By Arianna Crawford, The Social Media Explorer
The Big Valley Marketing New Platforms Series is a collection of posts that aims to introduce B2B marketers and communications to new social media platforms that may enable them generate new, innovative and uniquely meaningful approaches to reaching out to and interacting with their audiences. Adopting and maintaining new channels is a long-haul journey and will take time before any return on your investment. If you’d be interested in partnering with Big Valley Marketing, feel free to drop us a line at hireus@bigvalley.co
Discord has been a bit of an underdog platform that borders what some would consider social media. Starting out as an audio-streaming platform, it has become home to many communities, expanding from its original gaming audience to include athletics fans and other, broader personal interests. Over recent years, Discord has grown rapidly in both size and capability, showing a platform willingness to invest in high-quality user experiences.
Importantly, it has become a home-base communication app for younger generations that are driving the growth of diverse communities and long-distance friendships. You can think of it as the reincarnation of old Internet message boards and chat rooms–AOL round 2.
Similar to Mastodon and other fediverse platforms, brands can set up their own servers and moderation rules on Discord. Video, phone, and messaging are at the center of most use cases, and people can easily switch between the servers they’re on. There are also in-app games that brands can develop and integrate with their servers.
When compared to similar platforms, Discord requires less technical know-how and is more brand-friendly than others, but the question of whether brands should join and how is still pertinent.
Ultimately, this is not a brand-native environment. It’s the definition of dark social, or places where online conversations and actions related to a brand, campaign, or topic are difficult to accurately attribute or pinpoint their origins.
It’s the right fit for: Brands with a community near the center of their brand stance, such as a sporting team, or brands with a dedicated user base, like Midjourney, might benefit from Discord.
Ask yourself:
- Do we have an audience that consistently engages with our brand or product?
- Is engagement on other social channels indicating an untapped well of enthusiasm?
- Do we have the resources to set up, maintain and nurture a server?
Audience
- Size: 200 million monthly active users
- Behavior: People on Discord are looking for interest-based communities and are willing to engage/build relationships.
- Relevance: Audience skews younger and not necessarily professional at this point, but that could change as it continues to incest in creating quality digital experiences and communities
Ease of Management
- Tools: Traditional social tools aren’t available, but new brand integrations are in the works.
- Infrastructure: You do have to set up an invite-only server, but it’s pretty easy. Maintenance will require more effort.
- Moderation: You make the rules for your own server, which gives you more power to keep things professional and safe. But, as is the case for Mastodon, this can require a lot of resources to do consistently.
Content Strategy
- Uniqueness: Live broadcasting, a more natural chat system rather than others, and access to direct, live audience insight are what set this platform apart.
- Fit: Most traditional B2B content won’t fit here
- Transference: You could repurpose live events into clips for other platforms, or use the data from your server to inform your overall social strategy
Overall Impact
Discord is a mostly unexplored opportunity for B2B brands seeking to build passionate communities. However, the chief concerns are the level of effort required and determining whether it is, in fact, suitable for your community, given its dark social nature.
