How To Get More Twitch Raids
What Is A Twitch Raid & How To Get More?
Getting a raid on Twitch is the ultimate jumpstart for your stream. It gives you the opportunity to suddenly grow your average viewers, your followers and explode the awareness of who you are, what you like, what you do and why you do it.
Knowing how to get a raid on Twitch can be extremely important for a streamer and therefore it’s a commonly asked question by the wider community.
One thing you’ve got to remember with raiding is that the majority of viewers are going to leave very quickly because the content they were watching has ended.
Therefore, you typically have an extremely short amount of time to convince them to stick around or come back another time. Later in this guide, I’ll explain what you should do if you get raided.
What is a Twitch raid?
A raid is when a streamer sends their viewers to another channel at the end of their stream. It’s a great way to introduce your community to another content creator and surprise them with an influx of new viewers. You can raid any channel you want.
How do you raid somebody on Twitch?
To raid you can either press the raid button on your Stream Manager page or type the following:
/raid channelname
Only you and your editors can start a raid this way. Not your moderators or VIPs.
If you didn’t mean to start a raid, you can type /unraid in your chat before the timer ends or press the cancel button on the Stream Manager page.
So let’s talk about how you can get one from another streamer.
Spotting opportunities
The right place, the right time
Twitch Raids can be summed out with the one thing you’ll constantly hear… ‘be consistent’. E.g; the more you are online and streaming, the more likely somebody is going to spot you, and/or decide to host you.
But while you could be streaming League of Legends or Fortnite 45 hours a week, it still doesn’t mean you’ll be spotted among the thousands of other streamers playing those games.
So you need to become aware of your game surroundings. By this, I mean to understand how popular the game you play is, when it is most popular to viewers (and streamers). You’ll also want to be aware of when there is a new game or an old game with a big update. Being aware is incredibly important to increase your chances of a random raid.
You’ll want to look out for a large streamer in a usually small category or game, they may end the stream and want to support other creators in that game. You may get lucky…
I found this quote from Redditor AvalonAngel84 to be a perfect explainer as to why most Twitch streamers raid:
“I usually raid people that I know & follow, or if nobody is online or I know a person is going to stop soon I usually pick somebody who is streaming the same game. I check out their channel for a few seconds to see if they are somebody that I would enjoy watching and then go ahead and raid them.”
Make friends (networking)
The biggest reason somebody is going to raid (or host) you are because you are their friend and they want to help you. Therefore the best way to encourage raiding is to make more friends.
Engage with other streamers and their streams, naturally develop friendships like you would in real life.
I’m not recommending that you try and be everybody’s best friend, see them as ‘transactional’ only and jump into everyone’s stream asking to be their “BFF’S 4EVER” — that’s not what you would do in real life is it?
You want to start naturally building friendships with other streamers and content creators, ask them how they are, talk about the games they like to play or the current meta. Get to know them as a real person outside of Twitch, Discord or Steam. If it doesn’t feel right, natural or they aren’t keen, then do what you’d do in real life with somebody you met at school, college, uni, a coffee shop, work or at a party.
Every friendship offers each person something of ‘value’. Whether this is caring, being entertaining or helping them develop something. You could help a fellow streamer by helping them understand the game better, by creating artwork for them, for helping them run their Discord, giving them advice in something you are an expert in or just by promoting
So, don’t go into their chats and spam ‘raid me pls’ or ‘please be friends so you can follow me’, that’s not real, and you’d never do that in real life at a friend’s house.
What should I do if I get raided?
If you are being raided, there are many things you should do, a few you could do, and ultimately no rules to why you do them. If it fits the style (brand) of your stream and it’s authentically you, then you’ve gotta’ do it!
- Thank the raiding streamer and their new viewers for raiding you, it’s an incredibly exciting moment and you want them to feel the love as much as you currently do.
- If you know the streamer raiding you, ask them how their stream was going, talk about what you love about their content and their community. It’ll make them feel warm & fuzzy inside and potentially make them want to do it more!
- Give the streamer a shoutout in your chat (you can get a mod to do this or set up a custom command in a bot like Nightbot)
- Describe who you are and what you do on your stream — a lot of these viewers may know nothing about you and so they need to know why you stream, what games you commonly play and things you normally do. Feel free to promote your Discord, Website or social media accounts here! Don’t turn this into an essay though, they will decide within seconds whether they want to stick around or not…
- Engage with the new viewers, ask them questions and gently bring them into your community’s common discussion points.
- Do something that makes you stand out, jump around, dance, cry, ask them to give you a challenge in the game you are playing or at your desk. Give them a reason to remember you.
Some people use raids to harass and bully other creators on Twitch, if you find yourself on the receiving end of this, Twitch allows you to change your settings to disable all raids or only allow them from friends, teammates and followed channels.
However, you can change the settings to either disable all raids. Or only allow raids from your network (friends, teammates and followed channels).
By the way; these rules definitely apply to a big host too. Don’t forget how powerful those can be too.
FAQs
- How can you end a raid on Twitch? – You cannot end a raid (and it would not make sense to). Therefore it should only be used at the end of your stream.
- Can you buy Twitch raids? Probably, but you should never do this, there is no way to know whether the ‘viewers’ are real and they won’t stick around to enjoy your content, so what is the point really?
- What is the difference between a Twitch Host and a Raid? Hosting a streamer shows their stream inside your channel, but it means your viewers do not join their channel. A raid directly redirects your viewers to their channel and chat.
Well, I hope that helped you understand how powerful raids are, why you should want them and ways you can increase your chances of getting one! Good luck out there.
Who Are We?
The Emergence is a stream education, guides & tutorial website that also happens to stream. You can find out more about me below:
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