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My Experiences with Starting a Gaming TikTok

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Earlier this year, YouTube launched its Shorts video format. YouTube Shorts are vertically-oriented videos with a browsing mechanism similar to TikTok. Even in this early stage, a number of creators have greatly expanded their reach through this new format.

With YouTube being a priority for me, I decided to start making videos within the Shorts format. I was already making clips for Twitter and Instagram, so making YouTube Shorts was simply a matter of reformatting them for a vertical screen.

As it turns out, that YouTube Shorts vertical format is also same as TikTok. Though I’ve been reluctant to support more platforms with my content, I figured that if I’m going to make vertically-oriented clips for YouTube anyway, why not also post them on TikTok for greater reach with little extra effort?

Thus far, not much has come out of YouTube Shorts. TikTok though…

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The Art of Repurposing Stream Highlights for Social Media

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Sharing highlights from your stream can be a great way to attract new viewers or keep your existing fanbase engaged with content they might have missed. For a number of my social media followers, they’ve never gone to my stream but regularly engage with my highlights. If that’s the way they want to connect, that’s cool too!

The process could be as simple as taking a snippet from your stream and uploading it to your social media platforms. However, you’re likely to be leaving money on the table if you don’t go the extra mile. Here are a few tips to get the most out of your streaming highlights when you share them on other platforms!

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The Process Behind Running My Stream

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Developing my streaming process has been…a process. For a long time, I failed to see the forest through the trees. Trying to squeeze the most performance out of my underpowered hardware, I spent too much time figuring out how to present a technically-competent stream and not enough time thinking about everything else that goes into it. Didn’t have a plan to promote my stream. Didn’t think about what type of content I wanted to create once I got things working. Didn’t even think about why I was doing this in the first place beyond seeing whether I could do it at all.

My aimlessness came back to haunt me when I came up just short of reaching Twitch Affiliate status. Even though it wasn’t a goal I was actively targeting, missing the mark forced me to really think about what I wanted and the steps required to get there. Streaming is still a struggle, but having a better handle on my goals has really helped me define my approach to this demanding hobby.

As of now, this is the process I go through to make each stream happen.

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Content Creation and Load Management

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One of the trendiest phrases in NBA jargon is “load management”. This is the practice of forcing healthy players to sit out regular season games as a means of keeping them fresh for the playoffs. Though it’s a touchy subject – as it devalues the NBA season while robbing paying fans of their opportunities to see the best players at times – we’re starting to see the potential benefits in this strategy. Case in point: Kawhi Leonard on the Toronto Raptors this past season.

Coming off the previous season where he only played 9 out of a possible 82 games due to injury, the Toronto Raptors put Kawhi on an aggressive load management program to keep him fresh. Instead of playing all 82 games, he played about 60, while skipping at least one of two games that were scheduled on consecutive days. Kawhi might have been visibly limping by the end of this past season, but he had enough gas in the tank to lead the Raptors to their first ever NBA championship. Though we’ll never know for certain, there’s a chance his body would have broken down prematurely had he played the season in full.

While I am not a superstar basketball player, applying the concept of load management to the way I manage In Third Person may not be a bad idea.

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Establishing a Foothold on YouTube

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Over the past year or so, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to establish the In Third Person footprint across different online platforms. The blog is home base and should continue to be for the foreseeable future. Twitch has been a major focus of late, having spent hundreds of hours streaming, tinkering with my equipment, building episodes of Boss Rush, and repurposing content for other platforms. Much of that content goes into my Instagram, where it’s used as a space for stream highlights, screenshots, conversation starters, and sneak peeks into my life outside of gaming.

I’ve achieved some success, but there’s also been a lot of failure. The most notable of those is my presence on YouTube.

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My crappy Twitter account and the larger discussion about maintaining the In Third Person experience

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Oh you didn’t know In Third Person has a Twitter account? I don’t blame you.

When I first started the blog in 2009, I set up a Twitter account to take advantage of being able to post from the blog to Twitter automatically. From then on, it was nothing more than a content-posting robot. For that handful of people that have subscribed to my Twitter feed over the years in spite of this, thank you. Also, why would you subject yourself to that?!

It’s emblematic of how I’ve handled external platforms until fairly recently. External platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch were afterthoughts. Nothing more than platforms with functions that could help enhance the experience on my site. To a certain extent, I still don’t know how engaged I want to be on those, as external outreach isn’t necessarily a priority for me. However, being a spam machine isn’t a good look regardless.

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In Third Person is Now on Instagram!

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In Third Person is expanding!

If you want more content directly in your Instagram feed, follow me @inthirdpersondotcom!