Questions to Ask on Live Stream
Prompts a streamer can put to chat, starting with openers that even lurkers will answer and ending with ones that only work once a stream has warmed up, with notes on how each lands in a fast chat and a quiet one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where's everyone watching from tonight?
Why ask it
The reliable first question, because it takes one word and gets lurkers typing for the first time. Keep it at city or country level and say so, since a chat full of precise locations is a problem you created.
Is this your first one of these, or have you been here before?
Why ask it
Tells you in ten seconds whether to explain what you are doing or carry on from last week. It also gives regulars a reason to welcome newcomers, which does more for a chat than anything you say yourself.
What are you doing while you've got this on?
Why ask it
Most viewers are cooking, driving, folding laundry, or working, and knowing that changes how much you should rely on what is on screen. Answers here are also the most honest picture you will get of why people keep a stream open.
What time is it where you are?
Why ask it
Cheap to answer and it shows you who is up at four in the morning, which is worth acknowledging out loud. If half the chat is in a different part of the day from you, that should change your start time rather than your energy.
What's everyone eating or drinking right now?
Why ask it
A filler question in the best sense: it fills a gap while you fix something, and nobody needs to think. Expect emotes and photos, and expect it to work better an hour in than at the start.
What made you click on this today?
Why ask it
The answers are about your title, thumbnail, or whoever recommended you, which is information you cannot get any other way. If most people say the notification, your discovery is coming from existing followers rather than anything new.
What should we start with?
Why ask it
Offering the choice buys you attention for the next half hour, because chat wants to see whether the thing they picked happens. Give two or three named options: an open invitation gets you fifty suggestions and no decision.
What should I put on next?
Why ask it
Music requests are the most answered question in any chat, and also the one most likely to get you muted on the replay. Say up front whether the recording matters, and treat 'anything' as permission to pick your own.
What's the last thing you searched for on your phone?
Why ask it
The self-editing is the joke, and people volunteer surprisingly domestic answers. It gets replies from viewers who never join a conversation about the actual topic, which is exactly what you want mid-stream.
What's a small win you had today?
Why ask it
Deliberately small, because asking about achievements gets nothing from people having an ordinary day. Answers will be laundry, an email sent, a walk taken, and reading a few of those out loud sets a kinder tone than a compliment would.
What did I miss since the last stream?
Why ask it
Turns the regulars into the people who catch you up, which rewards them for coming back. Answers double as a list of what your community actually pays attention to, rather than what you assume they do.
What's something you learned this week?
Why ask it
Slower, so ask it during a stretch where you can read the chat properly rather than mid-task. The good answers are specific and often unrelated to your topic, and following one for two minutes is usually better content than continuing your plan.
If you're working alongside the stream, what are you trying to finish tonight?
Why ask it
The co-working question, and in a study or craft stream it is the one that builds returning viewers. It also surfaces who is here for company rather than for you, which is worth knowing before you change format.
What's the one thing you want me to explain properly tonight?
Why ask it
Gets you a request list ranked by demand instead of guessing at the level of the room. If the same request appears three times, do it there and then rather than promising a future stream, because half the chat will not be back for it.
What's a question about this you've felt too embarrassed to ask?
Why ask it
Naming the embarrassment is what unlocks it, and the answers are usually basic questions that a lot of silent viewers share. Answer the first one carefully and without a joke, because how you handle it decides whether anyone asks a second.
What's the worst advice you've been given about this?
Why ask it
Complaining is easier than praising, so this fills a quiet chat quickly, and the answers tell you which myths are still circulating. It can turn sour if people start naming other creators, so redirect to the advice rather than the source.
For anyone still up: what's keeping you awake?
Why ask it
Late streams have a different chat, quieter and more candid, and this acknowledges it. Some answers will be heavier than the rest of the night, so decide in advance how you want to respond rather than reading them out cold.
Is anyone stuck on something the rest of us could help with?
Why ask it
Hands the stream to chat for a few minutes and often produces the most useful stretch of the night. Cap it at one or two problems, because an unbounded version turns into everyone talking past each other.
What should I do differently in these streams?
Why ask it
You will get contradictory answers and one worth acting on, and the contradiction is itself useful information about who is watching. Do not defend anything in the moment: replying with reasons is how you stop getting honest answers.
What should we do next week?
Why ask it
Ending with this gives people a stake in coming back and gives you a title before you go offline. Ask for votes on options rather than ideas if you actually intend to follow through, because an ignored suggestion is remembered.
Putting questions to a live chat
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Asking so chat can answer
- Ask one question at a time and say it twice, a minute apart. Viewers arrive constantly and most of them missed the first version.
- Put the question on screen if you can, as a text overlay or a pinned message. In a fast chat a spoken question scrolls out of existence in seconds.
- Keep answers to a few words. Anything that needs a paragraph gets typed by nobody, because people are on phones with one hand free.
- Say the answer format out loud: 'city and country' or 'one word'. Without it you get a mixture that is hard to read back.
- Wait longer than feels comfortable. There is a delay of several seconds between you asking and the first replies landing, and talking over that gap kills the response.
A quiet chat is not a hostile one
Most viewers never type, and a stream with thirty viewers and four talkers is normal rather than a failure. If a question gets nothing, the usual causes are that it needed too much typing, it assumed knowledge newcomers do not have, or you asked it while doing something visually busy. Fall back to a one-word question, answer it yourself first, and read out the replies you do get by name. Reading names is what converts a lurker into a talker, more than any prompt on this list.
Big chat, small chat
Under about twenty talkers
You can respond to nearly everyone, so use the slower questions and let people finish a thought. Silence is fine and does not need filling with another question; leaving a gap is usually what gets the shy viewer to type.
Over a few hundred
Individual answers become unreadable, so switch to countable questions: polls, this or that, one-word answers. Ask your moderators to pick out three or four replies for you instead of trying to read the scroll yourself.
Either way
Read something back within a minute of asking. If nothing you said gets acknowledged, the chat learns that answering is pointless and the next question does worse.
What goes wrong
- Anything that invites precise personal detail: exact address, school, workplace, what they look like. A live chat plus a public recording is a bad place for it, and you are responsible for having asked.
- Questions about politics or religion asked casually. It is not that the topic is forbidden, it is that a live chat gives you no way to moderate the resulting argument while also streaming.
- Asking about someone's problems and then moving on. If you invite an honest answer, budget a minute to respond to it before switching tasks.
- Repeating the same three prompts every stream. Regulars stop answering, and their silence reads to newcomers as a dead chat.
- Forgetting the recording exists. What chat types stays in the replay, so anything sensitive is better handled after you go offline.