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00:00:01
Onboarding
17 Plays1 year ago
OK great, you're committed to building a community on Discord. Fantastic. Now....how do you get your community there?
Dylan and Steve talk through the process and logistics of onboarding your community to a new platform.
http://www.nervous.net
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Transcript
Growing Up Without TV and Its Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
Wait so you were you grew up without television completely yes yes we grow without television completely cuz my parents didn't love us i think or something. Now the that good thing, and I'm gonna put that in quotations, the good thing about that is that when I first saw a movie, like one of the first movies I ever remember watching was E.T. at our like babysitter's house when I was too old for this to be an issue, and it fucking wrecked me. Because I could not separate that from reality because
00:00:36
Speaker
You know, to me, like we'd watch like the Olympics, like we'd rent a TV and watch like the Olympics or like sporting events, sometimes things like that, but like. Wait, so y'all would rent TVs? Yeah, this was back when you could rent TVs. Wow. I mean, I remember that. Like, I remember going to the video store and you could rent like a little TV VCR combo, yeah which was always like, it was one of those things that was kind of wild to me because I always saw them available, but I never actually saw who would come into the video store and rent a movie and a TV to watch it on. But I guess that would have been you. Yeah. And it was it was a VCR with like a handle on it.
00:01:08
Speaker
yeah And then it would be a TV. like ah not It wasn't a combo, it was an actual separate thing and we'd get it set up and like we'd rent the TV so we could watch the Olympics on the over-the-air stuff, right things like that. So for me it was hard to separate the TV from the reality.
TV as a Special Event and Community Building
00:01:22
Speaker
That's so wild. But it's interesting like, and this weirdly dovetails into what we're going to talk about today, because for you, TV shows weren't just like a time waster, it was a destination. You had to like go and seek this out. Like the entire family got together and made a group decision that we're going to watch this yeah on the television. That's a very strong and solid parallel to the way that Discord communities work. It's not casually discoverable, you know, like an Instagram account where it's, oh, I wonder if they're on Instagram. And then you just start typing the name and then that pops up along with, you know, 60,000 posts of like random keyword spam. You have to go and hunt that shit down. Yeah. Nothing was easy when I was a kid back in my day.
00:02:07
Speaker
Back in my day. Well I'm Dylan. And I'm Steve. And we are nervous.
00:02:40
Speaker
So back in our day, back in, back in our day, do you remember when chewing gum had asbestos in it just to help you get the flavor? We'd wear an onion on our belt. Cause that was the style at the time. I love Abe Simpson. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. So we're talking about discord as a destination and this is, um,
00:03:01
Speaker
This is a really interesting kind of aspect of Discord. and And to be honest, I feel like this is one of the things that makes it really hard for brands and companies to kind of get their head around the idea of Discord as a platform for themselves. It's true.
00:03:17
Speaker
So yeah, so the thing with Discord is that it's it's a destination it's a destination wedding. You know what I mean? It's it's a a cool record store in like an odd part of town. It is someplace that you have to make a decision to like actively go and participate in that community.
Building Brands and Engagement on Discord
00:03:33
Speaker
The thing about like broadcast accounts, especially Instagram, right you're just sitting there doom scrolling and it's really easy to be like, Oh, look, Fender Guitars posted anything. me to say Okay, anyway, I next on to the next thing and you just like you see it and then you just blaze past it or, you know, you click on it and then immediately you get into like the creepy ad algorithm and then it's like, cool. Everything in my feed, you know, every fourth post is now going to be ads for Fender Guitars. so Discord is
00:04:04
Speaker
it's a destination. You really have to actively seek it out. And the thing that brands don't understand about that is that that means that you don't necessarily have the benefit of that easy discovery, that easy brand recognition where you can just be like, Oh yeah, we're just going to run, you know, five grand worth of keyword ads on Instagram for a month. And then boom, we'll have like 80,000 followers. yeah like It doesn't work that way. You have to build the server out and then you have to use everything at your disposal and whether that's broadcast social or email mailing lists or paper inserts or flyers or partnerships with your retailers, whatever it is, you need to actually get the word out and you need to realize that creating a Discord server means onboarding your community to a new platform for them.
00:04:54
Speaker
So what you're saying, Steve, just so I can make sure I understand, is that it's real hard, and if you don't do it right, it's gonna suck.
00:05:07
Speaker
I would say it's less that it's real hard and more that it's real unfamiliar. I think that it's just not the way that a lot of companies, a lot of brands are accustomed to doing social media anymore. What a lot of people were able to do with Instagram and Twitter and Facebook is the rise of the platform fueled the rise of their account.
00:05:29
Speaker
right especially a lot of these like legacy brands that yeah they set up their brand account like you know pretty much as soon as you could have brand accounts on Instagram. And the rise of people using that and looking for things related to whatever it is that they sell, like they were able to just kind of like ride that wave.
00:05:46
Speaker
And part of that is because the way broadcast social is built is there's this little demon that lives in a box somewhere called the algorithm. yeah And if your content fits within whatever magical thing, the algorithm decides is important at that time, it's going to be served up to more people, which then increases the growth of your account.
Deep Customer Engagement on Discord
00:06:05
Speaker
And so the early adopters lucked out because they got in early when the algorithm was a little bit more loosey goosey.
00:06:11
Speaker
which does make it harder for new people to grow as much. Whereas Discord, they don't have a little algorithm in a box that's going to serve people your Discord server. Well, yeah and the thing is with broadcast social, like everything there is designed for sharing. like That's, you know, everything there is centered around like, how do I get people to share my content? As soon as somebody interacts with your content, then the algorithm shows that content to everybody that they're friends with and shows that they liked it.
00:06:39
Speaker
Everything in in broadcast social is all about you know getting that like aggregate views. It's all about views. It's all about likes, views and likes, views and likes, views and likes. Everything is like, how far out can we push this? With Discord, it's about the quality of your content and the quality of your community. So with discord it's all about the quality of your content and the quality of your community and the the quality of your interaction with your community like you're not trying to share something you're not trying to get a shit ton of likes on something you're not trying to like push something out and have it go viral.
00:07:14
Speaker
Like viral means nothing as far as Discord is concerned. um And I think that you know part of the reason that a lot of companies really kind of stumble on a Discord strategy is that what they don't understand is that broadcast social is the widest part of the sales funnel. You're trying to get people in. Discord really should be the landing pad after the sale.
00:07:37
Speaker
hu Discord is where your community should come to talk about the thing that they just ordered and be excited that it's on the way or to you know share reviews of the thing that they just ordered or to compare the thing that they bought versus the other version of the model that their friends bought.
00:07:54
Speaker
or to sit and talk about maintenance or modifying things or, you know, talk about different ways to use things and talk about like, you know, vintage versions of the thing. Like yeah it's the place where your community comes to deep dive into your product. And yeah, you can add on selling everything like that from there, but that needs to be the place that everybody wants to be, to be a fan of what you do.
00:08:17
Speaker
Right, so a Discord is like a members only jacket that really means members only. Like it's it's the secret club you go to because you know a guy or a girl or a cat or whatever that's gonna let you in because you know the password to get in and you're gonna learn all this cool stuff about the thing that you love.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's the five timers jacket. The five timers jacket. um Yeah, and I think that's that's one of the the tricks of all of this social media, new social media, broadcast, community, whatever is going on is that this is another tool in your toolbox.
00:08:52
Speaker
but it can also be one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox because you're not trying to force virality. That's not the purpose of it. You're trying to encourage community. And if something from your discord goes viral, it will be because someone in the discord shared it out on another social, not because you as the brand were trying to force it to happen. You know, I was just talking about Fender guitar, so I'm going to, I'm going to pull up Fender guitars, uh, Instagram page, right?
00:09:20
Speaker
So we're just going to, we're going to go in and we're going to take a look at that real quick. Today's episode brought to you by Fender guitars, not really, but if you want to sponsor us Fender, hook us up by.
00:09:32
Speaker
So right away we look at Fender guitars. They've got 3.8 million followers on Instagram. Okay. crap And then, and then you, yeah, I know 3.8 million. and And then, you know, two days ago they made a post, uh, celebrate Joe Strummer's unparalleled style with this custom accessory collection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 11,828 likes, but only 39 comments. Mm-hmm.
00:10:02
Speaker
So the algorithm served this up to a little under 12,000 people out of 3.8 million who liked the page and want to follow the page. And of those 11,828 people, only 39 people decided to have a conversation about this. Now, Discord You can have a server for Fender guitars that only has 10 or 15,000 people in it total. But when you post a conversation, and when you post like a new piece of information like that, instead of only 38 people wanting to have a conversation about it, you can have hundreds and hundreds of people actively having a conversation about it for multiple days.
00:10:48
Speaker
So what you're getting here is you're not getting like this buckshot, you know, kind of like scatter reach where you're hoping that, you know, out of the 38,000, whatever people that liked this, that like somehow that translates out to sales from like 1% or half percent or whatever. What you're doing is you're building a much deeper connection with the fans that you do have so that they can continue finding ways on a daily basis.
00:11:15
Speaker
to be more and more emotionally invested in the product that you're making and in the culture around your product.
Onboarding and Community Management on Discord
00:11:24
Speaker
So how, if I was a brand, would I get people into my Discord server? So the thing about the Discord server is that you really kind of need to promote it like an event.
00:11:39
Speaker
Okay. You know, so what you want to do is you're going to use your broadcast social, right? To push, you know, push out that message, let people know, Hey, this is the new place to be. But like any other event, like, you know, you also, you need to get stuff into people's hands. So if you're like a consumer goods company, like if you're like a direct to consumer e-commerce kind of like hypothetically, a yo-yo company.
00:12:02
Speaker
like hypothetically a yo-yo company. So you're selling yo-yos. You're shipping physical yo-yos out to people and they're opening a box with a yo-yo. So every single one of those boxes should have a flyer in it that pushes them to your Discord because they're already invested in your company. They've spent money on your brand.
00:12:19
Speaker
And then now what you're doing is you're you're validating that decision by showing them that there's a community of people who also feel the same way about your brand that they do. And hey, would you like to come and hang out and meet them? Right. And I think that's that right there is the simplest way to start onboarding people into your community, especially if you're actually sending out physical goods. You know, you already probably include a thank you for your order card of some sort on there. And if you put something on that says, hey,
00:12:48
Speaker
Scan this QR code to join our Discord or just whatever to make it super, super easy for people to get from that piece of paper into your Discord is going to lead to a lot of people who are going to come in, maybe check it out, maybe get invested, maybe they realize it's not for them, maybe they just start hanging out to see the announcement so they don't participate, which is fine. um But it just gives them that way to get into your server quickly and easily. And that's, I think, one of the things you need to do because if it's hard to do something,
00:13:14
Speaker
You're not going to do it. No one's going to do it. I'm the worst at that. If someone's like, hey, I'll give you a free thing, but you have to do these like five steps. I'm like, I'd do it for four steps. You know, but like, I'm i'm a human being. I'm not going to take a bunch of time to jump through hoops to get into something, even if there's a reward at the end. So the simplest way you can get people in is going to be the best way.
00:13:34
Speaker
yeah i mean i and I think it's also, you know ah again, especially for e-commerce brands or or any brands or companies that have like a physical product. ah Everybody knows that customer acquisition is expensive as hell. yeah It's the worst. It really is. But customer retention is where you can really really shine and it's where you can really really boost the bottom line of your company and the great thing about it in my opinion is that you know focusing hard on customer retention in a positive way allows you to do something that's like so it's less crass in my opinion it feels less dirty.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, it feels, you know, everybody's trying to get pushed into a fucking sales funnel for something constantly all day. You can't even pump gas without having ads shouted at you from the gas pump. How many times are you like actually rewarded for the purchase that you've made? How many times does the company like make that take that time and make that effort to make you feel like validated for making that decision. you know And and to to make you feel like, you know hey, you're you're genuinely part of something now. Come here. Come hang out. like Let's spend some time. Let's talk. What I think too, and this is I was just kind of thinking about this, that customer retention is what creates a bond with the customer and your brand.
00:14:57
Speaker
And it's so much easier to do because they've already bought your stuff. Yeah, you know, they've already purchased your stuff. They already like your stuff, hopefully. And if they don't like your stuff, they're going to tell people about it. True. But if they're in your discord, they're going to tell you about it. They're going to straight up be like, at Uncle Steve, this yo-yo is shit.
00:15:18
Speaker
and Uncle Steve is gonna be like, tell me more, and learn about it, and then that's gonna get sent to the product team, and the product team's like, oh, they're right, we probably shouldn't have covered that yoyo in spikes, it makes it really hard to catch. you know And that's the thing, and that lets you figure it out, and it's not just someone on Twitter being like, fuck, Uncle Steve's yoyos are fucking garbage.
00:15:36
Speaker
yeah you know So I think that's that's one of the biggest things with it is that it gives you a place to communicate with your customers, both customers who are happy and customers who are not happy, in a more closed environment. And you'll also be wonderfully surprised because your community members will also help people troubleshoot their problems with your product, which takes a little bit of it off of the plate of yore yeah your team can then focus on helping people who have like real problems, not just user error problems.
00:16:07
Speaker
Well, I mean, and that's, that's a huge green flag for any community, you know, any discord server. When the members of your server are quicker to help other members than your actual team is, yeah that is a fucking golden win right there. That means that your community is really invested. I was thinking about when we had a bunch of people join one of the servers we manage. Whenever you have a bunch of new people join your server, inevitably a troll comes with them. It's like they sense the the fun and they want to come make problems.
00:16:37
Speaker
And I remember being bummed because one of our greatest like server advocates must have just been offline that day because they weren't there when people were being idiots to be like, take this to another channel, or this is the purpose of this server, like that sort of thing. So like we actually had to step in and do a little bit of that. And then the next day, they were like back on it. And it was so nice because it it's almost one of those things where as a consumer, if you're in a store and you're doing something that you're not supposed to, and another customer's like, hey, bro,
00:17:07
Speaker
You're not supposed to touch that. It feels better than if like the manager of the store is like, Hey fucker, knock that off. You know, because they're, it just, it doesn't feel like you've really screwed up. If someone from the community is like, Hey, maybe, maybe don't do that. You know, and it just, it it makes it feel like a community and not like a place where someone is dictating everything. Yep.
Strategies for Successful Discord Communities
00:17:30
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. So now one more question for you, Steve is. Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
What is something you shouldn't do when trying to onboard people onto your community? I mean, honestly, one of the biggest things you shouldn't do is is assume that they understand the platform. That is so true. You know what I mean? Yeah. But like when you create an Instagram account, you assume that everybody knows how to use Instagram. Yeah. Because because there's not much to to know. Yeah. Really. you know the The amount of friction there is in like getting a ah follow is is pretty minimal.
00:18:06
Speaker
But with Discord, there's a desktop app that needs to be downloaded. There's an account that needs to be created. And there are you know there's there's ways and and and tools and everything to use the platform that people don't necessarily understand. So when your brand creates a Discord server, you've got to remember that you've got to do two things. One, you have to convince people to join your server. And two, you have to help onboard your community to a new technology platform. you have to teach them to use a completely new service. So don't overestimate you know how much of your community is already on Discord. I mean, there's probably a ah good chunk, depending on the sector that you're in, but certainly not everybody. yeah So you have to really, really remember that like you you need to help kind of do the job you know Discord's job, essentially, of explaining to people what the platform is, what it does,
00:19:03
Speaker
why you're using it and why it's beneficial for them to start using it too. Yeah. So we, you can use your broadcast social to get people onto your discord. Yep. But how do you maintain that community? Once you get people there, once you get people on there, you need a dedicated community manager.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I don't mean a social media manager who you just hand an account on your Discord. I mean an actual community manager because those two things are very different sets of skills. It's very possible your social media person might kick ass at Discord. But again, do not assume that. And also make sure that that person has the support they need in order to be successful at that job. Because a community manager can be the best community manager in the world, but if they don't have the ability to set up an event or do interesting things on the server, it's not going to be fun for people to be there and they're not going to be as excited to stick around.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and again, think of your discord server, think of it almost as a physical storefront, yeah you know, or think of it as like an actual, think of it in the same terms as like a physical event, right? People need an impetus. They need a reason to, to come in and participate and congregate.
00:20:30
Speaker
you need to feed them that stuff like on the regular. and And again, this is, this is another reason that a lot of brands are are very nervous about it is because they don't necessarily fully understand what they're getting into, but you need to have an event in your server at least once a month. Yeah. It doesn't have to be huge. yeah It doesn't have to be, you know, some massive, you know, production, but you need to have some kind of an event to pull your community together minimum once a month in your server. Yeah. You need to have members of your team and they're chatting with people.
00:20:58
Speaker
about whatever it is they wanna chat about, like on the daily. And you need to have a moderation team. and your moderation team can be incredibly tiny, but you need to have moderation and you know a proper like safety setup in your server so that your server is a safe and welcoming place for your community. yeah Those are like kind of the three like main tenets of like successful community management, a dedicated community manager, good moderation, and proper server setup. yeah and i think
00:21:29
Speaker
Thinking about your server as either a community event or a brick and mortar store is a really good way to think about it because if you had a brick and mortar store, you wouldn't understaff it.
00:21:42
Speaker
right you know and you wouldn't like be like oh steve you can handle this you know you've got you've got eight hours you just take care of this and you know there's no one here to support you so that'd be like if you just have your community manager of one person supposed to be doing everything no but if you have a community manager and a couple moderators you now have a full staff that can can handle things and stores tend to be like some of the most successful stores, whether they're big like you know corporate stores or even local mom and pop stores have something going on that helps or involves the community that they're in. Right. And so on Discord, that can be events that you're having that provide information or feedback or gather feedback from your community to help everybody be successful.
00:22:26
Speaker
Right. The more I think about it, the more I think that the brick and mortar analogy really is ah pretty apt. I mean, and it you know, I used to own a brick and mortar retail store. We had events at least once a month. We had some kind of event because you can't count on foot traffic coming in just because people want to buy a thing. Like people need a reason. What you can absolutely do is upsell them on a bunch of other random stuff once they're in the store and give them one compelling good reason to set foot in the store.
00:22:55
Speaker
and then see how many things you can sell them monthly there. yeah Like that's great. People don't host events on Instagram yeah or Twitter or Facebook. You know what I mean? Like that is so rare and minimal. And it's honestly not even what those platforms are particularly optimized for. And when people do, they're just live streaming something. It doesn't have the same feel of like, I'm doing something and I'm getting real time feedback from the audience. Yeah, I'm getting a bunch of hearts, you know, or whatever, but there's no two way communication. um But we should talk about events next time.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah, we'll definitely have to deep dive more specifically into events. But yeah, like when you're live streaming on Instagram, like you can see the comments coming in, but realistically, how are you going to respond to all those while you're also yeah streaming and doing whatever it is that you're doing? You know, unless your live stream is literally just you staring at your screen and and verbally responding to comments. Which people love that. That's some quality content there. Everyone likes seeing my double chin as I look down at my phone while live streaming.
00:23:59
Speaker
yeah So yeah, so onboarding your community and Discord is a tricky thing to do well. And since it is your server's first step into growing, it is something that needs to be done like thoughtfully. You can't just be like, we're going to have a Discord, we're going to launch it tomorrow. no needs You need to think about what you're going to do, plan out what's going to happen in the server in the following weeks and months, and make sure that you have a team in place that can make sure that the success happens.
00:24:28
Speaker
And i mean that's something that I've i've noticed you know with with Nervous is that like by and large, honestly, we very rarely do the any of the actual community management for our clients. Mostly what they need help with is they just need help with the strategy and they need help understanding the platform.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, the chances are good. If your company is large enough that you're coming to us for help on setting up a Discord server, you've got staff that can absolutely do this. You know what I mean? Like you've got people on your staff already that know and love your product and your brand.
00:25:03
Speaker
and like really understand all this stuff and would be amazing assets on a Discord community. yeah All you need from Nervous is you need help getting this thing set up and you just need somebody to help make sure that you're set up for success and that you understand the nature of how different this platform is from all the other ones that you're used to working on. Once you get that, once that like really truly clicks, your team's gonna be able to handle this wonderfully.
00:25:31
Speaker
So yeah, contact Nervous if you want to get help setting up a Discord server. yep And you want us to help your team get a better understanding of how it works versus your other socials. um Once again, thank you for listening.
00:25:46
Speaker
And that was an awkward silence. Yeah, I just didn't say anything because I wanted to see what you were going to do if I just left you hanging. And as we saw, I failed miserably. I thought you were a street performer, Dylan. Well, I was and now I'm old and heard all the time. Um, anyway, thanks for listening to the Nervous Podcast. I've been Dylan and that's been Steve and I'm not letting him talk anymore for the rest of this episode. Goodbye. Okay. Bye.