5 Tips for Teens Building a Discord Community
Discord may have started off as a way for many in the gaming community to talk to each other while gaming, but it has evolved into a very fruitful marketing tool in recent times, particularly among smart teens.
Many of us who have felt the loss of physical interaction since early 2020 have turned to Discord for solace. The creators of this platform started off with the aim of not just creating a chat platform, but to go a bit beyond that and host communities. There are thousands of great communities teenagers can benefit from on Discord today.
Long story short — if you’re an individual, brand or even a group of friends—this is your place to start in your teens.
Remember that unlike other social media platforms, Discord isn’t as prone to commercialism. To truly find success here, one must shed the layer of commercialism and actually interact with other teenagers. Not unlike how it is when one makes friends for the first time!
1. Setting up a server
Creating a server itself is not very hard at all but it helps if there is a purpose to it. Before you start, know with sincere clarity what your server is centered around. From fandoms, sports, interesting topics or just a place for you to hang out with your friends.
Furthermore, if you’ve already established yourself across other platforms like Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr, you can create a server here to get to know your audience better and get some hard-hitting feedback from fellow teens.
The kinds of channels you create, the types of bots you use and ultimately the insights you generate all revolve around the purpose you started with. But, there are some unspoken commonalities followed across all types of servers, and they are:
- An announcements channel exclusively for important updates and information
- An admin/moderator exclusive channel.
- A rules and guidelines channel outlining the ‘DOs and DON’Ts’ of your community
- Don’t spam your server invites in other servers or spaces
- And of course, Discord has its own set of community guidelines, so make sure to look through them!
2. Be slow but sure
Here’s the thing, the features Discord offers are undeniably attractive — but we don’t recommend that teenagers building a brand go all out in the very beginning. As the conversation in your community gradually progresses in newer directions, you can slowly start adding in other features. Like bots.
Bots are a teenager’s best friend on Discord. They’ll do all the work for you and greatly add to the entertainment value. You can even code your bots to do whatever you want them to! Want a bot to randomly add in pepe faces and other memes? Sure you got it. Want a bot to play music from YouTube and SoundCloud? Yup, you can do that too.
Once a rapport has been established with your fellow teens, you can even start handing out awards and use custom emojis to add some extra flair. Other than that you can stream, share, voice chat (and share a whole lot of GIFs).
3. Quality over quantity
Don’t let the numbers fool you. Think of Discord as a party you’re hosting. It’s easy to think ‘the more the merrier’. But then you realise that you need to cater the needs of every single member. So don’t get disappointed if your server doesn’t have a lot of members — teenagers can be fickle folk. You can always get more later but if the quality of the server is compromised or it becomes dormant, things get a lot harder.
4. Community roles
This is one of Discord’s most celebrated features. Using it, you can give a few members selected roles, restrict some from particular channels and add moderators. This ensures that the communication happening in the server is all up to the community standards. Use this feature very carefully!
5. Promotion
Generally, it is advisable not to promote your Discord server unabashedly. The best thing you can actually do to promote your server is to actually make sure that its quality is excellent and consistent. Think of it as your friend group — they won’t put up flyers inviting people to join them, instead they make people organically want to get to know them! In that regard there are some subtle ways in which you can highlight the appeal of your server among other teenagers. A catchy name, a shortened customised invite link, and relevant bots can make all the difference!
All right, you’re all set for the great big world of Discord. Explore, enjoy, and most importantly, have fun!
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