In the past few weeks Twitch clips have made a full cycle. When the feature was first introduced in mid 2016 everyone was sceptical and saying that clips are a nice thing are probably not needed. Now in late 2020 Twitch clips are so popular and widely used that even the music industry is tasting blood and wants a piece of the money pie by copyright striking hundreds of thousands of clips. No matter where you stand on this matter, pro or against Twitch clips, clips are still highly used for YouTube montages, funny moments and WTF videos and this is where the issue begins.
What Twitch Clips Are Used For!
Clips are accessible to every streamer on Twitch. Certain viewers, mods and of course the streamer have the ability to clip a past moment. This is often used when something unbelievable happened during the stream, it can be an amazing trick shot in Call Of Duty or simply the streamer spilling his coffee all over his new $200 keyboard.
More often than not the streamers take all their Twitch clips of the past month, select the best, throw them into a ten minute YouTube video and then post it as a Twitch Highlight of the month on YouTube. In theory there is nothing wrong with the idea of taking good clips and reposting them for more exposure, however; the amount of time put into those highlight videos and the return of investment, does not match in the case of most streamers.
Why Does It Not Work?
The problem is relatively simple. A Twitch highlight video often serves the Twitch community as a recap of the last month. Meaning people that are already following your live stream and enjoying your content will go and watch the recap, but no new viewers are attracted to your live stream through the highlight video. If the purpose of those videos is to serve the already existing community, and not serve as an outlet to grow your reach, then keep doing those videos, however; if you expect to attract new viewers through YouTube videos like this, you are selling yourself short and here is why.
Growing a YouTube channel takes a lot of time and effort, and while the channel is small, the only way to attract viewers is to make search friendly videos. Search friendly videos are videos that solve a potential problem and are tagged with the right keywords so viewers that look to YouTube to solve their problem will find your video. Every single channel has the ability to rank in YouTube search and be pushed by the YouTube algorithm. A perfect example for that is my Gfuel video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8bPWX7Eu1U which has over 40k views with, at that time, barely 100 subscribers.
When viewers stumble upon your search friendly video you have the chance to redirect them to your live stream to give them more information. If your videos are not search friendly however, chances are no one will ever see those videos.
Twitch highlight videos are with the most and least search friendly videos. If your highlight videos contain multiple games, it makes it difficult for YouTube to categorize your video as well as it will be difficult to tag correctly. On the other side if your highlight video contains Fortnite or Warzone footage as an example, games that are highly popular, the video can be as search friendly as possible but will still not make it in the algorithm, because the category is so saturated with big names that your video will simply drown.
What You Should Do With Your Clips!
Despite the frustration you might feel, DO NOT stop clipping your Twitch stream. Twitch clips are a great way to reach more people and show them what they can expect from your stream. A good use of your clips is to post one clip right BEFORE you go live on your Facebook page, your Instagram or your Twitter feed. That way people see the clip, and when looking for your stream see you are live, and are more likely to stick around.
The other way to use your clips is to send them in. Yes take your clips and send them to big YouTube channels that ONLY make twitch or game highlight videos. There are several huge YouTube channels that only create montages based on their viewers clips. They link channels in the description as well as tag the creator on the actual clip. This way your clips are getting hundreds of thousands of views on an established channel. There is no limit to how many you can send in and there is no limit to how often you are featured. The better clip the better the chances to make it into the video.
Do not waste your time on creating your own highlight videos just for them to drown in the large sea of YouTube. Take your clips and send them in to get featured on a big established channel.
Let me know your opinion on this matter underneath the article or the YouTube video!
