Stream Etiquette Pt 3: Self Promoting/F4F

I already touched base on this in my networking chapter of my streaming guides prior, but I wanted to also do an isolated guide on F4F and other self promotion tactics here.

As I've said before, don't be desperate let alone selfish as one of those guys/gals who self promotes.

Especially the highly frowned upon act of practicing F4F.

Entering someone's channel and just asking for a shout out of your channel is a bad decision though not the worst. As I've also said before, I admit to at times giving a shoutout due to someone being polite, but I also educated them on not making a habit on doing it anymore on my stream or anyone elses.

Entering someone's channel and telling them to shout you out, or just leaving your channel name then exiting the chat? More so of a bad idea especially if you have never contributed a single thing to their channel.

Going onto a channel and telling people in the chat to 'come by my stream for [insert game here] wins' or something similar is even more so rude, and no one with a brain stem wants to follow someone who tries to swipe viewers from another live channel, especially if those viewers enjoy watching the streamer you tried to scalp them from.

All of the above are key mistakes that new channels tend to make because they're worrying about follow counts compared to actual viewer retention.

In doing such, you're showing people someone who is lazy, attempting to take the easy way to gaining followers without chatting with others and giving valid reasons to being worth the time, thus also being someone who sees their potential followers as just a number, statistics in a popularity contest, and not people.

It also shows signs of one being selfish in not caring about the other streamer's content or grind, instead coming by just to leech off of him/her and their viewerbase.

Again, anyone with common sense wouldn't want to support someone like that and if anything, like the other examples in this section of guides? It'll likely net you a bad reputation if you do it on multiple channels.

Irony there? Trying to leech off others to take a quick route to getting growth for fame and fortune could actually give you such a bad name that you never achieve such, as more and more streamers become aware of your toxicity and spread the word.

One point of networking is that it teaches you how to interact with others on a streaming site. If people by whatever reason they conceived to do so just so happened to follow you? Without the proper practice of knowing how to talk to your viewers? They may not stick around anyway.

It's as I've told newer channels who've come by my stream, because I want to attempt to educate them instead of give a time out or ban outright. You want people to support you? Earn it by establishing real bonds with people, which as a streamer is what you would be doing anyway when people come by your channel.

My take on it is that if one wants followers without actually speaking to them? Then they're better off doing prerecorded content on Youtube over livestreaming, though I also try to make time to reply to people who comment on my YouTube videos as well.

Chat with others in another streamer's channel as well as the streamer him/herself. Don't even mention that you stream.

As you continue to be friendly and respectful, chat with people on mutual interests in gaming, so forth? You'd be surprised to find people following you just because you were friendly to them as well as streamers shouting you out without you asking them just because you were respectful, active, and yourself. Its honestly not that hard to be friendly.

If you're not willing to take the time to get to know others as more than numbers, then you don't deserve the numbers consisting of minutes and hours of their time you want them to spend watching you.

Give what you want to gain instead of wanting to gain without giving.