various social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, you can actually use these platforms to gain more viewers on Twitch.
For instance, you can put up a post saying Going Live with a description explaining what you are going to do on Twitch and also inform the audience about the time that you plan to stream at.
This way, when you go live with your stream, you are likely to get a sizeable viewership. Of course, it depends on how popular you are on various social media channels.
Game Selection
Choosing a game with a high fan following is a great idea to get good viewership for your live stream. However, you must stream at a time when this particular game has a smaller live audience.
One of the most popular games that is being streamed on Twitch is Fortnite. What makes it a good choice is that it has massive followership but it also has a smaller concurrent viewership number. One of the most interesting facts about this community is that they prefer watching multiple of various streamers. Thus, you have a good opportunity there to get a decent viewership.
Twitch Analytics
If you are someone who’s just beginning at Twitch, it is important to keep a track of your progress in order to know if you are heading in the right direction. For this purpose, you can make use of certain tools at Twitch that can help you better understand your Twitch statistics including the number of viewers and followers.
Not just this, it is also important to experiment with various time slots as far as streaming is concerned. While doing such experiments you can use a Twitch tracker to see which time slot works best for you and your streams.
Here are some Twitch Analytics tools that you can try:
- Twitch Analytics – found on the creator dashboard
- StreamElements
- Streamlabs Desktop
- TwitchTracker – free Twitch analytics tool
Conclusion
I am sure it is clear to you that the best time to stream on Twitch depends upon a couple of factors, as listed above. If you follow the tips mentioned above you should be able to get the most viewership possible for your live streams.
