Preparing your Community for Christmas
Christmas is fast approaching and it’s time to start preparing your community for the big day. Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays in the world and is an awesome time to hang out with friends and family to celebrate. It’s also an awesome time to celebrate your community and how far you have come in the year.
Below we’ve put together a whole range of ideas for your community to get you sorted out for Christmas to keep your community engaged.
Events
Christmas is an awesome time to get together with your community and hold some events. Events also allow your community to celebrate the achievements of the year, and it’s always fun to be able to plan an event. It doesn’t matter if you don’t run them regularly, now’s your chance to take your community to the next level.
Check out some of the following suggestions that are from our free events ideas book.
- Christmas GFX Competition (Best Christmas design based on a communities theme.)
- Secret Santa (Each person is assigned someone to make a gift who they give it to in DMs on a particular date.)
- Christmas Tree Competition (Create a channel where members can post their Christmas Trees and other members in the community can vote on the best trees.
- Carol Sing-Along (Get in a VC and bash out a carol together as a community)
- Christmas Movie Night (Watch a popular movie such as the Polar Express in a voice channel)
- Find more at https://m.ays.gg/events-ebook
You can also have prizes with events to encourage members to participate such as the items from the giveaways below.
Giveaways
Giveaways are also a great way to give back to your community and to show your appreciation, and the best thing is, you don’t have to provide all the gifts yourself. Feel free to ask your staff and members to chip into the giveaway items for the community.
When running a giveaway it’s important to set some ground rules. Members should only be able to win one giveaway and they should actually have a use for an item won, not to just give it away again as that takes it away from someone who really wants it.
You can use a bot like Dyno or Giveaway Bot to create and manage the giveaways. Below are some cool giveaway ideas for your community.
Paid:
- Nitro
- Nitro Classic
- Reddit Premium
- Amazon Giftcard
- Steam Giftcard
- Merchandise
Free:
- Special Role with colour
- Own voice chat
- Own channel
- Premium Role
Charity Stream
A charity stream is also another amazing event that we encourage you start doing. A charity stream is essentially a stream you host with members of your community where you game or talk and you raise money for a specific cause. We hold one every year at AYS so stay tuned for updates on that.
You can use a platform such as https://tiltify.com/ to plan and host the giveaway while using a platform such as Twitch or YouTube to stream. They also have some awesome stream overlays so you can show how much you’ve raised and who has donated.
It is usually a good idea to have your community vote each year on what the charity should be. In the past, we’ve donated to the Red Cross and Save the Children but there are thousands to choose from, pick one that is close to your heart. Don’t forget to also set a goal of how much you want to raise, doesn’t matter if you don’t meet it but it can help encourage people. You can also offer perks for when people donate such as a cool donator role.
Announcements/Updates
At the end of the year, it’s always a good idea to have some big news planned for the new year, whether that’s a new feature coming to the community, or a fresh new look. You should aim to have something new and engaging for your members to keep the party going.
Designs
As the festive season rolls around, it may be a good idea to switch to some festive branding. For us, that means updating our logos and bot icons such as AYS.
You may also wish to add Christmas emotes to your community such as in the channel name on Discord. If you need some help feel free to check out our design services: https://dev.ays.gg
Year in Review
A year in review is also another amazing idea for your community. It is essentially a blog article or video that shows all of the amazing things from that year and sums the year up into just a few minutes, highlighting the best moments. You may have a few graphics showing your growth and some memes from over the year if you’re into that kind of stuff. You can check out our one here: https://medium.com/advertise-your-server/year-in-review-2020-5980507c85fe
With all that being said, it’s up to you what you choose to do for Christmas, keep it special, keep it alive. That’s the Christmas spirit.
