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It’s not enough to just set up a community on Discord. You need to grow it.
Why?
First, a Discord community is not likely to be discovered by potential new members unless it is actively promoted. Second, a Discord community that is not growing is likely to be seen as inactive or uninteresting, which could lead to people leaving. Finally, a stagnant Discord community is not likely to be able to support itself in the long term.
Luckily, there are at least several ways to promote and expand your community:
Let’s start with a tip that’s not about growth per se, but about making people stay on your server once they join it—
The way you organize your Discord server is vital as you don’t want to confuse your users. So, keep your channel names and server structure nice and clean.
It’s a good idea to put the most relevant channels up top, less relevant chatting channels in the middle, and the least relevant ones somewhere at the bottom.
Also, avoid duplicating channel topics. It’s better to merge them into one, rather than have two similar channels functioning in parallel.
In a nutshell, keep your structure under control. For example, C# Inn—a community for C# programmers—has a structure that’s pretty easy to grasp even for a newcomer.
If you want your server to be visible, it’s a good idea to put it on a publicly accessible server listing, such as:
Of course, there are thousands of servers to choose from and before your community gains popularity, you’ll need to put some effort into it.
When growing your Discord server it’s crucial to focus on giving value to your community members. If you give them great value in the form of exclusive offers, insider information, giveaways, etc., your community will grow healthily and stay engaged.
Remember—
The more value you give, the more your community will give back.
Only active and engaged users matter, so don’t worry if your community isn’t growing exponentially from the very start.
Focus on value and the rest will follow.
If you run a channel on YouTube or Twitch (or anywhere else) related to your Discord server’s topic, use it to grow your Discord community. Such cross-channel promotion can help you reach your potential audience more quickly and efficiently.
As simple as that.
To keep your members engaged, consider hosting events regularly. Again, if you focus on offering them quality and value, they’ll stay interested in the server.
Here are a couple of ideas:
Try some of these, and see what works for you.
Tip: There are some tools that will help you run a community effectively. For example, you can explore Discord bots, and automate some of the repetitive tasks or make your server more fun.
Let’s be honest—
You’re not a lonely island. Chances are, there are already other servers that might be operating in related niches. Why not partner up with them?
You can create partnership channels where you put up an ad for your partner’s server. They can do the same for you on their server. That’s how it works. This way communities have a better chance to keep growing.
Mind you, though, not all partnerships will be available to you from day one. Some server admins will only welcome established communities.
Also, resist the temptation to partner up with anybody or too many servers at once. Stay focused and choose your partners wisely—think about what kind of value you can offer, and what the other communities can offer you in return.
There are countless ways to grow your Discord server. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of inspiration, creativity, and looking at your specific situation.
Have a look at some more tips and tricks, and see if they’re something you can make use of:
Again—
There’s no universal way that will always work. Try out several options, see what brings the best results and focus your efforts on it.
Tip: Remember, if your community is nearing 250K users, you need to reach out to Discord to get the green light for your server to grow past that number.
You may find many of the tactics and strategies we’ve already covered useful for maintaining and moderating your Discord community.
Here are some more that may be particularly important for Discord community moderators:
Use the @everyone and @here tags sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. These tags are great for getting people's attention, but if used too often, they can become annoying and people will start to tune them out.
Make use of Discord's various text formatting options to make your messages more eye-catching and engaging. For example, you can use bold, italics, and underlining to make important words stand out.
Use Discord's built-in emoji reactions to add some fun and personality to your messages. People love to use emojis to express themselves, so this is a great way to make your messages more engaging.
Use Discord's Voice Channels feature to host regular voice chat sessions with your community. This is a great way to keep people involved and engaged, as it allows them to interact with you and each other in a more personal way.
Make use of Discord's various bots to add some fun and functionality to your server. There are bots available for just about everything, from playing music to hosting games and quizzes. Adding some bots to your server can really help to keep people engaged and involved.
When you receive feedback, take it to heart and try to see things from the other person's perspective. Then, work on making changes that will improve the Discord community experience for everyone. Remember that feedback is essential for growth, so be thankful for it and use it to make your community better.
In order to post regular updates and announcements in your Discord server, you will need to use a bot. There are many different bots that you can use for this purpose, but we recommend using a bot called Announcer.
Announcer is a free and easy-to-use bot that will allow you to post announcements on your Discord server. To get started, simply invite the Announcer bot to your server. Once the bot is on your server, you can use the "!announce" command to post an announcement.
It is a great way to keep your Discord server organized and up-to-date.
There are many ways to actively moderate your Discord server to keep out spam and toxicity. Here are a few tips:
Here are a couple of things to consider:
And finally—
Don’t become a memeable Discord moderator.
Discord Mods are a series of memes that make fun of the typical moderator. These memes often portray the moderator as an unkempt person exhibiting predatory behavior. The trend started with the Discord Child Grooming memes and has continued with the "Keep Memes out of #general" and "Hey, Kitten" memes.
For a more in-depth look at Discord Mods and their historical background, read this article.
Remember, building an engaged community is a demanding task. To learn more about how to do it effectively and efficiently, read Community Engagement Strategies, Metrics & Examples
There are a variety of Discord community examples out there, each with its own unique purpose. Here are just a few of the many Discord communities that can be found online:
The Programmer's Hangout is a Discord community for programmers and other technology professionals. The community has channels for discussion of programming, technology, and general interest topics. The community also has a number of bots and services to help members with their programming and technology needs. Programmer's Hangout has roughly 108,000 members.
The SpeakJS Discord community is a place for people who are interested in learning and using the Javascript programming language. You can hang out with more than 26,000 other members.
The Axion Discord community is a group of people who are passionate about the Axion cryptocurrency. They use the Discord platform to chat about all things related to Axion, including its price, mining, and trading. The Axion Crypto Community consists of over 36,000 Discord members.
The Innersloth Discord community is a group of people who play the game Among Us and discuss strategy and tips. The community brings together more than 397,000 members.
The Discord community for EVE Online is a place for players of the game to come together and chat. It is a place to discuss strategies, share tips and tricks, and just generally chat about the game. The community is one of many dedicated to the game, and consists of over 11,000 members.
Let’s address the elephant in the room—
Why choose Discord over Slack or Discourse when building a community? After all, all three seem equally capable of handling this.
Well, there are at least several reasons.
For one thing, Discord provides a more immersive experience with rich media support, making it ideal for communities that thrive on multimedia.
Additionally, Discord offers features such as server and client voice chat, which are not available on Slack.
Next, Discord integrates with a number of popular gaming platforms and services, making it easier to connect with friends and find new communities.
And finally, in contrast to Discourse, Discord is not an online forum based community, which to younger generations is far more appealing.
To learn more about the pros and cons of starting a community on different platforms, check out: Slack vs Discord vs Discourse – where to build your community?
Discord is one of the best platforms to build a community. To build and engaged one you need to:
