What Metrics Matter?
Let’s be honest: The number that often catches an audience member or potential sponsor are the those that are right in front of them. I’m sure people have commented or called attention to your follower count or average viewer count. However, those aren’t the numbers that are most important for business growth and long term opportunity.
I have known creators that have millions of followers that drive little to no conversion when they are attempting to sell a product or promote a brand. I have known creators with fewer than 5000 followers who drive more bookable business than household names. I have known creators with fewer than 50 average viewers who make more money than creators with over 500 average viewers.
What am I trying to say with the above?
The number of followers/viewers you have doesn’t matter if they don’t actually ‘follow’ you.
Within this article, you will get away from the vanity understanding of what constitutes value and hone in your creative energy towards creating the best possible product for growth and conversion. In essence, what livestream metrics matter.
Breaking Vanity’s Mirror
I get it. You want to celebrate milestones in the growth of your career. Subscriber and Follower milestones are wonderful moments to showcase progression. But when you look at that total number, what is the average percent that actually tune in on a regular basis? My gut is it is fewer than 5% (and guess what – that’s normal)
A person follows for a very specific reason at a very specific point in time. Perhaps it was because you did something they uniquely appreciated or maybe you were playing a game that they liked. Each follower count is one potential eyeball of reach, but should not be the metric you pay closest attention at scale.
Paying too close of attention to Follower counts is also where most creators become depressed. Comparisons start to come into play. You may see a peer have a faster growth rate than you and thus lead you down a spiral.
The sooner you can distance yourself from the top-line and focus instead on the per show basis is where you will learn the changes necessary in order to facilitate growth.
So What Metrics Matter?
Now that you’ve pulled yourself away from comparing to Jonny Instagram Star, you can start to refocus in on your show.
You should absolutely be looking at your shows on a per show basis. The frequency of when you do the analysis below is up to you, but I recommend at least doing it once a week to start and transitioning to bi-weekly once you find your groove.
The areas you want to focus most on are:
Sustained Average Viewership Duration
Broadcast Type to New Follower -or- New Subscriber Conversion
Average Viewer to Paid Subscriber Ratio
Revenue Per Hour Broadcast
Engagement Per Broadcast
Sustained Average Viewership Duration
How long are viewers staying engaged in your programming? This is the main data set I used when analyzing YouTube content for years and it equally applies to live broadcasting.
What is your average concurrent viewership that is maintained over the longest period of time?
When you receive a raid or host, how long are those viewers staying around? What percentage is being maintained?
Do certain formats maintain viewership longer than others?
Having 30 dedicated viewers is just as valuable as having 500 dedicated viewers. Viewers are people who are choosing to spend their time equally with you. Visualize the space you are filling.
You want to give them a show that will keep their attention, but leave them wanting to return. The most dangerous thing in any live broadcast or show is the moment a viewer or attendee looks at their watch. Once they do, you’ve lost them.
Broadcast Type to Follower -or- Subscriber Conversion
With each show you perform you are hoping for two key results:
To Fill Existing seats with your Regulars
To Sell New seats for future potential Regulars
You will want to break down show by show to see what is generating the best conversion for new followers and subscribers. Know that chasing the area that has the most potential viewers (ie: insert popular game X here) isn’t necessarily the best strategy. With larger number of viewers comes a greater amount of competition in the space. In order to play in that field, you need to have something so incredibly unique (and a little help from established talent in that area) in order to break out.
You may discover that certain things you love broadcasting simply don’t convert. That is something of which you may need to analyze and revisit for yourself creatively.
A fun tool I’ve utilized for analyzing my own shows externally is TwitchTracker.com .
On TwitchTracker, I would navigate to my own profile page, then click on “Games”. From here, I can sort all of the Categories I have broadcasted to by Followers (high to low). What you want to take a close look at is which titles generate positive conversion. In my case, the categories of which I’ve given the greatest airtime have very poor followers per hour conversion. Meanwhile, there are categories with meaningful hours broadcast that have great conversion with each hour. This helps influence what categories to lean into and what games to consider in the future.
You can do a similar exercise on a per show basis with your Stream Summary on Twitch. How many new followers/subscribers are you converting per show? Are some shows performing better than others?
Average Viewer to Paid Subscriber Ratio
This one is relatively straightforward – How many average viewers do you maintain and how many active paying subscribers do you have?
The ideal of course is a 1-to-1 ratio, but inflation may form with gifted subs, utilization of sub perks/benefits (such as Prime), etc. Take a close look at how many viewers are choosing to invest in you monthly and how many are regular viewers.
Revenue Per Hour Broadcast
Broadcasting takes time, significant energy and upfront investment. Obviously we all want to seek a return for our investments and watching your progression in terms of revenue is absolutely vital over time.
Take a look at your past broadcasts:
Which shows generated the most revenue?
Which shows generated little to no revenue?
Which shows required greater investment but did not break even?
To build a sustainable career in broadcasting, you must be mindful of how many hours you are putting in and what the return looks like. Part of this is also ensuring that the audience isn’t feeling inundated with content.
BE MINDFUL OF YOUR AUDIENCE. BROADCASTING LONGER DOESN’T EQUAL GREATER SUCCESS.
Engagement Per Broadcast
You want to keep in tune with how the audience and your fans are receiving and perceiving your content. You want your content to maintain being a point of ongoing conversation – both in chat and externally on social media/press. A few metrics to keep close eye on are:
# of social posts and social post engagements per broadcast
Unique chatters in audience
Conversion per Notification (Go Live Notifications/Initial External Posts promoting streams)
If you notice that your social posts promoting your livestream are receiving little to no interaction, it is time to re-analyze how and when you are posting. If you notice that certain “Go Live Notifications” are receiving greater click-through, take a look at why they do and how you might be able to further replicate that success.
Next Steps
With these analytical considerations in mind, reflect on your past broadcasts. How are they performing? What can you do that makes them more effective in conversion? Where are you finding growth and (if it aligns with you) how can you do more?
I encourage you to look past the top-line, gain greater mindfulness of your audience and find the balance that works both for them and you.
