Viewers who have something to do stay. Here are twenty-one options, ordered by effort.
Short answer
Give viewers something to do by offering a decision, a guess or a claim every few minutes — voting on what happens next, guessing an answer, claiming a side, or competing on a leaderboard all convert passive watchers into chatters.
Free, no setup (do these tonight)
These cost nothing and account for most of the gap between a quiet stream and a busy one.
- Answer a one-word question
- Vote between two options you then honour
- Guess a number — closest wins
- Rate something out of ten
- Name the next thing you should try
- Predict what happens in the next five minutes
- Type their country or city
- Choose your next topic
Light structure
A little preparation makes participation repeatable rather than accidental.
- Compete in a recurring segment they know is coming
- Set a challenge for you to attempt
- Vote in a native platform poll at a decision point
- Defend a running record or streak
- Submit questions between streams
- Nominate a champion from earlier in the stream
Overlay-level activities
These run whether or not you are talking, which is what makes them scale.
- Play a reveal quiz for points
- Claim a country or team in a battle
- Vote on decisions in an ongoing simulation
- Race to answer before the timer ends
- Climb a live leaderboard
- Chase a daily record set earlier
- Keep playing through your break
The test of a good activity: if you stopped talking for sixty seconds, would viewers still have something to do? If not, the interactivity is you — and it does not scale.
What to avoid
Anything that pulls viewers out of chat loses most of the people it might have engaged.
External sites, sign-ups, apps and mid-round Discord links all reduce participation, however good the activity behind them is.