If you read the first article, you are familiar with my belief that Discord is the most underrated Social Media Platform in today’s digital world. Most people think of Discord as a place for gamers. However, in recent years it has been growing in popularity for private gatherings, student communities, and even businesses. Understandably, businesses found Discord to be a useful tool for team collaboration, event hosting, and engaging with their customers but there are even more ways to use Discord for your business.
Today we are going to dive into some of the ways that businesses and creators can use this social media platform in their day-to-day to day.
File Sharing
Discord also has the capability of file sharing on the website. This allows for easy sharing between team members. You can track the progress of a document each time that it is uploaded onto the site. Which can be quite helpful in the event of a technical failure or making comparisons.
(It’s important to note that without boosting the server or having a Nitro subscription, the file upload size is limited.)
Team Collaboration and Project Planning
In the beginning, gaming communities used Discord most frequently to collaborate with their teams. It made sense when they realized Discord could be used for team collaborations and project planning in the professional sector. By utilizing the roles feature, companies can create team channels to restrict who can view and comment within the channel. This is a great way to create areas for team members to collaborate on specific parts of a project. Plus, it can prevent sensitive data from being publicly displayed.
You can also reduce the number of apps your team needs with Discord. For example, your team can say goodbye to Zoom with Discord’s voice and stage channels. By utilizing these unique channels they can video chat, collaborate on Discord’s built-in whiteboard, and even present their screen on the channel.
Community Engagement
One of the primary uses of Discord is for building communities, so of course increasing your community engagement is on the list. Building a server for your community to hang out in increases the chance for you to hear feedback directly from the consumer.
Aside from conversations in channels, you can increase your engagement rates through a variety of different activities. Some examples are:
- Exclusive Giveaways
- Voting or Polls
- Games
- Contests or Competitions
- Engagement Rewards and Leveling
- Server-Based Economy System
There are many ways you can keep your community active and engaged on Discord other than just chatting. Discord bots are a huge help in interacting with your Discord community. Some of my all-time favorite game bots are Snail Racing, Taco Shack, and PixxieBot.
Course Creation
With the privacy and gating features you can implement on Discord, it is a great place for Course creators to host their educational content. With channels and forums, creators can organize their content and community channels with categories, channels, and forums. This allows users to access their content, ask questions, and get support from their community in a streamlined and easy-to-use process.
For creators that offer 1-on-1 mentorship opportunities, creators can create private channels with their mentees. This also works for group projects and collaborations. With the use of forums, your server can host one channel that is designated for users to discuss certain topics or ask questions. This makes it easy for other users to quickly browse to see if a question has been previously asked and answered.
Currently, course creators often create Facebook groups for their course community. These can often be confusing and daunting to navigate. Questions often go unanswered, content is difficult to find, or worse: the same question gets asked every other day. By using a Discord server to host your community, you are creating an instant message style of conversations. This can be seen as more personal or even less daunting to users since you can remain completely anonymous on the platform.
Using a server to host your educational content allows for all of your content and your community to be hosted in one centralized location. This is great for small businesses that are unable to hire a developer to build a community-based website for them and do not have the coding skills to do it themselves.
Support Tickets
Do you sell a product you need to offer a support center for? A Discord server is the perfect location to host your support staff, create a ticketing protocol, provide FAQs, and allow for community feedback for your product. Want to see an example of this in action? Check out any of the support servers for the major Discord Bots.
Virtual Events & Streaming
Directly built into Discord is the ability to create events and receive RSVPs without adding a bot. Community servers have additional channels that allow you to communicate and share your screen with joiners. The stage channel is great for hosting live events like giveaways where one person is presenting and prefers others remain muted. If you want multiple speakers, voice channels are the best option. And don’t worry, if someone forgets to mute their mic, admins can do it for them.
For streamers, Discord has integrations with the major streaming software to allow you to stream your content directly to Discord. Each user can set up their unique hotkeys, overlays, and other basic stream settings from the platform.
Server Subscriptions & Stores
The newest feature that Discord released was adding a monetization feature for creators. On community servers, creators can enable a paywall for some or all of the servers. Want to have different price points for different features? No problem. Their server subscriptions are tiered, allowing you to set the lowest price point to free.
Their server shop was just released last month. Without leaving the platform, users can purchase things like digital products or unique roles and identifiers to use within the server. This feature is especially great for course creators to up-sell the initial purchase.
Chatbot Integration
The last use of Discord for Businesses that I am going to list today is Chat Bots. Many of you may be familiar with the use of chatbots on websites. Oftentimes they are integrated with Telegram, however, Discord also allows for chatbot integration and logging on their platform. With Discord’s mobile app, you can respond to inquiries on your website from anywhere you have an internet connection allowing you to reduce your response time without being stuck at your desk.
Endless Possibilities Available for Businesses.
This article only covers the main uses that businesses use Discord for. There are so many different opportunities available to brands through the use of Discord Bots, that it would be difficult to name them all. I swear if you have a need for your server, there will be a bot to help you with that. If not, I’m sure there is a bot developer out there that would love to help.
If you haven’t already started your brand’s community in Discord, what are you waiting for? Head to their website and get started building your community today! It’s free! Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss the next article in my Discord Tips & Tricks for Businesses and Brands series!
Have a Discord-related question? Email me or add me as a friend on the platform: reddington2995
Don’t want to deal with learning the ins and out of Discord, but want your community started ASAP? Let me help! With over 2 years experience creating and managing Discord Communities I can create a website that is tailored specifically to your community’s needs. Email me today and let’s chat about your server.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is provided for informational purposes only. The author is not affiliated with Discord or any of the specific bots mentioned. Any views, opinions, or endorsements expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of Discord or the developers of the mentioned bots. Users are encouraged to conduct their own research and exercise discretion when using any third-party applications or services, including Discord and all Discord bots. The author disclaims any responsibility for the actions or experiences of individuals using Discord or the mentioned bots.
