Commentating thoughts/tips

With all of that said, one thing to keep in mind is that you should work to your own pace, with your own goals in mind. Do you have enough time in a day to do 1 cast or 3? Do you have enough replays? One mistake I made when I started casting was to say to myself “OK BRO, DOING 3 CASTS A DAY UNTIL I’M HUSKY.” This just doesn’t fly, namely because when you start off, sometimes finding quality content can be hard to do – depending on what you like casting. So time management and proper goal setting is one of the firm foundations of starting out when you’re casting.

Time management is also something to consider. As noted further above, you may start out setting a goal such as “3 casts per day” – but sometimes things come up, sometimes you’ll encounter tech issues, and it won’t happen. I would advise either setting a more flexible goal, or setting a goal that is far easier to approach. To amend an old adage; better to cast slightly less than what you wanted, than to set a goal and never hit it. I work full time and I really like my job – but I don’t “take it home with me” so I have a small portion of each day where I can cast maybe 2 – 3 games – however I don’t always, namely because I spend some of those hours playing SC2 myself, watching casts, talking to my friends and playing other games

Anyway – get a Twitter account. It’s simple and free, and requires a medium amount of attention to begin with – but after a while you’ll find that people will be drawn to it because of you advertising it on your vods, or because they’ve seen your tweets come up through their own social media searching or just through scouring comments that have mentions of topics – SC2 balance stuff, comments about pros, those sorts of things that you can tweet about that others might be interested in hearing about.

After you’ve gotten an account and have a few followers that are happy to interact with you, you’ll need to be careful with how you “garden” your followers and how to gain more, not to mention another big factor – what is the purpose of your Twitter account.

I want to be popular on Twitter like day9 – obviously something that a lot of people would love to have – but it’s not exactly easy to get to. This kind of ‘attention’ and popularity comes with time and obviously with a lot of hard work. This kind of goal is something that is extremely passive and realistically will only come with time and patience. I’m sorry if you’re one of those people looking for quick fandom.

I want to simply have it there for “tweeps” to see when I post new vods, nothing more – There are a couple of casters who do this, and while I don’t fully advocate that kind of obliviousness from a social circle – it is possible to do this and have it be effective. This one is much easier on your time – you don’t need to garden any followers, just make sure you get your YouTube-Twitter link going, and you’re set.

I want to be able to link new vods, and have interactions with my followers – This is probably my favourite – and if you know me you’ll understand that this is how I operate through social media. Posting links to vods is obviously a primary part of my Twitter account, but interacting with fans, friends and other folks is a big part of how I like to use the social media I’m a part of. It’s great for feeling out the general “vibe” of what people like and what they are up to, and one of the most important parts is that it helps you get connections. I’ve met and spoken to a heap of pro players, other casters, and other personalities that have helped me or given me advice, purely through Twitter. I’ve made friends and become a part of the venerable team Dream Team Gaming (dtG) with one of my favourite players Sickness who I now regularly talk to. I thoroughly believe that connections are a massive part of life in any context, and to be honest it hasn’t been any less true in the context of esports.

Oh shit turbulence. *plane shakes around, attempting to type like a boss*