Collaborations are one of the best ways to grow your audience by having other people on your live streams and you showing up to theirs.

Your audience is instantly expanded.

Do you want to know how to collab with other YouTubers or streamers on any platform?

I’ll give you a few tips to get you started.

And the one thing other videos don’t show you how to use platform specific features to increase your results.

Are you ready to dig in? Let’s do it.

Let’s start with platform specific features that’ll help you spread the word about your collaborations.

While it may seem counterintuitive to start here, these features actually may help you approach your collabs differently.

And then I’m gonna give you some tips to get the right collabs on your channel.

Youtube, Facebook, Restream and Instagram all have specific functionality to let more people know about you.

Youtube’s is lacking, but there.

You can tag the person you’re collaborating with in your title.

This is gonna help you with discovery of your content when somebody is searching for them.

This is typically most helpful when you’ve got somebody bigger than your channel on your stream or video.

Of course, you could also ask them if they want to simulcast to your channel to open up the floodgates, and we’ll cover that in a minute.

Facebook’s cross posting feature allows you to send the stream to both channels of who you’re collaborating with.

Unfortunately, no one knows it exists, and it requires both channels to approve the cross posting channel wide so you could literally go live to somebody else’s channel that any time, which is the security risk.

It’s best used for partnerships that want that on an ongoing basis.

Also, something to be aware of is that the view counts are connected, so you’ll see viewers on both channels.

However, comments are separate so you need to pull both videos up to see all of the comments.

A little bit awkward.

Instagram lets you bring on guests, and it’ll also send notifications to that person’s audience.

Since Instagram Live is phone only, you have limited capabilities in terms of the tech and overlays, of course.

And then there’s Restream’s Pair feature.

This allows for easier collaboration per stream.

Because Restream allows you to multicast to more than one platform, you’ll be able to collaborate without having to focus on a single platform and no more sharing passwords or trying to get access to to their channel to stream to.

I mean the headache of adding and removing people as manager of the account…I’M ON.

Let me show you how it works.

So in Restream, you’re going to click the Events button and you’ll land on this page.

Create the event.

Choose to schedule a live stream.

Put your awesome title and description.

If you could spell…

Choose your date and time to go live, upload the image, then click next.

Here you’ll toggle off and on any channels you want to stream to.

Verify that the date and time is correct and then create the event.

Here you’re gonna see the pairs option.

Now, if your guest does not have a Restream account, you can easily send them to livestreamingpros.com/restream and that will get them a ten dollar credit, which they will thank you for.

So you’re the hero.

And then once they sign in, this is what they’re gonna see, and all they have to do is add channels and then they’ll add and connect their

Facebook, YouTube, Twitch or anything else.

And keep in mind, the collaborations can look a variety of different ways from you both showing up on each other’s channels at the same time to you interviewing them on your channel and they feature you

in some way on their channel on a separate video or stream.

The possibilities are endless.

It is up to your creativity.

So how do you get collaborations in the first place?

Well, at first, the audience of who you’re collabing with must match directly or at least have some kind of crossover.

It does you no good to collaborate with a channel where the audience would not be interested in subbing to your channel.

Be smart with your time.

When you think about collaboration, not competition.

Your possibilities open up.

I collab with other people who also teach live streaming.

The audience is a perfect match, and I have an attitude that there is enough viewers to go around.

Abundance.

Don’t hoard those viewers.

I often collaborate with people who are slightly different topics than mine, but have that crossover audience.

It all works.

Second, the snowball effect.

When you’re just starting out with collabs and your audience is smaller, you’re gonna have the best results with longterm thinking.

Start by collaborating with people who are at or just above your current audience level, and this will get you the experience you need at practicing doing it well.

Before you ask somebody who is much, much larger than you, that snowball effect takes motion when you do this, getting audience growth a bit here a bit there and then it gets larger and larger.

Now I will always, always, always, always encourage you to reach for the stars and go big with your goals.

When you’re inspired to do so, then add that person to the list.

Third, find the win win win.

What kind of collab would be a win for your audience?

For you? And the person you’re asking?

That’s where the magic happens.

Fourth, approach the person with sincerity.

Make it about them, not your desires.

What makes this a good collab with them?

Figure out if they have an existing process for collabs on their website or the about section of YouTube, follow their processes.

They exist for a reason.

For example, I have an interview request form on my site to ensure requests don’t go missed.

If they do not have a process, then figure out where they’re most active on social and reach out that or via email.

Again approach with sincerity.

We have a workshop all about this process with swipe files for reaching out.

That link is in the description.

Pro tip!

The more active you are in their community and you’re helpful to them, the more likely they are to say yes.

Take Sammy Super Star, for example.

He is super active in various communities, and when he asks for interviews, he always gets a yes even though his channel isn’t huge…Yet.

Don’t forget to join us for a live stream to ask all of your questions about audience growth.

And now that you know how to collaborate with other YouTubers.

If you want to learn more about how to use Restream with success, check out this playlist to dive deeper and I will see you over there.