Growth Guide: Getting Started with Discord

From the wise words of jagrosh, we’ve brought to you important notes to keep in mind when making a Discord server. Below are the things we’ve found important to note, mostly from his article. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

Should I Make a Server?

Is this something that you are passionate about? Don’t make a server just for the sake of making one. You should be highly interested in the topic and want to improve the community for that topic. You should also be knowledgeable about the topic and able to help newcomers and experienced members alike.

Does this server have one specific topic? If your server is a “generic gaming server” or “generic public server” or “random server” or “memes” or any variation, then it is not going to grow. Frankly, no one is interested in joining a server that doesn’t have a defined topic. If you take a look at the biggest and most-popular servers on Discord, they all have a specific topic, like “Overwatch” or “World of Warcraft Druids” or “Discord API”. If you want your server to become popular, you must pick a specific topic.

Do any other servers for this topic exist? Once you’ve decided on a topic, you need to figure out if a server for that topic already exists. For example, don’t make a server about “League of Legends,” because one already exists. If a server for your topic already exists, you should join the existing server and contribute to the existing community instead of trying to create a new server for the exact same topic! However, it’s possible that there doesn’t exist a server for “League of Legends Demacia Lore,” so that would be a perfectly-fine topic to create a server for. (If you don’t know if a server already exists, see the “Resources” section at the bottom of this document)

Does the topic benefit from having a Discord server? For some topics, there is no benefit to having a Discord server. Discord is great for real-time communication via text and voice. Make sure that the topic is one that can be discussed in these ways.

Do you need to own the server? This is probably the most important question. Obviously, you’re here because you want to set up a server, advertise it, and grow a community. The question is, would you be willing to give ownership and all permissions to someone else if it meant that the community would grow better? If you would not be willing to give ownership to improve the community, you need to stop reading this guide right now and delete the server. Servers aren’t things to “show off” because they are popular; they are communities of real people that want to communicate, and you need to care more about that community than about who “owns” the server itself. This is something you must accept if you want to create a community: that if the community would do better without you, you need to be able to give it up to someone who will perform better.

General Server Advice

Be specific with your server’s aims. Who are you targeting? What users would you like most to join your server, or gain the most use out of it? Some servers are all about coding and programming (often in specific programming languages), other servers provide homework help, others are anime-specific, what’s your server’s aim? It needs to target a certain subset of the population and be clear about its intentions.

That way, you’ll be able to target users who are most suited to your server and would gain a lot of enjoyment out of it. There’s no point in attracting a load of anime fans when your server’s topic doesn’t even deal in the remotest with anime; that means those anime fans aren’t going to be sticking around afterward.

Some server owners are afraid to be specific with their server’s topic, so they create an overly generalized server “for everyone.” While this usually isn’t a major problem, it might mean that it can be difficult to attract users to this new server, since there are so many other servers that serve the same purpose.

Tips:

• Channel Order — Keep the ‘rules’ or ‘info’ channels near the top; remember that when someone first joins the server, they’ll see whatever the first visible channel is (unless the invite they join points somewhere else)!
• Invites — I normally don’t give people the ‘Create Instant Invite’ permission via role, and instead create a manual override allowing it only for the ‘rules’ channel. This means that if someone wants to invite their friend to the server, the friend will see the rules channel first!
• NSFW Channels — A good rule of thumb is: don’t. There is a reason why you might want to create a NSFW channel, and that reason is if the core topic of the server has a NSFW component. For example, some television shows have scenes that might be not appropriate for underage viewers; a NSFW channel would be useful for discussions about these scenes. Don’t make a NSFW channel if it doesn’t relate specifically to the server.

Tips and Tricks

These are just some generic tips that usually correlate with success.

1. Don’t separate the “Owner” in the member sidebar. Usually, a role should only be “displayed separately” or “hoisted” if people need to be able to easily see who is in that role. For example, it’s usually good to hoist “Moderators” so that someone can easily ping them if needed. However, hoisting roles like “Owner” just looks narcisistic.
2. Only have as many moderators as the server needs. It might be tempting to start adding a bunch of moderators as soon as there is some activity, or as soon as the first bad thing happens, but don’t be too quick. Make sure that you completely and fully trust your moderators before adding them, and don’t add too many. Early on, you probably only need one or two mods just to make sure that you have all timezones covered.
3. Do not DM advertise to random people, nor reward people for inviting friends. Unsolicited advertising breaks Discord’s Terms of Service, so if you send random invites, or even have a system that encourages people to do that, you’re breaking the ToS and your server and/or account could be shut down! Follow the rules!
4. Think about why YOU would want to join a server. Don’t follow certain practices or add certain things just because you saw someone else do it, do things because they make your server something you want to be a part of! This is something that so many servers mess up; they add bots or certain channels just because they saw another server with them and not because it actually makes the server more enjoyable.
5. Be careful with Partnerships. For partnering, you’ll want to look for servers that both your community is interested in, and that you think their community would be interested in your server. This way, you’ll both share interests among your members. When creating a partnership, make sure you and the server owner of that server create specific terms for the partnership. You want to know where you both stand in this agreement. What I see a lot, is people who simply go into a server, post their advertisement in a “partners” section, and then never come back to that server (or even leave the server). This method for partnering is almost as ineffective as advertising for 1 day or 2, and expecting hundreds of members to flood your server. I’d suggest working with your server staff, and coming up with a document for terms and conditions for your partnership. Keep in mind, that anything you put in the document, you will have to do as well. Meaning, if you want the server owner to say “hi” at least every week or so in your server, you’ll need to say “hi” in their server every week as well. Create the conditions how you all see fit, and then propose them to your potential partnering server. — If they say no, ask why not. If it seems like a reasonable answer to not partner, consider changing your conditions. This is known as compromise. Keep in mind, they will likely also have conditions for you to meet. — If they say no, and their answer seems unreasonable, do not partner. Stop here, say “Have a wonderful day.” and move on. No need to start fights or arguments over something that likely wasn’t meant to be, and there are plenty of other servers out there. — If they say yes, awesome! Make sure to read through their conditions as well, and you’re on your way to a new partnership!
6. Be a community! A community pretty much is a group of people coming together for a similar cause. Therefore, getting along with those you are surrounded by can be helpful for everyone within the community. Not everyone is a social butterfly, but there are many reasons why you might want to be part of your community. Whatever your reasoning, your server becomes a sense of ‘home’ typically because of the community you’ve created there. Without communities, we would live very isolated lives with minimal to no contact outside of our immediate social circle. Getting outside of our close-knit group, and meeting new people is an essential part of cultivating a self-fulfilled life! It allows us to support one another, interact, share experiences and our modern life struggles. Having this open bond with others is what builds valuable relationships, and gives us a deeper sense of belonging. Communities are also rich in resources. Your strengths may be someone else’s weaknesses and vice versa. With the diversity of skills, common goals can be achieved that much faster! When you think about the community you want to build or be a part of what comes to mind? It’s especially important for members of a community to participate in decisions that impact their well-being so that they can walk away feeling empowered about fulfilling their full potential. This can happen when there are an abundance of people that genuinely care about the wellbeing of others, and seeing a community thrive!(edited)When you go through a rough day, it is always nice to have someone to talk to. Friends come from all walks of life. Therefore, knowing you can come home and have a meaningful conversation with another person helps you cope with any painful situation you may be currently facing. It’s great to know that you can get along with neighbors and enjoy the perks that come with not feeling so alone. Building a strong bond can literally heal you mentally and spiritually. Being able to connect with your members will keep you sane from everyday stressors! Community building is an investment. It takes time and commitment, hard work and you need a strategy in place to nurture these relationships and to grow your community. Your focus should be on the people and the relationships, not on the number of members you have. It’s much better to have a smaller community of people who love what you do, share their ideas, engage in conversation with you and with each other, than to have a large group of people who aren’t really interested in your server at all. When people are engaged, your community will grow organically. Focus on the quality of relationships within your online community rather than on the number of people in it. Bottom line: If you don’t care about your community, they won’t care about you.

What are you waiting for? Go forth and start with your own Discord server!

Citations
Images: Pokémon©
Information: jagrosh