[FAQ]

I’ve started saving my VODs after my streams on Twitch, but now I have a growing library of these long videos and I’m not sure what to do with them.

What’s a good strategy for managing them in 2025? Should I just leave them on Twitch? Should I be editing them down? Or repurposing them for other platforms? I feel like I’m missing an opportunity to get more value out of my past broadcasts.

[Jeff Bullas]

That is a great point. Letting your VODs just sit there is a massive missed opportunity. A good VOD strategy turns one live stream into a week’s worth of content.

The key is to stop thinking of your VOD as an archive and start seeing it as a raw asset you can mine for valuable content.

First, the most immediate thing you should do is go through your recent VOD on Twitch and use the platform’s built-in “Highlighter” tool. Pull out the best 5 to 10 minute segments and publish them as standalone Highlight videos. This makes it easier for your community to catch the best parts without having to scrub through hours of footage.

Second, and this is non-negotiable for any serious creator, you must download your full VOD before it expires and is deleted by Twitch. Do not rely on the platform to store your work for you. Once you have that master file, you have full control.

Third, the most powerful strategy is to repurpose the content for YouTube. You can do a light edit to clean up the beginning and end and post the full VOD, or, more effectively, you can edit it down into a tighter, more focused long-form YouTube video. This gives your content a permanent home and exposes it to a massive new audience through search.

Fourth, you have to mine that VOD for short-form video clips. Go through the recording and find every single funny moment, great play, or insightful tip. Cut each one into a 30 to 60 second vertical video, burn in large, easy-to-read captions, and you now have a week’s worth of content to post on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. This is your primary discovery engine for attracting new viewers.

Finally, you can make a strategic choice to unpublish the full VOD on Twitch after a week or two. Some creators do this to funnel viewers towards the more polished, edited version on their YouTube channel.

The strategy is a content funnel: use Highlights on Twitch for your core audience, create polished long-form videos for your YouTube library, and use short-form clips everywhere else to attract new people to the top of your funnel. Never let a good stream die as just a VOD.

Cheers,

Jeff

[Author]

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