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I need advice on running a Discord server! |
Having trouble getting members? Can't get your server to be active? Not confident with moderation? Here's some small advices on how to revitalize your Discord server! |
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Stop Discord Trust & Safety Abuse! If Discord does not address the situation involving Trust & Safety member breaking their own rules for their personal preference, they deserve the shutdown from the Feds. #ChangeDiscord (Background thread, Newsweek, Forbes)
Running a Discord server is not easy and I've seen most people struggling with it. From my personal experience, here's some advice, I guess.
This guide is WIP and will remain WIP. Suggestions are welcomed at any time.
Revised June 29, 2018.
Before making a Discord server, you should ask yourself these questions:
- What's the purpose of your server, in the most specific way possible? (Possible answer would be "We're enthusiastic in <specific game/topic>".)
- Is it unique? How? (Don't give generic answers like "nice bots" or "helpful staff". You may answer "No" if it's just a straightforward community server or something like that.)
- How will you engage your population (Keep your members) in the future?
There is no correct answer to them, but you should at least be able to answer these questions keep them in mind. If you answered "No" to question 2, you should focus more on question 3.
Personally, I suggest that you should find some people (10 is enough) who have interest or expertise in your field to start the server, so that it'll be easier to find new members as they'll have a reference in what's going on.
Just a community? It's not the end of the world, but that'll be fairly difficult to bring your people up. Easy to maintain, though.
It's not a business of attracting more people: It's more like a business of keeping your population in shape. So, servers need events to give people initiatives.
Let's break them up into 3 types.
You're running a game server? Game tournaments! You're running an art server? Work exchange! You're running an anime server? What about dub challenge?
This type of events highly depends on your server's purpose and also resources available to you. They are highly effective but at the same time consume a lot of your time and effort (Question 3) so you should keep a balance between these events and regular activities.
Minigames (Like Cards Against Humanity, UNO, skribbl.io and Webopoly, surely you'll find more) as well as other small events (Like movie night, karaoke, etc) can be used to keep your members busy. They require less effort than type 1 events, but they won't bring in new members, and there is a limit on how many you can do: Too many minigames can dilute your purpose and annoy members which may lead to losing members.
Giveaways with attractive prizes will surely make existing members happy and bring in new people when used with proper advertisement. However, we all know that attractive prizes, like steam games or gift cards, are costly. So you can't really do them often.
But after all, you can't do events all the time. So there's also...
Chat, obviously! But chat about what? You certainly need responsible staff to start topics and engage in conversations. Members need to feel that...
- You care about them
- They have certain value in the server
- They enjoy staying in your server
- They have things to talk about
Once you know how to keep your population, you should impose measures to increase your member count.
Your advertising slogan/text/description should point out what you have (Purpose and/or Type 1 events) plus some attractive treats (Type 3 events). Try create several versions of it, long ones for listing servers and short ones for listing websites. Though, do keep it short and on point in general. Refer to this AYS article about writing descriptions.
This page lists most places for advertising. Remember to bump your server regularly to keep your server at the top of rankings.
Partnerships are not recommended as the mutual benefit is negligible (~10 members for an average server). Your server can live without partnerships, for that I'm sure.
Three ways.
If you have enthusiastic friends who would help you to get their goal, then surely appointing them is the best choice. But you must be sure! If your friends are rebellious...
Most commonly used method. Let your members explain what they have and what they're able to do. However, lack of objective views can cause missteps in choosing staffs.
Personally, I let my members elect their moderators. This is very objective and my members satisfy. However, without constantly refreshing population, there's hardly a challenge for the elected.
DON'T add a lot of bots, or mention your bots as one of the features of your server anywhere. You should only use bots that you will truly use, or your server can give new members a bad impression. You should also place the bot role lower if you choose to display it.
In most situations, you only need 1 bot to faciliate moderation on phones and have an alternative audit log. You can add some other bots for minigames and advertising.
Ask me here!
- AYS' "5 Ways to Grow Your Discord Server"
- jagrosh's "Tips for creating and growing a new Discord server"
- Tornado's "Discord 101"
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