How to Use Discord to Build Community and Get New Ideas From Your Customers

Most organization proprietors know  Discord only as a platform where gamers connect and communicate. But to brothers Eddie, Brian, and Eric Nam, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based mostly podcast startup Dive Studios, it can be a platform for significant interactions with their buyers. 

The trio have a symbiotic connection with their audience, claims Eric Nam, who serves as inventive director of the organization. “From a business standpoint, building a community of actually interested, passionate persons is the most beneficial detail that we have.”

Discord’s structure is identical to Slack’s: After developing a free server, you can open up issue-specific channels, or chat rooms, to guide the dialogue. People also have the capability to have interaction in particular person or team voice and video calls. To get begun, you just obtain the Discord application, make an account, and identify your server. You can then invite people to join right or share an invite hyperlink with a greater audience.

Companies together with StockX, AllSaints, and Chipotle have either opened a server or done advertising strategies utilizing the system. The Nam brothers designed their server instantly on founding Dive Studios in 2019. Two many years afterwards they created State of mind, a subscription-primarily based application that makes it possible for well known musicians in American and Korean media to share personal tales in brief, podcast-model episodes, and added Discord channels for user conversations. Mindset lifted an $8.7 million seed spherical last calendar year, and the server has grown to virtually 44,000 users.

This is how Eric, 33, Eddie, 31, and Brian Nam, 25, have taken benefit of Discord’s capabilities and rising popularity to establish their company and engage their viewers, and what they say it will take to operate a effective Discord server.

A Discord server would not moderate itself: It wants frequent notice, especially if you want to foster significant discussions and establish a powerful community. Attitude has a staff of moderators that regulate offensive remarks as well as a channel that specifies rules these as not sharing any particular info and only using channels as supposed. Brian Nam, the CEO, claims he spends at the very least an hour a day on the server himself, web hosting live brainstorming classes and responding to client remarks. He’ll generally inquire consumers a problem that prompts them to respond with a own tale, or to explore new features of the app they’d like to see or types they believe will need advancement.

Handling the server also suggests engaging in behaviors that may possibly not yield tangible benefits correct away, these types of as acquiring to know a several individual people nicely. “At the conclusion of the day, these are the people today who are supporting [the business], so give them the appropriate treatment and interest,” Brian suggests. “It is really infectious and they start out to invite their pals into the Discord.”

“Discord puts the social again in social media,” suggests Carlos Gil, the writer of The Conclusion of Marketing: Humanizing Your Model in the Age of Social Media and AI. “There are men and women to talk to, and it just feels communal, a thing which is been misplaced in social media over the previous ten years.”

Discord’s origin as a gaming platform has resulted in a design that’s much more fun and playful than a system like Slack. The application has a neon color plan and is populated by whimsical and colourful people, which, in accordance to Brian, appeals to the youthful prospects whom Frame of mind needs to arrive at. It also features more profile personalization solutions than Slack, allows users build a social media-like id on the app, and allows them to have certain roles in just a server. These roles can resemble typical positions such as moderator and ambassador, but they can also be additional imaginative: Mindset, for case in point, has a purpose labeled daebak, or “magnificent” in Korean, which is presented to buyers who have shown unique enthusiasm for State of mind on Discord. 

According to Brian, building attractive and useful channels is essential to holding the server applicable to clients. Amid other people, Frame of mind has a storytelling chat and a live episode listening channel. “It truly is remarkably communicative,” he says. “Discord’s enabled us to definitely fully grasp how folks are perceiving and chatting about material, but also speaking about the app and the expertise all round.” 

Establishing a devoted comments channel in Discord is vital, states Brian, so that constructive feedback and new concepts never get misplaced. Listening to other real-time discussions on precise topics also enables founders to quickly come across out what buyers are hunting for and to collaborate with them on new suggestions. “You can use it as a discussion board or as a soundboard,” says Gil. “All of the methodology of acquiring feed-back from your consumers can be changed by employing Discord.”

The Nams, for instance, found out via Discord that clients were being discussing approaches to donate subscriptions to the Way of thinking app to customers who couldn’t find the money for the $34.99 once-a-year payment. They joined the initiative and founded a “scholarship system” that matches men and women searching to donate to persons who need to have a donation in just a few weeks, it gained over 1,500 donations. The founders go more by putting the donor and beneficiary in make contact with with every other, facilitating associations and further involvement with the model. 

“You see people today seriously diving in, like paragraphs of suggestions,” states Eddie Nam, VP of Talent of Mentality. “They just actually want this to do well and do improved.”