Discord has 140M monthly active users (MUAs), and the average user spends about five hours on the platform, according to Backlinko.
When compared to user activity on other popular social platforms, Discord’s statistics are nothing to write home about. For this reason, many influencers ignore Discord — which is a mistake.
Rather than focusing on sitewide statistics, influencers should be focusing on Discord’s individual features. These features allow you to create your own community based on your own content that can be bustling with activity 24/7. Such a community allows you numerous benefits — and in some cases, it can even result in a new stream of revenue.
Benefits of Discord for Influencers
Discover servers are a fancy name for chat rooms. Anyone can create a Discord server for any topic they please. In the case of influencers, the topic of the Discord server is most likely you. When followers join your Discord server, they can talk about you, your content and anything that’s relevant to those two topics.
When you think of a chat room, you likely think of chaos. Consider the Twitch chat for a streamer who has 1,000 (or even 100) viewers. Most of the time, it’s hectic. You’ll find it nearly impossible to reply to someone else, let alone hold an extended conversation with that person.
To get around this problem, each Discord server has channels. Channels are subtopics within your Discord server. If conversations are spread out across multiple channels, it’s far easier for followers to have meaningful interactions with one another. Of course, compared to other content sources, Discord is still a little crazy — but that’s part of the appeal. Users always have the option of messaging one another directly for more intimate conversations.
Channels are broken up into three categories — text, voice, and video.
- Text channels allow for text and images only, similar to a traditional chat room.
- Voice channels function similarly to real-time podcasts. Just press the voice chat icon and say what’s on your mind — anyone who’s tuned into the channel will hear you.
- Video channels allow for group video chats, similar to Zoom.
Overall, Discord is a fairly robust platform. Certain social platforms contain some of Discord’s features, but very few combine all of them together in the way that Discord does to promote thriving and active real-time communities.
Setting Up Your Influencer Discord Server
First things first — create your server. Once you’re set up, verify your server just like you would on any other social platform.
Next, create your channels. At the start, your community will be quite small, which means you don’t want to create too many channels. Each channel should be somewhat active.
From there, add moderation tools to make sure your server functions smoothly, even when you’re not looking at it and moderating it yourself. There are two ways to accomplish this:
Add a Moderation Bot
A bot, such as MEE6 can send welcome messages, automatically assign user roles, and set criteria for unwanted content. For example, if you are a family-focused influencer, you likely don’t want users cussing on your channel. If a swear word is detected, a bot like MEE6 can automatically warn or kick the user from the channel. Using bots helps you create an active atmosphere within your channel while keeping things clean at the same time.
Add Individual Human Moderators
Bots are good, but bad actors know how to circumvent them to post unwanted content. Getting a few moderators from different time zones to help out is essential as your server grows. It’s the same as on Twitch — all big streamers have at least one moderator active while they’re streaming. The good news is that dedicated followers are sometimes willing to volunteer as moderators free of charge.
At this point, your Discord server is set up and ready for action.
Harnessing Discord to Connect With Fans
To populate your Discord server, promote it across your accounts on other social media platforms. We recommend plugging it directly within your content at least once. Also, be sure to include links to it in the bios of your social media profiles and the descriptions of content releases, such as YouTube videos.
Users will start to join. Suddenly, you’ve created a brand new avenue to promote your content. Imagine you release a new YouTube video. On Discord, you can make an announcement telling fans about the video. With this approach, you guarantee a higher number of eyeballs on everything you post, leading to more engagement and exposure across the board.
Discord channels shouldn’t be purely promotional, though — take the opportunity to interact with fans directly as well. Pop into your channel to converse in a general sense. Followers are more interested in an influencer’s channel if they see the star of the show is participating. Direct participation increases the value of your community and makes it more likely that followers will check in to see what’s new.
Discord Monetization Features and Ideas
Aside from using the platform to increase your interaction levels on other social networks, you have two ways to make money on Discord directly as well:
Chat Commands
Let’s say you’re a gaming influencer. Through your moderation bot, you may add a chat command such as !chair. When a user types !chair into the chatbox, a link to your gaming chair on Amazon appears. If you’re a member of Amazon Associates or the Amazon Influencer Program, you earn a commission when a user clicks that link and makes a purchase.
The Discord Partner Program
Currently, Discord does not offer any direct monetization features for partners. However, it’s safe to say that if it were to implement some sort of ad monetization model in the future, partners would be the first to access it. In the meantime, becoming a partner will grant you a few small benefits, such as better bitrate on your voice channels and a custom vanity URL for your server. Acceptance is based on server activity, so apply to the Discord Partner Program after you’ve built a thriving community, not right when you create your server.
Discord isn’t the same as other social platforms. Its influencer appeal revolves around its community-focused approach. Create a channel, promote it to your existing followers, and watch it grow. As long as you can take the time to properly set up and maintain your server, there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.
