>>66662033Two parts to growth: attracting newcomers, and retaining your audience. Attracting viewers is hard work and a lot of it comes down to being in the right place at the right time. It's very rare that someone becomes a phenomenon overnight (nearly impossible unless you have someone spending a lot of money marketing you).
More often what happens is that someone starts out early when there is little competition and is able to grow their audience over several years. Because so many people want to be vtubers now, you have a lot of competition for all the basic formats like zatsudan, singing, gaming, asmr, cooking, etc. That's going to make it difficult to grow if you don't have anything that makes you stand out. As there's no formula to success, you'll just have to figure out what works best for you.
Retaining your audience is more straightforward. First, you want to give them content that feels familiar and doesn't challenge them too much. No drastic pivots to different types of content. Try to have a good sense of who your audience is going to like when choosing people to collab with. You could be best friends with someone but if the audience doesn't like them there's not much you can do.
Second, you want to be consistent. Make a public schedule and stick to it. If you can put out content at the same time on the same days every week, that's great! Best way to make watching your content into a routine for people. But even if you can't do that, a schedule still helps your viewers decide between watching you or doing something else. Which keeps them happy instead of frustrated when they showed up expecting one thing and you deliver something else.
Third, you want to make sure your newcomers feel welcome. Encourage your community to be kind to newcomers. Be responsive but don't play favorites. Try to give your community things to do together so that they're in it for each other as much as they are for you. All easier said than done, of course. Leadership ain't easy, and you'll need to use a firm hand at times to steer your community in the right direction. But if you are fair and consistent in the application of your power, people won't push back too much.
