Top Community Growth Tips for 2022
As we start 2022, it’s a good time to have a refresher on the best ways to grow and manage your community to make it thrive this year. The internet is consistently evolving and it’s important to keep on top of everything new happening and to consistently be adjusting to help your community stay on top. So without further ado, here are my top 5 tips for running an online community in 2022.
Refresh Your Community Advertisement
Now is a better time than ever to give your advertisement a refresh. Your advertisement tells new members what your community is about and what it offers. Your advertisement represents you as a community and it’s important for it to be at its best, especially with the New Year as a lot of people are looking for new groups to join for 2022.
During the year , your communities features and discussions may have changed as well and it’s important to list out these changes in your ad. Otherwise your advertisement will be quite out of date compared to what your community is about now. After having run your community for a year longer now, you will be a lot more experienced in marketing your community so a refresh will be beneficial. If you’re looking for a guide on how to make an advertisement, check out our one below.
Employ Social Media Marketing
Social Media is another great way to grow an online community and nowadays it’s very important in ensuring that you have a huge outreach to find new members. Pretty much everyone nowadays has a social media account so targeting your potential members using these platforms is very important.
You should create a Twitter and Instagram account at the least and if you’re looking to go further, a Tiktok and Facebook page to expand your audience. You should aim to post regularly, a few times a week will work for most communities. Don’t forget to also use hashtags to target your audience. You can use a tool such as https://inflact.com/tools/instagram-hashtag-generator for generating hashtags around target keywords.
You may also choose to use a Social Media management tool such as Zoho Social which allows you to schedule posts, view all your analytics and keeps everything organized by keeping all your accounts in the same place. It can even offer you advice as to how you can improve your following and engagement. Don’t buy followers though as that will backfire.
We recently recorded a podcast on how to use social media to advertise your community.
Use Listing Websites
Listing websites are gold when it comes to Discord Servers especially. They’re the search engines of Discord and what people will use when trying to find a new server. Below are some of my favorites.
- Top.gg — https://top.gg
- Discord.Me — https://discord.me
- Disboard — https://disboard.org
- Discord Expert — https://discordexpert.com
These sites collectively receive hundreds of thousands of views each month and rank highly on Google so it’s worth adding your server to them. Make sure you have an awesome advertisement, banner and good keywords when adding your server to these sites in order to rank as high as possible on them. And don’t forget, bump as often as you can as that will tell the site you care about your server and in return, bump your server up their list.
Events, Activity and Engagement
One of your resolutions should be to spend more time with your community. A lot of owners tend to go idle or just focus on growing the community, but it’s important to be present within the community itself and be friendly with the members.
You should try to host an event at least once every two weeks and try to talk within the community on a daily basis. You should also check in with your staff team daily to see how things are going and if there are any issues among them.
Be Unique
This is a tip if you’re looking to start a new community, you need to have a unique idea. There is no point in copying someone else’s idea as they already have the market and it is going to be incredibly hard to challenge them. Below are some of the most overused ideas:
- General Gaming Server
- General Community Server
- General Roleplay Server
See how they all have general in them? Your server needs to have a specific topic, within a specific type. If you want to start a roleplaying server, it can’t just be generic. It needs to have a real purpose and background behind it that hasn’t been used before.
If you already have a server I don’t suggest changing its core theme as that can be a community killer.
Bonus: Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is the most effective way at growing an online community. Although a lot of communities cannot afford paid advertising, organic reach can only get you so far and paid advertising allows you to expand your reach to people who may have never seen your community before. It’s important to have a set budget when spending so you don’t go overboard.
You should spend 5%-12% of your income on advertising and marketing to give you a ballpark.
Check out our Premium Services at AYS: https://aysdiscord.com. You can also shoot us an email at hello@ays.gg if you have questions or are looking for a custom plan.
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Thanks for checking out this article. I hope you enjoyed it and took away a tip or two for your community. Don’t forget to follow us over on Twitter for the latest growth advice: https://twitter.com/aysserver and check out our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/promote
