Your goal is to increase your viewership. This helps boost your exposure and reputation. And this, in turn, gives a lift to your chances of gaining freelance work.

And one of the best, and in reality easiest, methods for achieving this is to maintain a regular, published schedule.

Here’s just a few of the advantages, which we will detail below:

• Your viewers will know when they can catch your latest stream.
• Viewer loyalty will increase, and loyal viewers will be more likely to mention your streams to their friends and peers.
• It makes it easier for LiveEdu/Livecoding.tv to feature your streams, blogs, social media and related forums.

So, let’s take these in turn.

Helps your viewers

Think of how frustrating it would be to keep an eye on your favorite television show when you weren’t sure when the latest episode would air. You’ve been watching, you’re caught up on all the past episodes, and it’s a show you really like. But, you find yourself wasting time checking with the channel, hoping you catch the latest. How long will it take before you start looking elsewhere for a new show?

Why would you want your livestreaming audience to face the same obstacle?

You have created a brand – yourself – with an audience of people who want to watch you. Letting them know when they can best find you is both a good business practice, and just a nice, respectful thing to do.

So, what kind of schedule works best? We advise letting your viewers, and those you would like to become viewers, have at least five days’ notice of your streams. More is always better, but from our experience, five days looks to be a solid minimum.

Builds loyalty

Loyalty can be a fickle thing. Sports teams rely on it – loyal fans buy tickets and merchandise. And that loyalty helps build a community.

While not quite to the same scale, that same loyalty builds an online community. It is built via such outlets as forums and social media. It means you, as the center of that loyalty via your channel, can count on your viewers to be there. Assuming, of course, they know when.

Using the features LiveEdu/Livecoding makes available, users can check your profile for your schedule. And if you update that schedule regularly – and keep to it – the viewers know you care about them. Loyalty runs both ways.

Makes it easier to help you

Let’s head back to the TV example. You see an ad for your favorite show, teasing the next episode. A flashy image, maybe a couple scenes or quotes, a little flavor text. And what else is always there? The date and time of the next episode. Even if it is a full season coming to a streaming service, that date and time stamp are there.

That little bit of information helps the network or service get the word out about the show. It allows viewers to either adjust their schedule or, if they can’t catch it, to make arrangements to record it.

LiveEdu/Livecoding will help you grow your audience, but that can’t be done without you letting us know when. Create and keep a schedule, and we can help send traffic to your channel. Pop in as you feel the urge, and we can’t. If you ever wonder how certain livestreamers seem to get special attention, check their profile and you will probably see a solid schedule.

And we can then feature your streams, and you, on our blog, forums, and social media outlets. No one ever made money by keeping out of sight. With scheduled streams, we can help you get the word out about your services.

How to make it work

There are some simple steps to how you can make scheduling your livestreams work best for you. These fall into two basic categories.

The first is all you. You know when you can be available to stream, so you need to actually set your schedule. Find a set day of the week, or even month, when you expect to make yourself available. Every Tuesday and Friday? Monday afternoons and Wednesday mornings? That’s up to you. Once you get your routine in order, then you can let others know. And then you need to keep to that schedule.

The second is how LiveEdu/Livecoding can help you. There are badges that let viewers see when your next livestream is available. Your splash screen can be updated with the information, as can the schedule in your description. Once all that is done, we can help you grow your audience by featuring your feed elsewhere on the site.

Have any thoughts or questions? Check out the comments section below.