Discord is a pretty awesome yet underrated app. Not many people are aware of its potential in the digital marketing scene yet, and that’s probably because people misconstrue it as purely a gaming app. And while it was established in 2015 for a better sense of community among gamers, it has since expanded to all sorts of people, communities, and businesses.
As a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles, we’re here to tell you why Discord can be a great tool for expanding your brand. Here’s a general overview.
What is Discord?
Discord is an instant messaging and digital distribution VoIP platform available for Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS. Users get a chance to interact one-on-one with other users (direct message), in a tight-knit group (private server), or in a large, open forum (public server).
There are also several modes of communication on Discord. You can send text messages, call people directly, or have a public voice chat where anyone can join in. You can even share your screen so people can see what’s going on on your computer. If you’re managing a community, these features are pretty handy. If you’re a small company, for example, you can use Discord to have an online office. If you’re a business, you can share updates with your customers and give them sneak peeks. Neat, eh?
Who Uses Discord?
According to Discord’s metrics, there are over 150 million monthly active users, 19 million active servers, and 4 billion daily server conversation minutes. Imagine, this is a largely untapped world of people and communities right at your fingertips!
How Much is Discord?
There are free and premium (called Nitro) versions of Discord.
You get access to a lot of Discord’s perks for free, including video and voice chats, public and private servers, bots, and up to 100 servers. The only downside may be the limited bandwidth—you can only upload images and videos under a certain size and can only stream in low-quality.
Nitro, on the other hand, is available for $4.99 or $9.99 monthly. The former gets you more customizable options like animated profile pictures and badges, animated emojis, and higher stream quality. The latter gets you multiple profiles, customizable backgrounds for videos, higher bandwidth (up to 100 MB), highest stream quality, and up to 200 servers.
How Is Discord Useful for Digital Marketing?
Community Management
What makes Discord different from other social media apps like Facebook and Slack is its user role feature. This is a special, personalized role that you can assign users with or your customers can sign up for upon joining your server. It allows you to tag only certain people.
For example, suppose your brand is all about providing vegetarian recipes. In that case, your user roles could be “gluten-free,” “meat substitutes,” “foreign-inspired cuisine,” and other concepts your users might be interested in. So, whenever you post a new gluten-free recipe, only the people interested in these kinds of recipes will be tagged. This is much preferable to Facebook or Slack, where everyone gets tagged, even if they aren’t interested.
User roles also give people access to certain channels. Let’s say your brand differentiates between regular customers and VIP customers who get early access to new releases or special products. You can create a private channel for VIP users that your regular customers can’t see.
And speaking of channels, you can totally separate your brand into different categories. Different strokes for different folks, right? If your gluten-free customers aren’t interested in reading about meat substitutes or foreign-inspired cuisine, then they can just hide those channels and continue hanging out with other gluten-free foodies. You can’t expect your customers to have all the same interests, after all, so consider having multiple channels as having multiple safe spaces for your customers.
And the best part is, you don’t have to manage your community alone. There are a ton of bots on Discord that can make community engagement a lot easier for you. Some of the cool tasks these bots can do are setting reminders, standardizing time zones, banning words and phrases, playing music, hosting games, using the dictionary, and plenty of others.
Events and Live Streams
Aside from the enhanced sense of community, Discord is also a great place to live stream and host events.
The app has pretty cool individualized video and audio settings. You can have different volumes for different people, mute (so they can’t talk) and deafen (so they can’t hear) people easily, transfer or kick people out of a voice chat, etc. You can also pick who gets to see the event and what they get to see from your screen or camera. Compared to other communication platforms, you definitely have a lot more control and moderation.
Additionally, Discord is a networking goldmine. You can be a part of multiple servers relating to your brand. Here, you can generate new leads or talk to fellow professionals in the industry. It’s like connecting with a whole network of people from the safety and comfort of your own home!
Conclusion
Discord is a really powerful and versatile networking tool. It lets you interact with your customers and helps expand your brand’s reach conveniently. We highly recommend downloading the app here and exploring just how well it could fit into your digital marketing strategy!