We're really enjoying Twitch & Youtube this week.

I know we have posted a lot about this already, but I wanted to dedicate an entire blog to it today after our first week of using it every day. This blog is also a way for me to record our past and have notes to myself. So I need to do that today.

Note: Even if you don't care about Twitch, just give this a read so you can hopefully understand why it's so important to us now.

We kicked off the stream with the Nocturnal Freetail Stamp Party last Saturday, and then spent this week on Twitch working on the new run of Bullets for wholesale and custom stamping orders.

So why are we so excited for the new Stamp Machine Stream?

• Guy gets to shine again!
  • He's been working hard keeping the warehouse operations going the last few years. It's been a lot of fun to introduce his larger-than-life personality to new fans of Mint. What you see on the stream is just Guy being Guy. I've been really impressed at how comfortable he is just being himself. Although he is a trained actor, so I shouldn't really be surprised.
• New ways to interact with Stores
  • We've had a lot of stores popping into the Twitch chat. That includes Infinite, Loot, Another Round, and a few others. This is a great place for customers and our favorite brands to all talk together about what they like even if it isn't Mint.
  • We had a pretty organic moment with Loot Bags on the stream yesterday. They were in the chat while Guy was stamping their job. Fans got to interact with Guy and Loot while they worked on making some amazing color combos for the new Bullets.
    • You can watch the highlight from the Loot stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/mintdiscs (on repeat for the weekend)
• Information about Artists & How Stamping works
  • We've also had a few artists coming by to see what we are up to. Skulboy and Bradford Leiby were both on yesterdays stream as well.
  • Just like with stores, we think it will be fun to do work with the artists live and in person while printing their designs. 
• More Content & Honestly....Streaming can make $$$
  • We've been looking for a way to interact with fans in our own way. Things that weren't just ace races and events. With Twitch and Youtube live we have the ability to make highlights and clips and push those immediately to every social media platform. This is huge for a small company like Mint as we have a pretty limited budget for marketing and content. 
  • These platforms will eventually pay us. That allows us to hire editors, refine the content and much more. In an age where just selling discs isn't good enough, this just seemed to logical to help cover any gaps if we have them in the future.
• Fans & Brands can make content
  • Literally anyone can take our Youtube and Twitch streams and go make content with it. You can make clips out of anything on those streams. 
  • How many other brands are giving you that much access to make your own content? It's really cool and I hope it's something we see other brands try out as a way to interact with everyone, not just fans.

At the end of the day, we can't lose the organic feel.

The daily stream is nice but it's a bonus for now. For the most part all we are doing is turning on the cameras while Guy does some of his normal daily work. 

However, we also saw our best viewer turnout during the late night stream last Wednesday. Guy stamped about 1000 discs in a few hours. I had a lot of fun just watching him do his thing. This is also an opportunity for us.

It's pretty apparent after one week that we'll go two ways with Twitch: Raw weekday content and weekly night time specials.

The weekday streams will be what they are. Guy can interact with Fans and Brands. There is next to no structure. It is meant to be organic and raw.

For night time specials we can do things like Team Takeovers, Public Stamp Parties, and Store or Artist takeovers.

I did a blog the other week with a focus on supporting the stores that support Mint more(view it here, Blog #27). I had Twitch in the back of my head when I was writing this as a way to accomplish some of what I was talking about in that blog. We had a feeling it would be a great way to show our renewed commitment to these brands and also the fans. 

That's all for today. Gonna enjoy the rest of my Saturday.

Until tomorrow.