How to empower women* to use DISCORD
The past weeks were crazy. All over the world #WomenLedProjects ruled the NFT space, but interacting turned out pretty difficult when we left the common social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. This are my learnings in evolving a female Discord community.
THIS WILL HELP INVITING WOMEN* TO DISCORD
Discord is absolutely underrated when it comes to #WomenLedProjects. I heard several times, this platform belongs to men or nerds. It’s to difficult to handle or does not have a welcoming design. But aside the “dark” and complex coding context, Discord offers many options to interact and involve the community easily. Here are some learnings, I’d love to share with you!
1ST.: SEND PERSONAL INVITES
Women* do use Discord, especially the moment they know, what they will find in there. A personal invite with describing the first steps will help. For example:
“Hey Melanie, do you know we run a Discord to share all our learnings and insides with our community? Joining us will help you onboarding the web3 so much faster. All you have to do is:
- Follow the link and create your account. I reccomend to use a pseudonym as name and a grafic profil picture.
- You should also do a verification for your E-Mail and/or phone number. This will make joining easier.
- Join our Discord and read carefully how to pass the verification-bot, so we’ll know you are human. In our case, klick on the green check mark.
Now you are ready to jump in the conversations. Don’t be shy, you are allowed to ask. PS: The first side you will enter is #WELCOME, here you will find an instruction and an overview of our server. love d.”
2ND.: USE AN INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE
It’s all about an inclusive and welcoming language. Create a #Welcome-channel to lead through the project and the Discord.
- What is this Discord and/or project about,
- involve new members directly,
- describe the next steps,
- offer support,
- use emojis,
- guide through the channels
- and most important — call to a first action! This will be an ice breaker in further usage of the Discord offers.
By using a welcome-bot for a landing-pad or personal welcoming side, you will a: recognize new members, b: invite the community to interact with new members and c: it really looks nice and inviting.
3RD.: LISTEN AND REACT
The community will tell you, what they need or what they are missing. We offer a #support-channel where everyone can ask for Discord features they are missing. For example new channels, activities and so on.
4TH.: STRUCTURE IS KEY
Use everything Discord offers to structure your content and conversations. People will search for answers or channels to ask their questions. The better you structure the topics, the easier it will be, the more successful members will feel.
Also think about roles and what members are allowed to do in this channels. We learned, women* do not need any restrictions at all. In all interactive channels they are allowed to post pictures, social media, links, invite to other discords, …
5TH.: MODS AND COMMUNITY MANAGER
The better your community managers aka mods are, the more interactive your community will be. We use simple phrases to welcome new members or just a new day:
- What can we do for you?
- We’d love to welcome you, do you have any questions?
- GM/GN
- On the menu: “DAOs”. Let’s switch to channel #DAO-knowledge to discuss everything you need to know.
- Web3 can be so overwhelming, what did you do for you today?
You will need at least one person to manage all this bot-stuff, all the administration, the settings and codings. This can be learned easily but you do not have to do everything on your own. And we reccomend at least two mods, maybe the founders and/or people from the team. But also reward acitve community members with becoming a mod.
Who are “mods”, these are defined moderator roles.
6TH.: CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT, …
Do not copy paste your content. If people can read it on a social media plattform, they will do it. But always share your content and invite your community for interaction. Ask for a call of action. Thank them, if you used learnings from the discord to write/create something. Open a topic arround your content.
For example: To write this article, I’ve been in intense touch with our wom3n-Discord community. I offered them a lot, asked, listened and created a space, they want to spend their time in. After publishing this article I will share the link and thank them for being this openminded but also ask them, if we need to change something or create new channels.
If I post a topic on Instagram, I always prepare a deep dive for Discord with more insides, links and so on. And I always offer a Q&A or AMA for members only. I also use this method to invite people from other social media platforms becoming active Discord members, because after seeing your face they will put more trust into an ananymous space.
7TH.: NEVER OVERUSE @EVERYONE
You can call the whole channel with using @everyone to gain more awareness for a post or comment. But never ever overuse it to inform people you tweeted five times a day on twitter or who mentioned you in their story. This will make them mute channels or the whole Discord and you will lose the direct connection to them. It will be difficult reinviting them.
It is possible to invite women* to Discord and for sure, I do not want to declare our identity into a binary system of two gender. But after working for inclusion and diversity for over 10 years, I learned that there could be a huge difference in how to involve all people in your project. What I stand for is an inclusive communication, inviting every person to participate. Always ask yourself, what do participates get in exchange for investing their valuable time? How can you support the growth of a community and what do you do to entertain them easily, to increase interactions without being annoying. Sometimes games will work out, sometimes they won’t. The better you know your community, the more people will join. The more members will invite others to your Discord.
Maybe one more thing. Do tell members, their interactions will be rewarded (you can install a level-bot and think about a rewarding system) but do not beg them to do so. You can also make members invite others more subtile by asking: “Who is missing in our Discord?” or something like that. But always treat them on eye-level, your members will recognize when you’re playing tricks.
I hope this was useful for you. If you want to get in touch with me, just follow arround @dajanaeder.eth
