To grow your Discord community, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that promotion is essential. That is to say, promoting your Discord group is vital for people to find you. And join the server. You can achieve that by adding your server to Discord-server lists, posting your server on r/discordservers, and promoting it on social media.
In this article, we’ll explore +10 Discord server ideas that will help you engage your members. And therefore, grow your community!
1. Set a Clear Set of Rules
After starting a Discord server for your online community, one of the first things to do is to set basic guidelines to ensure high-quality conversations. Also, these will help you nurture real engagement within your community.
Otherwise, if the group is full of spam and unrelated discussions, it will probably not be long before you end up with an inactive group.
2. Add Your Server to Discord-Server Lists
The first step to spreading the word about your community is to add your community to Unita’s directory.
Promote Your Discord Community
Another idea is to promote your server in Discord-server lists. This will help users to search for particular servers based on their interests, allowing them to find yours! Some of the most popular lists are top.gg/servers, disboard.org, discords.com, discord.st, and discord.me/servers.
3. Promote Your Server on Social Media
Another good way to grow your community is to promote your server on social media. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are great platforms where you can share your server’s link. And therefore, build an engaged community. You can also add the server’s link in your bio. Or in your videos’ descriptions on platforms such as YouTube.
4. Post Your Server on r/discordservers
Another way to promote your Discord server is to share it in Reddit’s Discord server directory. It’s called r/discordservers. This subreddit is really popular and it has over 115,000 members. However, to share your Discord server on Reddit, you’ll need to have an account.
5. Be Active in Your Community
For your community to grow, it’s fundamental to listen to your audience. For instance, you can achieve that by facilitating channels in your Discord server for members to express their thoughts. In addition, you can read their reviews, comments, and experiences.
Audience-building 101:
— Jessie 🟣 Building The Creator Academy (@jessievbreugel) May 9, 2022
👉 Understand what you're about
👉 Position yourself accordingly
👉 Be strategic about your audience
👉 Create engaging content
👉 Validate your product ideas
👉 Harvest your audience
👉 Launch your product
👉 Earn online
Did I miss anything?
Also, while you as a community builder might be really active behind the scenes, it’s essential to interact with other members. Therefore, you can’t just propose an activity and wait for others to participate without any incentive!
On the contrary, community managers need to lead the conversation to promote genuine interest. After all, if you offer value, your people will organically want to be part of the community.
6. Customize Your Server
Customizing your server is a must to create the best possible experience for your members. By doing so, you can build a friendly community that serves as a safe space for users where they can discuss a specific topic.
To customize the server, you’ll have to go to “Server Settings”. Also, it’s worth going through the options one by one and deciding what you want to modify from Discord’s defaults.
One of the benefits of having a community server is that you’ll have access to extra customization options, like a Welcome Screen. This screen will appear to new users when they join the server. And its purpose is to tell them a little about the server and what channels they can use to get started.
You could also add some custom emojis to your server to make it more personalized. The free version allows you to add up to 50 static emojis. To add more emojis and also animated GIFs, you’ll need to upgrade!
7. Upgrade to Paid Boosts
Free customization options are good. But if you want to have a lot more customization power, you’ll need access to paid boosts. And the Nitro version of Discord!
On the one hand, boosts unlock extra features for your server. And the features add up with a higher number of boosts. Each boost starts at $4.99 per month. What’s interesting about boosts is that anyone can purchase them for your server. If members love your community, they can boost it. And get perks for everyone!
On the other hand, Nitro is the paid version of Discord. It unlocks not only server features but also perks for your personal Discord account. It costs $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month. There’s also a cheaper version (Classic Nitro) with fewer features.
8. Offer Incentives
Benefits and incentives include exclusive content, learning resources, and even mentorships and workshops.
You could also try to partner with complementary businesses and other communities that can offer valuable deals to your members. These types of exclusive deals work great both to attract new members and retain existing ones. They also allow you to incentivize people by offering something valuable to them that’s more expensive or unavailable for non-members.
9. Send a Weekly Newsletter
Another great idea to grow your Discord server is to send your actual and potential users a weekly newsletter with that week’s events. That will keep them updated on what’s going on in the group. And work as a reminder for them to check in!
10. Cultivate Community Habits
This is a strategy most communities use, as connecting with like-minded people is one of the main reasons why people join online groups. So hosting events might be a sure bet in order to cultivate community habits.
Communities usually organize virtual or hybrid events such as webinars, AMAs, or interviews with experts. Additionally, you could explore some in-person options. Such as regular local chapters and breakfasts/dinners.
11. Open a Channel for Users to Give You Feedback
A universal piece of advice in the community-building ecosystem is “Listen to your audience”.
To do so, you have to facilitate channels for them to express their thoughts. And read their reviews, comments, and experiences. Your users’ feedback will help you both learn more about what they like, and create content based on that. So to listen to them, you could open a “Feedback Channel” on your Discord server for your members.
12. Open a ‘Networking Room’
Apart from seeking advice, resources, and support, when joining a community, one of the main goals is to connect and network with people from your niche. That’s why opening a “Networking Room” in your Discord server is a good idea to engage your users and attract new members, organically growing your community.
13. Add Bots to Your Discord Server
Not only bots can make your life easier as a Discord server admin, but they can also help your members be more engaged. Bots perform different functions automatically. In addition, you can add them to your server to help you moderate the community. Or simply to make it more unique.
But before adding the bots, you need to find fun bots you’d like to add. To find bots, you can visit directories like Carbonitex or do a quick search on GitHub. There are many free bots available you can choose from!
14. Add Moderators to Your Community
Through a clear set of rules and guidelines, moderators will make sure that the community stays chaos-free. Making it a safe and friendly space for everyone. Also, having a well-chosen moderator will help your community be more ordered. Therefore, you’ll attract new members to your Discord server.
Also, moderators should offer the Discord server’s users helpful rule explanations, tips, and advice.
15. Use Analytics!
A big part of improving user engagement strategy is using analytics and key performance indicators to track success and prove the value of your work. In this case, to analyze your strategy you can use your members’ feedback, gathering information through community chats, surveys, or interviews.
Last but not least, in order to grow your community, you should find multiple ways to promote your online group and make it popular in your niche.
Therefore, something that will help you get more people to join your online group is to let your potential users know that they can get valuable content and support in your community. Certainly, a good onboarding strategy will provide an incentive for them to join and remain active!
