Coming up with ideas of questions to ask your audience during a livestream should be one of the easiest things in the world, but so often your mind just goes blank.
Like, I can’t think of a single question.
Luckily, we’ve got 35 questions you can ask on any type of live stream to engage your audience and add a little fun to your stream.
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Audience Engagement = More Views
Did you know that livestreaming platforms like YouTube Live and Twitch reward streamers that have an active chat? When people are commenting it’s a strong signal that they are engaged and enjoying what you streaming about.
Why does this help increase views?
Streaming platforms are in the business of attention. The more attention they can command the more ads they can show, and the more money they can make.
For streaming platforms like Twitch, if an audience is engaged, then they tend to spend more bits, which, you guessed it, earns the platform more money.
So getting people to engage is vital to your success, because the streaming platforms will reward you.
Use AI to come up with questions and interactions
If you're still having a hard time coming up with questions, try our free AI interactions generator that creates questions and interactions based on your topic. In a single click you'll get polls, word clouds, maps. and other visualizations pre-populated with relevant questions.
Don’t make your audience think
The key to getting your audience to engage with and answer your questions is to not make your audience think.
In scientific terms you have high cognitive load questions and low cognitive load questions.
This basically means how long does it take someone to think of an answer.
Let’s see an example.
Imagine I asked you:
- What change would you make to your desk to increase your productivity?
Now imagine I asked you:
- Name an item that is on your desk right now
The first question may have quickened your heartbeat because it’s a question that you might need to think about.
The second question would be easy to answer because you could look at your desk and type a response in the chat.
When you’re running a livestream, cadence and energy are key. The quicker you can get people responding in the chat, the more people will respond and feel like the stream is worth their attention.
The problem with other audience engagement tools
There are plenty of audience engagement tools out there that let you run polls, word clouds, and quizzes.
The problem is that in order to participate, you need to send your audience to a third-party platform, either on their phone or on a different browser tab.
This means all that engagement is going to the audience engagement tool, and not in your chat stream. The streaming platform can’t see this engagement so it doesn’t promote your stream to other users because it thinks it’s not very engaging.
The way around this is to let your audience answer your questions in the chat stream and use a tool like StreamAlive to automatically visualize the chat on your screen.
Let’s take a look at how this might look.
5 Location-based questions to ask on a live stream
Location-based questions are great to ask on a live stream because they are so easy to answer. With StreamAlive’s Magic Maps feature you can visualize the locations in real-time on a map!
1. Where are you joining from?
Literally the one question every streamer asks when their stream begins: Where are you joining us from? Now this question can be re-imagined with locations plotted on a map. As soon as your audience sees that their answers are being plotted, everyone else will want to get in on the game as well!
2. What is your favorite city?
Barcelona? Singapore? Rome? New York? Everyone has a favorite city, with StreamAlive you can discover which cities are the most popular.
3. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Add a bit of wanderlust to your livestream, finding out which cities or countries people would love to live in.
4. Which cities have you visited?
Turn the map in to a riot of location pins as people tell you where in the world they have traveled to.
5. Where did you last go on vacation?
What’s the most popular destination for your audience to relax? Discover some new places to visit or use the answers to talk more about destinations off the beaten track.
5 Favorite-based questions
Everyone has a favorite something, whether it’s a color, animal, city, band, movie and so on. Ask your audience what their favorite thing or person is and watch the answers come pouring in.
With StreamAlive, you can visualize the results in a word cloud that grows as more comments are added.
6. What’s your favorite color?
An easy question to ask, but people still love to tell you about their favorite color! And when the word cloud appears on your screen you’ll get everyone wanting to tell you.
7. What’s your favorite animal?
You’ll get a wide variety of animals, but which will win? Dog or cat?
8. What is your favorite sport?
If crashed on the couch watching Netflix is a sport, then I might be the world champion. But what about your audience? Are they a sporty bunch? You could modify this question to what is your favorite sport to watch?
9. What’s your favorite TV show of all time?
Is your audience into drama or comedy? Horror or reality TV? Find out and visualize the responses in a colorful word cloud power by StreamAlive.
10. What is your favorite band or musician?
This question should generate a range of interesting results, and you might even discover new bands as a result. The chat is sure to be set on fire as people discover others who like the same band or musician as them.
5 poll-based questions
Polls are some of the easiest questions to ask because your audience doesn’t have to think - the answers are all up on the screen! And by using StreamAlive’s live polls, the audience votes in the chat, increasing your engagement and boosting the visibility of your stream!
11. Which gaming platform do you prefer?
Few things are as tribal as gaming platforms. Sit back and watch people argue in the chat about which is the best way to game and watch your views climb as your livestream is promoted by the platform.
12. What’s your favorite season?
Will there be any love for winter? Or will summer rule it. Ask a follow up question: why? And visualize it as a Talking Tiles interaction.
13. What type of movies do you enjoy?
Is your audience full of Marvel fans or drama fans? Don’t forget to ask the follow-up question: What is your favorite movie - and visualize it as a word cloud.
14. How do you normally travel around?
Obviously if your audience is American then everyone’s going to say car. But for Europeans and other nations you might get a range of answers.
15. What’s your favorite cuisine?
A great way to spark some conversation in the chat. And don’t forget to ask a follow-up question: What’s your favorite restaurant? Tell people to share it in the chat!
5 long-form questions
If your audience is more on the thoughtful side, you could consider asking questions that require a more detailed response. This could slow down the pace of your livestream, but if you have hundreds of people tuned in, then you’ll get plenty of responses.
Using StreamAlive’s Talking Tiles feature, you can visualize the responses in a Tetris-inspired cascade of tiles.
16. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
A little bit of whimsical thinking. How many will say they want to fly? You could also ask a follow-up question: What’s the worst superpower you could have?
17. If you could travel to any moment in history, where would you go?
There are so many iconic moments in history, but which would you like to visit if you had the chance? A follow-up question might be: Who would you like to meet from history? And visualize the responses as a word cloud.
18. What is the greatest achievement that humans have made?
You could also spin this as “funny answers only”. It would be interesting to see how many people say ‘wifi’!
19. If you could have one wish right now, what would it be?
On one hand, you might want to say world peace, but on the other, you might want to say that you’d like to wake up with a million dollars in your bank account every day. Either one works.
20. What’s your favorite way to chill out?
Opening up the potential for some NSFW responses, but hey, it’ll make for an interesting livestream that’s sure to get your viewer numbers up!
5 Emoji-inspired questions
Use the power of emojis to let your audience communicate how they’re thinking or feeling.
StreamAlive’s Emoji’s Everywhere creates a word cloud from the emojis posted in the chat to create a unique visualization.
21. Use an emoji to describe how you’re feeling today
Emojis are purpose built to convey emotion, so use it to create an explosion of emojis on your screen.
22. Use an emoji to describe how you feel about Donald Trump
It doesn’t have to be about the Donald, but you’ll get to see what people think without resorting to name-calling or insults!
23. Use an emoji to describe how you feel about spiders
It could be spiders, it could be insects, it could even be koalas. Any animal that elicits a strong positive or negative response is a great candidate for visualizing the chat as an emoji word cloud.
24. Use an emoji to describe your favorite animal
It might not all be about cats and dogs. There’s an emoji for virtually every animal, except maybe the axolotl.
25. Use an emoji to describe how you felt about the ending of Game of Thrones
People have very strong feelings and opinions about TV shows, especially the ones that they think have let them down. While the endings of Game of Thrones and Lost might be a distant memory, many will hold on to how bad they were and be happy to let you know.
5 deep thinking questions
If you have a really engaged audience with a loyal following and they want to explore the deeper things in life, then opt for some deep-thinking questions. Questions that make them stop and think about their response and share the wisdom of the crowd.
It’s not for every livestreamer, but if you have the right audience, these kinds of questions are a great way to get to know everyone on a deeper level.
StreamAlive’s Transient Thoughts displays each user’s chat message as a thought bubble on the screen, so everyone’s thoughts can be heard and seen.
26. How do you take care of your mental health?
A super-important question, and everyone has their own coping mechanisms. Share ideas and strategies with your peers.
27. What advice would you give your younger self?
This is a deep question, although if it was on LinkedIn the answers might be quite different!
28. How do you deal with hangovers?
OK, not all long-form questions have to be deep. But this might be a great way to crowdsource ideas from the audience if you’re feeling particularly delicate on your livestream!
29. What’s the secret to happiness?
The ultimate deep question, maybe after “what’s the meaning of life?”. Crowdsource answers and see how everyone copes with the pressures of modern life. This question makes for some great follow-on questions like: What makes you happy? And visualize it as a Talking Tiles interaction.
30. What was the last good deed you did?
How altruistic is your audience? Do they do good things just to do the right thing? Find out who’s been helping old people cross the roads or who returned a lost wallet to the police station.
5 Rating-poll questions
Everyone loves to give their review on something. The rating poll from StreamAlive lets users vote between 1 and 5 to give their feedback on a question.
31. How would you rate the last season of Bridgerton?
You could replace Bridgerton with any recent TV show, depending on your audience.
32. How well is the President or Prime Minister of your country doing at the moment?
Few things get the chat fired up like talking politics. And few people have favorable views of their politicians. Find out what people think of their leaders in this poll.
33. How do you rate Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor?
It doesn’t have to be about DiCaprio, it could be any actor or musician.
34. How would you rate the economy in your country right now?
I don’t think I ever recall a time when the media declared “we are the most economically prosperous we’ve ever been”. We always seem to be lurching from one crisis to another.
35. How would you rate the current Marvel story arc?
People are really passionate about their favorite movies and are happy to let you know what they think. You could replace Marvel with Star Wars, or DC Comics, or Stranger Things, or any other movie property.
Come up with your own livestream questions
These 35 questions are the ones we’ve come up with. They are great questions for a generic audience, but based on the type of content you livestream, you might want to make the questions a bit more specific.
If you love the idea of visualizing the chat like in the animations above, try our new AI which generates interactive presentations for you with all the questions pre-filled. You simple need to connect the question to your livestream and your audience will be able to vote in the chat.
Photo by Stanley Li
