Raiding is a great way to share the love with other streamers, to meet new friends, to carry the hype to another channel, and So Much More™. To help with the various steps required to make everything work smoothly, here's a quick checklist or step-by-step to out.
- Select a raid target. Are you raiding an old friend? Raiding someone you just found because they're in a notable category? Returning the favour to someone who's raided you in the past? If you're interested, you can use a tool from my channel bot to find streams with similar category, viewership, and tags to your own.
- Snoop your target. (Make sure you're not accidentally revealing too much of that person's stream; be sure to mute the stream so you don't rebroadcast their audio by mistake.) Try to figure out whether they're about to end, or go on break. It's most fun to raid someone who is actually there to receive.
- In your chat, type "/raid targetname" (eg "/raid devicat"), without the quotes. Alternatively, in your Twitch dashboard, go to the "Raid and Host" section, type in the channel name, and click Raid.
- Do you have a raid call? Encourage your community to synchronize on some message that reflects your channel's theme or style. The clipboard is your friend here, as is a channel bot command like "!raid" to suggest some text to your viewers.
- Say your goodbyes and thank-yous, your closer, etc.
- Go to a closing screen for the last 10-15 seconds of the raid. Depending on how much Twitch lag people are on, they won't see or hear you for the last little bit.
- Click "Raid Now" to bring everyone over! Since you had the target's stream open from step 2, you're there too (and you're past any preroll ads that might play).
- IMPORTANT: Stop your streaming software from broadcasting. This is not an automatic part of the /raid command.
- Unmute the stream you're visiting, and have all the fun!
It sounds complicated, but it feels a lot smoother when you're actually doing it. I cannot recommend raiding highly enough, as it's a great way for people to find new friends (your community meets the person you're raiding, and your target's community meets you!), and sharing the love only strengthens it!