Lessons that we've learned in tripling our Discord growth in 4 days (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we dove deep into the raw data of our 4-day Discord marketing campaign. We explored the numbers, the reach, and the engagement of our discord server. But the real gold lies not just in the data points, but in the invaluable lessons learned along the way.

This is where the rubber meets the road, where we dissect the human element of discord community building and uncover the strategies that truly move the needle.

The Power of Presence: Mods and Core Team Make All the Difference on the discord servers

One of the most significant takeaways from this campaign was the undeniable impact of having active moderators and a present core team on our discord server. This manifested in two key ways:

1. Fostering Genuine Connections: A significant portion of our discord users engaged in multiple conversations with both our mods and other users, a testament to the welcoming and engaging environment fostered by our mods. People connect with other community members, and having friendly, approachable moderators creates a space where discord users feel comfortable returning and building relationships. Mods also serve a big role in connecting community members with each other, by tagging multiple users in the same conversations.

2. Keeping the Spam at Bay: Let's face it, the internet can be a wild west of spam, especially on Discord servers! Our moderation team, armed with Wick discord bot and manual oversight, effectively tackled a deluge of spam, ensuring a positive experience for our discord server. In additionally, a lot of users would actually DM our mods about spammy DM that they are getting due to being a common community members on our server. Having mods means that we can kick out these users from our discord server swiftly. It also ensures that we can take actions when someone violated our community guidelines.

But the impact of presence goes beyond just moderation. As a founder, actively participating in the discord server created a palpable buzz. People respond to genuine engagement from those at the helm. It fosters trust, encourages participation, and provides invaluable insights into the community's wants and needs. Especially for a more commercial drive project, people really love interacting with founders, partially because it is rare and doesn't happen often on other projects

Key Takeaway: Investing in a strong moderation team and maintaining an active presence within your server are not optional. They are fundamental pillars of building a thriving and engaged community.

First Impressions Matter: You Have Seconds to Capture Attention

We learned a valuable lesson about first impressions: on Discord, you have mere seconds to make a good one. Server discovery processes for most discord members are close to random. Many users join servers based on a fleeting glance or in hopes of discord nitro, often prioritizing a quick join over reading detailed descriptions. Having a clean UI is one of the most important factor in determining leave rate.

In our case, a significant portion of users left our discord server shortly after joining, realizing our server wasn't what they initially perceived. This highlighted the critical importance of a clear and concise discord server identity, instantly conveyed through your server name, icon, and a succinct description. We think it's quite natural for up to even 50% of the users to join and leave (in a web2 marketing campaign), even for a thriving community. Let alone relatively new communities that are just taking early access to the public. It's a good thing because this allows you to get only new members who are slightly interested in your discord community to stay. However, if you are seeing more than 80% leave rate, then as a server owner, you should do some changes.

Key Takeaway: Don't underestimate the power of a strong first impression. Make it crystal clear what your server is about from the get-go, ensuring you attract the right audience and minimize bounce rates.

Battling the Bots: Wick Saves the Day in the Fight Against Spam

The unfortunate reality of discord servers is the constant battle against spam. From shady account sales to get-rich-quick schemes, spammers are relentless. This is a universal problem if you do aggresive marketing on any social media platforms, including bot listing sites. Thankfully, our trusty sidekick, Wick bot, proved invaluable in this fight.

Wick's automated link and tag muting features effectively neutralized a significant portion of spam attempts, allowing our human moderators to focus on fostering genuine interactions.

The rest of the 2% of spam is around people asking other people for money or offering a much more sophisticated Ponzi scheme via direct messages. Either way, it is hard for users to fall victims right away and our moderators usually catch them very quickly.

Key Takeaway: Don't let spam overrun your community. Implement robust moderation tools like Wick bot to automate spam control and maintain a positive and welcoming environment.

The Human Connection: Building Relationships Over Pushing Products

Initially, our goal was to leverage the campaign to promote our Discord bot. However, we quickly realized that building genuine connections on our discord server was far more impactful.

By simply engaging in conversations, understanding our members' interests, and sharing experiences, we fostered a sense of camaraderie and belonging, hallmarks of a vibrant community. This organic approach led to more meaningful interactions and a deeper understanding of our target audience. If you are able to provide users with a fun time and get community engaged, users will come and revisit you often. Eventually, they will learn more about your product as they get to know more about the community. Reversely, pushing a product too early might get potential members to leave. Even on Discord in your own server, no one likes outright hard sells.

Key Takeaway: While promoting your product or service is important, prioritize building genuine relationships with your new users within your community. People are more receptive to offerings when they feel valued and understood.

Web3 vs. Web2: Navigating Different Monetization Landscapes

The economics of community building differ significantly between Web3 and Web2 spaces. In web3, because of the token launch, most communities are able to successfully monetize in a relatively short period of time.

For web2 communities, things look quite different, even for the most popular discord server. While we did get a lot of new members and smaller community server owners via our bot listing site, our campaign also highlighted the need to explore various revenue models within Communityone and identify sustainable paths to profitability within the context of our target audience and market (independent communities).

Key Takeaway: Understand the unique monetization landscape of your chosen niche. Experiment with different models and prioritize sustainable growth over quick wins.

Looking Ahead: Refining Our Approach for Future Campaigns

This campaign provided invaluable insights that will shape our future Discord marketing endeavors. We'll focus on:

• Crystallizing our server/brand identity: To stand out fro many servers, we will ensure our server name, icon, and description clearly communicate our value proposition to potential members. We are now a discord server for anyone who has questions about Discord. However, this new group of people made us realize that maybe we can just do a fun discord server for people to make friends with other members.
• Prioritizing community engagement: Continuing to foster genuine connections between new members and build relationships within our server. Now that we have all these new users, our goal is to continue engaging with them and overtime, converting them to more of our bot users.
• Experimenting with revenue models: Identifying sustainable monetization strategies for our target market.

This campaign was more than just a marketing exercise; it was a crash course in discord community building, highlighting the power of genuine connection, strategic moderation, and a deep understanding of your target audience. As we move forward, we carry these lessons with us, constantly refining our approach to create a thriving and valuable community on Discord.