As a streamer, thanking and shouting out your recent followers is an important way to engage with your audience and show appreciation for their support. Displaying recent followers in OBS overlays is a popular technique used by many streamers to achieve this.
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Why Thank Recent Followers
There are several benefits to thanking recent followers on stream:
- It makes new viewers feel welcomed and appreciated
- It incentivizes viewers to follow your channel
- It helps build a sense of community with your regulars
- It shows viewers your stream is interactive
Giving followers a shoutout is a small gesture that can go a long way in retaining viewers and growing your channel over time.
Setting Up Recent Follower Overlays
Displaying recent followers on stream requires adding browser sources to OBS Studio that are linked to overlay graphics. Here are the main steps:
1. Create Graphics with Streamlabs
Most streamers use Streamlabs to create customizable overlays for recent events like new followers.
- Go to the Streamlabs dashboard and select “Widgets”
- Edit the “Event List – Followers” widget
- Customize the appearance and create graphics
- Streamlabs will generate a browser source URL
2. Add Browser Source in OBS
- In OBS Studio, click the “+” button in the Sources section
- Select “Browser” and name it appropriately
- Paste the URL from Streamlabs into the browser source settings
3. Position & Customize Overlays
You can now position and resize the follower overlay on your scene. Customize options like the text, colors and animations in the Streamlabs dashboard.
Extra Tips for Follower Engagement
Here are some extra tips to maximize engagement with recent followers:
Give personalized shoutouts: Mention followers by name and welcome them personally. This makes a connection.
Use chatbots: Bots like Nightbot allow you to automatically thank new followers. This scales as you grow.
Add follower goals: Set custom follower goals and milestone alerts to incentivize more follows.
Cross-promote: Share that you shout out recent followers on other platforms to drive more traffic to your stream.
Analyze metrics: Use analytics to determine what times you get the most follows and engage further during those streams.
Create follower-only content: Occasional follower-only giveaways or game lobbies give viewers more reason to follow.
Thanking and shouting out followers seems simple, but it goes a long way. With the right OBS overlays and engagement strategies, you can directly grow and retain your audience.
My Experience Setting Up Follower Overlays
As a streamer myself, I found setting up recent follower overlays incredibly useful for viewer engagement. It was a seamless process linking Streamlabs with OBS.
The customization options allowed me to create overlays that match my branding. I get a lot of positive feedback from new viewers when I give them personalized shoutouts. It’s now an integral part of every stream.
Analyzing my follower metrics revealed that most people follow within the first 10 minutes of my stream. Focusing engagement efforts early has led to more follows long-term. Occasional follower-only giveaways have also worked well.
On slower days, I use a Nightbot command to automatically thank new followers. This scales up over time. As my channel grows, recent follower overlays remain an easy way to create connections and stand out.
