Imagine a place where you can gather like-minded people together to have a good time. That’s one of the core uses of Discord! People love to build communities about interests from airplanes to zoology, and to do that, they need to find members.
There are a variety of ways to bring members to your Discord server, including community partnerships, funneling users from social media sites such as Twitch or Reddit, and migrating members from a community on another platform to Discord! You may even be able to enable Server Discovery to let people find your community from within Discord’s own server listing system.
Of course, there are nearly an unlimited number of ways to grow your community, and these options continue to evolve along with Discord as a platform. However creative you may be in growing your server, it’s important that you value not just the growth of your server’s member count, but also the experience of the users who join your server.
Етично разрастване на общността
Ethical community growth is the concept of attracting users to your community in a way that does not violate the trust users have with Discord, third parties, and your community. Furthermore, this involves attempting to target people who will genuinely be interested in your community’s purpose and want to stay long-term. In other words, you could say that ethical community growth focuses on member quality over member quantity while providing a foundation for members to feel safe and welcome in your server.
Ethical community growth ties deeply into the way you advertise your server. Getting the word out about your community and convincing others to join is a key component in getting more members. However, in one’s passion to grow your community as fast as possible, it’s easy to overlook the ethics component of advertising.
In practice, this ethical framework must also extend to both the advertisements you as a community owner host for other communities, and the advertisements that you utilize yourself to grow your target community. This article will help you consider how to ethically handle community growth via advertisement by ensuring that it is:
- Рекламата е релевантна за членовете на общността ти
- Рекламата не смущава преживяването на потребителя в общността
- Позволява на потребителя да реагира на рекламата без предоставяне на външни стимули
Meeting all of these criteria will contribute to a higher proportion of targeted users joining, participating, and staying in your community. Doing so also contributes to a more pleasant and useful Discord experience for users compared to other advertising methods that may not meet all the above criteria.
Relevancy
When asking to advertise your community in another server, or when considering allowing a community to advertise in your own, a primary consideration should be how relevant the target community is to the members of the host community. For example, a server about cooking advertising in a server about football is not as likely to attract new members compared to an esports server advertising in a League of Legends server.
Това също така би формирало и лоши впечатления у потребителите. Колкото по-нерелевантна е дадена реклама за членовете на сървъра домакин, толкова по-объркани ще са те, след като я видят, а това ще създаде усещане за неловкост, което пък не би допринесло за разрастването на общността.
Прекъсвания
It’s logical to think that if you want a lot of people to see an advertisement for your server that you should have the host server mention @everyone, and that is, in fact, true! However, this is something that should be done very sparingly. Although users are understanding of @everyone mentions for important server or topical updates, they will be less likely to feel good about being pinged to join another Discord server, even if it is relevant. Therefore, using @everyone pings or direct messages to ask people to join another Discord server for a non-urgent reason is highly discouraged.
Ако например управляваш сървър, посветен на игри, и създаваш отделен регионален сървър на общността за същата игра, може би ще е добра идея да пинг-неш всеки (@everyone), за да знаят хората за този пряко свързан сървър. Но дори и при това положение, ако пинг-неш всеки (@everyone), за да провери сървър, свързан с напълно различна игра, би било доста по-дразнещо. Когато показваш уважение към времето на потребителите в платформата и се стремиш да оставиш у тях добри впечатления, следва да избягваш причиняването на смущения и така да поддържаш доверието им в общността.
Another tempting way to grow a server is to have direct messages sent to users to have them join your server. However, invading someone's direct messages for an advertisement is extremely disruptive to a user’s experience. Mass DMing users may even cause you to be reported for spam, and no one wants that. Instead, you should only send a direct message advertisement to someone when they have explicitly consented to receive a direct message about advertising. Don’t interpret someone joining your server as consenting to receive direct messages from everyone and anyone there, especially for advertising purposes.
Обективно действие
Finally, it is important that users join your community completely of their own free will. Users that feel the need to join to receive some sort of perk on the host server, your own server, or some additional consideration (e.g., free Discord Nitro) are going to be less likely to stay engaged in your server compared to those joining purely of their own interest. Thus, allowing users to make the choice to take action based purely on the advertising message and explanation is vital to keeping your community healthy and its growth sustainable.
Тук можеш да научиш повече за използването на аналитични данни от сървъра, за да поддържаш интереса на общността си.
Примери за разрастване
Now that we’ve discussed the general principles behind ethical community growth, here are some examples of ways to grow your community directly on Discord, or to help someone else grow theirs!
Server Discovery: One of the easiest and most ethical ways to advertise on Discord is through Server Discovery! By utilizing a compelling description of your server and applying focused keywords directly related to your community’s topic, you can allow interested users to seek you out simply by searching related words on Discord! They’ll be able to browse your server a bit before joining as well, so they can determine in advance whether or not it’s a space they are interested in. This truly gives control of a user’s experience to the user themselves while also allowing you to showcase your community’s merits to the world. Similarly, you can also host public events via stage channels to entice others to check out your community and see what your server is about!
Партньорски канали: канал, в който хората да могат да разглеждат свързани сървъри в свободното си време, е чудесен начин да помогнеш на хората от общността си да намерят други сървъри, които може би ги интересуват. От ключова важност е да разбереш интересите на потребителите си, за да знаеш какви сървъри да включиш в подобен канал. Можеш да предоставиш и подробно описание за темата на всеки сървър и защо потребителите биха искали да се присъединят, стига да избягваш да предлагаш външни предимства при присъединяване, като например включване в томбола за подаръци или предоставяне на други бонуси. Това е гаранция, че потребителите се присъединяват към сървъра от откровен интерес.
Also be sure to avoid intrusive methods of drawing attention to the channel such as mentioning @everyone or random individual users in the channel. This will ensure that having such a channel does not disrupt your community, and members can engage with the advertising on their own terms.
Пинг за включване: Ключово за установяването на етична рекламна практика е потребителите да дадат съгласие да получават реклами. Най-добре това става, като разрешиш самоназначаващи се роли, които могат да се споменават, когато има нова общност, която да споделиш с потребителите си и която може да представлява интерес за тях. Позволявайки на потребителите да се включат по желание в тези споменавания (напр. ако им позволиш да заявят роля от бот), ще избегнеш прекъсванията за потребителите и по този начин ще запазиш етично поведение.
A dedicated channel for such pings would further allow for the messages not to disrupt the experience of other members while also allowing for easier backreading in the future. Just remember not to overly incentivize people to join these new servers and let them come to their own, unbiased decision based on the description and purpose of the community.
Няколко думи за финал
Human creativity is unbound, and the list of ways to grow your community within Discord itself here is not exhaustive. When developing new ways to grow your community, it is absolutely vital that you start from the ethical framework listed here to try new methods instead of picking a method and attempting to justify it into this framework. If you find yourself attempting to justify a new method of community growth with “Well technically this is ok because…,” you should strongly reconsider using that method. In order to be ethical in growing your community, you also have to consider ethics first, not as an afterthought.
Въпреки, че е по-трудно да започнеш от дадена етична рамка и да стигнеш до нов метод за разрастване, вместо да вземеш метод, който искаш да използваш, и след това да се чудиш как да го представиш като етичен, усилието си заслужава. Веднага ще имаш по-голям шанс да намериш начин да разраснеш общността си, така че потребителите ти да останат с по-добри впечатления, а в дългосрочен план – да изградиш здрава общност.
