How to Better Engage with Your Gaming Community

Community engagement is one of the most vital parts of growing your gaming channel, but sometimes it can be one of the most difficult tasks as well. Trolls, low engagement rates, or shifts in your audience dynamics can all leave you feeling unmotivated or even reluctant to engage with your community.

However, don’t give up just yet – we’ve got some tips to help you boost your engagement and give your channel the care, attention, and growth it needs. We’ll discuss ways to increase engagement with your followers, the benefits of running a community Discord, and how to get more (and better!) comments on your gaming videos.

At MinMxD, we aim to give you the best shot at bringing your channel to new heights. Read on to find out more, or get in touch today!

Better engagement with your community starts at your baseline – increasing the engagement with your followers. While gaining more followers might seem more pressing as this is directly linked to the growth of your channel, engagement metrics are vital to getting your channel out there. As such, boosting the engagement of your current audience is actually the best step to reaching new viewers.

There are a few different ways you can increase engagement with your followers:

1. Encourage comments, likes, and shares in the video. This is a common tactic gaming content creators use, if a little lacking in impact. However, many people won’t do any of these things unless prompted, and the automatic features some platforms have – such as YouTube adding a flair to the subscribe button when it detects you saying it in a video – can help to further boost engagement.With that, if you find this blog helpful, why not share it on your socials!!
2. Encourage discussion in chat and the comments. Don’t treat your videos as one-sided interactions. Instead, use them as a way to open up a dialogue with your viewers. If you manage to pull this off, you will create a natural way for your audience to interact more, leading to better engagement.
3. Get involved with them directly on platforms like Reddit, YouTube, or even your own private Discord. By engaging in community spaces, or providing your own, you show that you’re an active participant in the community and give people a way to reach you. This can make your content appear more personable, making people feel like they’ve formed a connection and leading to better positive engagement through comments, shares, and likes.
4. Meet up with fans at offline events. As well as engaging with the online community, you can go out and meet people in person. IRL meetups and gaming conventions are great places to show your face, engage with fans, and really build up some personal connections. Plus, you’re likely to meet some great and interesting people that will help build your motivation to continue making content.

Find out how to network in the gaming industry >

Whether you’re a die-hard streamer or a master video producer, these steps can help you to get more and better engagement from your viewers.

Discord is one of the best ways to build a community. With 150 million monthly users worldwide, there’s a high chance that your viewers will already be on the platform – especially in the gaming niche.

Discord enables direct interaction with creators, but also other members of the community. This lets people get to know each other, theorise, and discuss your latest videos.

You can also use the platform to post teasers, explain decisions directly to fans, or provide additional incentives for them to follow you on things like Patreon – increasing your revenue while providing clarity and value to your viewers.

One of the best things about Discord is that it’s entirely optional – people can interact as much or as little as they like. To encourage them to interact more, be active and present. To not burn out, have moderators and community managers handle some of the interactions for you.

There are lots of different ways you can utilise a Discord channel, from running giveaways to hosting exclusive streams or gaming events. It gives another place for your audience to gather, and gives you a way of easily reaching them on the fly.

So while you don’t need a Discord explicitly, without one you’re missing out on a whole load of opportunities for community engagement, fan interaction, channel growth, and potential revenue.

It isn’t as much work as it sounds, either. Get a few people you trust, be they people you know or dedicated fans, and ask them to help you out. They’ll likely be happy to do so, as it means getting to support someone they respect.

If you need help getting your online community up and running, contact our team – we can offer you advice to get you started on the right direction!

Getting more comments is one of the best measures of engagement with your content. However, a comment takes a while to write out, and if you’re already getting lots it can dissuade people from even putting something out as they may think you won’t see it.

As creators, it can be hard to read through all the comments you get – made even more difficult by the presence of trolls or hateful messages that can really get you down. There are a few ways you can encourage positive comments and conversation, though, that provide an amusing way for viewers to engage with you. Some prompts you could offer include:

• Asking people about their day
• Asking to comment on something they liked in the video
• Asking an obscure question that might pose a fun challenge for people to answer
• Including things in the video that the viewers might want to comment about e.g. hidden easter eggs
• Reading and responding to comments whenever you can
• Featuring comments in your next video – this might encourage people to post more
• Running giveaways that require people to leave a comment on the video
• Opening up dialogues with your audience to make them feel more welcome when leaving a comment

Any way you can think of to make your engagement feel more unique, personalised, and special to your audience is a good way to encourage that feeling in them as well – leading to better engagement, and better growth for your channel.

Encourage your viewers, create opportunities for natural engagement, and interact with your audience outside of your videos through things like online community spaces (e.g. Discord) and offline events. Do these things right, and you’ll see your community engagement and channel growth reach new heights.

Take your efforts to the next level by working with MinMxD. Our experts can help you identify opportunities for growth, and develop strategies to boost your channel’s engagement. Get in touch today to find out more!

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