How to Use Custom Emotes to Build Your Brand on Twitch

Custom emotes are a unique asset for both viewers and creators on Twitch. For viewers, they allow a form of expression and reaction to content that’s closely related to your channel. And for streamers, they provide and incentive for people to subscribe – driving an increase in your revenue.

At MinMxD, we help gaming content creators and gaming studios to refine their content and offering as a whole. In this article, we’ll discuss what custom emotes are, how to get them, and the impact this can have on your brand and community.

If you’re looking for support in growing your brand or revenue, get in touch today.

Offering a fun and engaging way to connect with your Twitch audience, custom emotes offer a lot of individuality to your channel. Along with that, they come with a number of benefits for both you and your viewers that shouldn’t be ignored. Here’s our top five:

1. Reinforce Brand Identity

As they are unique to your channel and brand, custom emotes help to create a stronger image for your brand identity.

2. Foster a Community

Discussing your current emotes, debating about which ones will come next, and adding meaning to the emotes you already have can all be ways that custom emotes help to build a thriving community. Through this, you will find that your brand can thrive as the people supporting it develop closer connections.

3. Boost Viewer Engagement

Emotes are a quick and easy way for viewers to respond to a situation without having to type out a long-winded message that may get lost in the crowd. With the right suite of emotes, you can ensure your viewers are always equipped to respond in any scenario, which can lead to a more keyed in and engaged audience.

4. Enhance Brand Visibility

Subscriber emotes can be used across all channels on Twitch, so your emotes may end up in other streamers’ chats. This can be a great bit of exposure, as people may become intrigued as to where the emotes came from and how to get them for themselves – leading them to find and potentially subscribe to your channel.

5. Increase Your Revenue

Providing an incentive like custom emotes is a great way to increase your number of subscribers. Not only do they give people a reward for subscribing, but the way in which emote slot milestones are reached also incentivises people to subscribe, which can massively boost your income.

Like all Twitch branding, custom emotes have particular details that need to be carefully considered when it comes to design. Detailed in Twitch’s emote guidelines, there are requirements for content, specifications, and formatting that should be considered when designing your custom emotes.

While the full guidelines are extensive, here is a quick rundown of custom Twitch emote size specifications:

• Must be in .png format (or .gif for animated emotes)
• Either a single image between 112px by 112px and 4096px by 4096px, or three images sized at 28px by 28px, 56px by 56px, and 112px by 112px
• Must be square
• Must be smaller than 1 megabyte
• Must have a fully transparent (alpha channel) background
• Must be viewed at 100% resolution to ensure clear lines, sharp edges, and readable text
• Animated emotes cannot be more than 60 frames
• Animated emotes must not flash more than 3 times in 1 second

Once you’ve got the gritty details nailed down, you can focus on the fun part – actually designing a set of custom emotes you can be proud of.

Here, you can go with pretty much whatever you like (as long as it complies with the guidelines). Try to pick fun and memorable characters or moments from your Twitch streams, or make emotes that are representative of your brand – such as a mascot or catchphrase.

These can then be used by the audience at key moments during your streams, building up a culture of emote usage that makes people understand your brand and engage with it more.

Find out more about the importance of branding for gaming content creators >

By default, you unlock 5 custom emote slots when you become a Twitch Partner or Affiliate. To unlock more, you need to build your channel subscriber points by gaining more subscribers. Through this scheme, you will be able to unlock up to 20 custom emotes if you’re an Affiliate or 60 if you’re a Partner, with an equal number of animated emotes available as well.

You can also gain additional emote slots from Bits Rewards at three different tiers, with three emote slots already being unlocked for you from this angle.

This can act as a community effort, with viewers subscribing or gifting subs to help work towards the next milestone. By setting public subscriber goals, you can show how close you are to the next tier – building hype and boosting your number of subscribers, with all the benefits this entails.

Discover how to become an affiliate on Twitch >

There are two main ways your community can grow through the use of custom emotes.

The first is on your channel. As people use the emotes more, they will develop a closer bond to your brand, increasing the retention of your subscribers. Additionally, this is an opportunity for you to reflect your culture and ethos in the emotes, creating an immediately recognisable motif for your brand.

The second is away from your channel. As Twitch emotes from a channel someone has subscribed to can be used on any channel, they’re a great way to unlock some free publicity – increasing traffic to your channel and helping to grow your community.

Learn how to effectively analyse your performance to increase audience engagement >

Custom emotes offer a unique way to interact with your viewers and reward them for their commitment to you and your channel. They allow for more personalised expression from your chat, and provide a way to showcase or encapsulate memorable moments.

At MinMxD, we believe custom emotes are a small part of the larger goal for viewer engagement. We help gaming creators and studios to minmax their audience retention and growth, boosting your revenue while cutting down on time. Start today by getting in touch.

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