Discord has grown to become one of the most used community-building platforms on the internet. That’s probably because of its various features that let you perform audio and video calls, have dedicated group chats within the community, along with it’s easy accessibility and low-cost. These are features that help you with managing Discord communities.
Not only this, but Discord chats can be integrated with a lot of different other apps out there, including our community-building platform at Nas.io.
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While you have most likely heard of Discord before stumbling across this post, what actually makes a successful community on Discord? What are some best practices that you should know before you dive into building a community of your own?
Beginning a Discord Community
When it comes to building a Discord community, you first have to identify the exact the goal of your community. Who is your target USP (user persona), and what kind of experience are they looking for? To help you identify this, recognize gaps in the market and include this in your community to create a unique experience. What do you have to teach, and what could the user get out of this group that would make it worth joining?
Once you’ve identified your reasoning and goal behind your Discord community, your next step is to actually turn your Discord server into a community. All you have to do is go into your Server Settings > Community. Once you do this, all of your new community features and controls will be activated – and you’re ready to start building!
Once you activate your community, the safety feature will also be activated – this is important to help make sure everyone feels like they’re respected, included, and safe in the group. There will also be 6 different features that will show up, including your welcome screen (which you can customize to include your main learning points).
You’ll then create your chats or ”channels”, which each offer a different purpose, and contain different content. When building out your different channels, remember to create ones that will give your members the easiest, most optimal experience in your community.
Now, let’s dive into 6 best practices to keep in mind when managing your Discord Community.
Create an experience
When you run your Discord community, make sure you’re focusing on actually creating an experience for your viewers. You don’t want to just create the community and let it run by itself. Make sure that you, or your moderators, are actually engaging with your members, posting valuable insight often, and creating engaging content for the community.
Have an organized system for how you’re going to reply and engage with members. This way, you’re making sure that you’re showing members you’re there to support them, and you have a genuine interest in helping them.
Give members a space to share their own ideas
While the group is ultimately run by you, you want to make sure you’re fostering engagement and idea-sharing between community members as well. To do this, make sure you have a channel specifically dedicated to sharing ideas.
Let this be a place where you allow your users to share their creativity and ideas. Make sure that there is room for them to become creators and makers in the group as well, rather than just participants. This channel will be a dedicated space for them to speak their mind, be heard, share ideas and collaborate with other members.
After all, if you are the only one posting in your community chats – there’s no real point in holding a community in the first place. It wouldn’t be much different from members following you on your social media accounts. But engagement between peers is what makes a solid community experience, and it’s why people will join.
Create a safe, supportive environment
Part of creating a safe and supportive environment for your Discord community is picking the right moderators to help run your channels. Even Discord recommends that when picking moderators to help you run channels, a best practice is to choose and nominate some of your most active community members who embody your mission and share the same goals as you.
It can actually be more beneficial than looking to your outside friends, or hiring moderators who claim to be experienced – because having inside members as moderators reinforces the strength and benefit of your community. Your other members will recognize these moderators, already know them, and feel more connected and trusting towards the community.
This way you are also sure to get people who are invested in the goal of the community, rather than outsourcing other moderators who might have experience, but aren’t necessarily invested in the community as much as you are. By having engaged members as your moderators, you can be sure they will have the best interest of your community at heart. Any issues are going to be caught and highlighted because the moderator also wants to have a positive experience in the group.
Another way to enforce safety, keep morale high and support your members to the max is by establishing a set of rules and guidelines upfront that everyone in the community must adhere to in order to participate. As outlined in this post by a creator, David Kimball (who ran a 10,000 person Discord chat), your first text chat should contain all of your rules and guidelines. This way, everyone can see and have access to them at all times. Include what behavior isn’t allowed, and what is – the specificity of the terms are entirely up to you.
Be mindful of your tagging
While high engagement from you (as the creator of the community) is highly important to the community’s success, beware of how much you tag everyone in the group when you are making an announcement.
David Kimball also highlighted that it can easily start annoying group members when you consistently make announcements or post something on a chat using the “@everyone” tag. This quickly becomes a nuisance and people will stop taking your announcements as seriously if you consistently use it. He also recommends removing the ability for members to use tags like “@everyone” in your permission server settings.
This way, you can reserve this as a tool when you really want to get everyone’s attention.
Provide incentive and rewards for your members
A key way to get people to remain active and engaged in your group is by having a rewards system in place. Plan to provide discounts, benefits and other unique rewards for your members as a way to provide incentive – especially to those members who are the most active in your community chats.
Giving discounts to your own personal online classes, early access or free access to products and perks is a great way to help people stay interested in being part of your community. When you begin your Discord chat, make sure you have a plan to create tangible value whether it be the incentives listed above, or providing guides, printables, extra content – whatever makes sense for your industry – on a regular basis. Not only is this incentive, but it is also a nice way to show your appreciation and your dedication to the people in your community.
After all, you wouldn’t be here without them.
Hold events and experiences
The last best practice for managing your Discord community is to hold regular events for your members. The subject and nature of these events or gatherings don’t always have to be directly related to the topic of your Discord community, it could simply be something fun or enjoyable that will help your community connect with one another on a deeper level.
Some common events people hold are karaoke nights, game nights, quiz nights – and a popular one is AMA’s (ask me anything) sessions.
Not only will holding events help build morale and community between members and yourself, but it’s also a way to identify the personalities in your community. Doing this could help you identify any possible moderators you might want to recruit in the future – and on the other hand, help you pinpoint any problematic or disruptive personalities that aren’t contributing to the community.
And finally, there’s one extra bonus step – but also one of the most important things to remember when you’re moderating a Discord community:
Have dedicated interest
This is key. When you begin a Discord group, if you want it to be successful and grow – you can’t only be half-in. You have to be all-in.
Make sure you have a genuine interest in your goal and the topic your community surrounds. Otherwise, people aren’t going to be engaged enough to stick around. After all, everyone who joins your Discord group is significantly passionate about engaging with this community of people, and growing in this particular area of interest. And you have to be too.
Especially with the large amounts of groups out there already, if members get an inkling that you’re not in this for the betterment of the space or the people – then you can be sure they’ll leave your group, and find another community to join.
Dedication and undeniable passion as a moderator and host is the only thing that is going to build a successful community on Discord in 2022.
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