VTuber Re-Starter Kit (2023)
Who knows wtf Twitter is gonna look like by the end of the year? Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Tumblr, and all the other cesspits? I’ve got it all covered! Social media is changing and we must change with it. I’m so tired god please weh
Twitter is in free fall. Panic ensues. Valid. Many of us need that hellsite. Badly. It’s imperfect trash, but its *our* trash, understand? Fuck these “alternatives”. They are all noise right now. Cohost doesn’t allow commercial activity in its TOS, Mastodon has low engagement right now. Twitter Blue is here to stay. As VTubers, we all benefit from having it, actually. For $8/mo, you will be prioritized and boosted with mentions and replies. This means that threads and replies to you bump you up on the TL. Even if you pay for it, Lists and Twitter Circles are still a good idea. Heck, rotate people out of Twitter Circles to make sure you’re able to talk to more people. Continue to use Twitter to network by providing value to others and help others in their journey. Be chill and don’t use people for clout--it’s disingenuous. Treat people like people.
I can’t guarantee that things will be the same here on Twitter and neither can anyone else. The current data sets I see from clients and others may show that not much is changing, but this site is changing every day. We need to play it day by day and not worry too much about it.
Twitter has shops, utilize tf out of the business features. Given how much of a mess the site is with its daily tweaks and the loss of valuable engineers at Twitter, things could be topsy-turvy. Who knows? Be active!
This being said, you shouldn’t rely on Twitter alone. It’s not good for your business nor is it good for growing your brand recognition. So I’ll list where to go and the use cases. Don’t use this list to go to literally every place. There’s just not enough time in a day to maintain it all.
Don’t make Insta your mainstay. Please, for the love of God don’t. Everything wrong with FB is still wrong with Insta with the added bonus of it being Diet Tik Tok. That being said, it still is a good networking tool and can help your sales with its shop features (for businesses/brands/media that don’t want to use Twitter). So what to do with Insta? Repost your Tik Toks and hit it n quit it. Post your schedule (3:2 format, crop down with 1:1 squares and schedule out posts to upload your schedule). Update your stories with important things (they’re pinned tweets basically). Have a link in your profile and reply to people when you can. Use relevant hashtags and hashtags that aren’t super saturated. GL;HF
Tik Tok
Hit it n Quit it
Post in prime times
Turn brain off
Be unhinged with your originals
Remix and hf with trends
Repost best shorts elsewhere
Tumblr
It’s 2012 again and we have no character limits and post gif memes
Relax, hf, life moves slower with an older audience
Not a Twitter replacement
SEO can be a benefit (technical jargon I’ll save you from), but you must remain authentic. What works on Twitter doesn’t fly on Tumblr. You will not get traction from doing what you do here.
Pay attention to etiquette. You can have assholes, but many are willing to joke as if nothing had happened. Be consistent by liking and reblogging things. Turn off your brain and follow blogs and tags that are up your alley and QUEUE up things to keep posting throughout the day. Tumblr humor is ironic, but not irony-poisoned. It’s punny and quirky and you must kill the chains that bind your inner cringe. Truly be yourself, share your personal thoughts more (it's a blogging site ffs), share your fandom of things, and things’ll be okay.
Also important on the ettiquite as a first tip: dont act like you do on Twitter. Its a different audience and the normal ways of crossposting wont work here. This is not Twitter. Tumblr is a blogging site where blogs share each other and it is fandom-heavy (meaning sharing who your favorite oshii is for example and hyping up others). It comes naturally. Be yourself and focus on building up a presence on your blog to give people a good idea of who tf you are. Nobody is really a celebrity here and you can't act like you are here. USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGSUSE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TAGS USE TA--
YouTube
I made another mega thread for this, read it later. YouTube should be one of your mainstays as a VTUBER. It’s more work, yes, but they also have Community Posting for everyone now. Scaling up your brand and having better brand recognition is crucial here. As you post more videos, ALWAYS improve your pacing, thumbnails, and titles.
Twitch
We know it. We love it. Consistency is key. Start with Rule of 3s: 3 days/week, 3 hours/day, 3 social media outlets. This is a general rule for a reason, but it's a good minimum to start with because I’ve seen too many clients in deep need. If you need to start half an hour later to catch your regular audience, then do so. Starting out, you need consistent numbers, engagement, and retention. I’ll explain later, but you want to do what you can to increase production value and give more interactables for chat to use.
Advice for partners, you need to continue to carry the momentum to scale. By this point, you likely know what it is you need to do, but perhaps there’s a discrepancy with engagement or retention, or god knows what that holds your audience back. Collabs help, but not as much as you’d like. This comes with raids being a nice networking tool funnily enough. Raid people with similar content and vibe as you to continue to network with people. Switching audiences and using adjacent categories to find that audience may be what you need.
This is all hard to determine for partners so plainly on social media without analyzing data, audience, content, branding/design, and personality. There’s a lot that goes into your churn (how many folks you lose in your audience on average). Fixing that can either require optimization and turning your personality up to 11 more consistently and differently, but also can mean taking a leap into faith with a “big risk, big reward mentality”. One thing I know works would be the optimization tweaks here and there by looking at data (or not looking at all and just gathering feedback from your audience and friends and staying objective and factual), and diversification on different platforms so more can know who you are.
Try tools like Streambee to simplify the VOD review process Streamloots to increase engagement and have better monetization TITS, VRChat, and curation to invite viewers with “planned exclusivity” rather than total exclusivity (how you do this is up to you).
Discord Not really a social media site
Great for talking and engaging your community and breeding loyalty. VTubers need fewer “groups”, fewer individual servers, and more community servers where you can pool your resources and hype each other up. Effectively make use of what Stream Teams are good for and raise each other up.
Monetization
Use Kofi for tips, a shop, comms
Use Gumroad for another shop that has more discoverability
Use Patreon for memberships to slowly phase out Twitch subs. Be creative and have fun with Patreon rewards
Use Streamloots and have fun with it
There’s more I want to discuss, but for now, you can follow me on Twitter and here on Tumblr for this data-backed advice, the nitty gritty nerdy jargon for social media with data and whatnot, and my personal thoughts with my positive experiences managing and consulting folks.
If you yourself are terrified still even with all of this, I have restructured my business with Build-Your-Own Bundle type of consultations and management. Services are 50% off. 69% off after your first purchase (nice)
