Here’s the thing about blockchain games and similar web3 projects – their success depends on how big, strong, and loyal their community is. The best place to build a blockchain community is Discord.
In this article, we’ll go through a step-by-step process that will help you build a Discord community for a blockchain project.
1. Understand Discord and Its Features
Before we get into practical tips on how to build a Discord community, let’s go over the basics of how Discord works and why it’s important for blockchain projects.
What Is Discord?
Put simply, Discord is a social media and communication app where people can hang out and connect with people online. For brands, Discord communities are a way to communicate with people directly, do promotions and announcements, as well as grow their user base.
Discord is particularly popular with gaming and web3 communities, which is why having a Discord server is essential if you’re in these niches.
Main Discord Features
Here’s how Discord works.
Various groups and communities on Discord live on servers – they can be public or private. Each server can have many different channels.
Users can communicate through and post text, images, gifs, voice, videos, etc. Besides talking and hanging out, people can also play games, listen to music, participate in quizzes, etc.
Members can have various roles, which helps with moderation.
2. Create and Set Up a Discord Server
Creating a new Discord server is fairly easy. On Discord, choose “Create my own server” and select that your server is for a larger community. Then, you need to name it, add a banner, and that’s it – you’ve created a Discord server.
The next step is setting up and deciding on some base rules.
Add Different Channels
To start, add various channels to keep things organized. You can also sort them into different sections.
Here are some channel examples that might be useful for a blockchain community.
The first section should contain all the basic info your members might need.
Discord Channel Examples
For example, #welcome, #rules, and #roadmap channels should be right at the top and this is what new members will check out first. Furthermore, you can add #guides, #official-links, #FAQ, and #help channels as well.
There should also be a news section where you can have an #announcements or #updates channel. This is where you’ll post any news regarding your blockchain project.
Since you’ll be working a lot on engagement, dedicating a section of your server to events and other interactive experiences is a great idea. Here, you can have #giveaways, #games, #art-contest, #meme-challenge, #fan-art, and similar channels.
You’ll also need a couple of general channels where people can just hang out, talk, and post memes.
Depending on your blockchain project, you can have many other channels. For example, if your project is a DAO, you can have #dao-proposals and #dao-discussions channels.
Additionally, if you have a community from around the globe, you can create channels for all the different languages. The possibilities are endless!
For example, Splinterlands’ Discord server has more than 70 channels. However, it also has a lot of things going on and a big community that calls for that, so take that into consideration.
Assign Roles
Members within a Discord server can have different roles, which grants them different permissions or privileges. You can create any roles you’d like, however, there are four different settings in terms of role permissions – Member, Moderator, Manager, and Cosmetic.
Member
Most servers have a special name for this role that fits the theme of the server. to get it, users generally have to go through a verification process and are then assigned this role.
Moderator
The Moderator role is one of the most important roles. It’s assigned to project team members with channel permissions higher than those of ordinary members. They can timeout or ban users and delete spam or offensive content.
Manager
Generally assigned to any type of managers on the project, such as collab managers, marketing managers, alpha hunters, etc. They don’t have as many permissions such as mods, but can still tag everyone in the server and manage a few bots, such as the giveaway ones.
Cosmetic
these roles don’t give any additional discord permissions to users but can be a thing of prestige, such as the OG role for some of the first or most active discord members. There are usually also utility roles, such as WL roles for users who secured their whitelist spots
Set Clear Rules
In order to build a Discord community that’s strong and healthy, you need to have clear rules in place. Make sure you decide on them and write them down when setting up your server.
3. Get Members for Your Discord Server
When you create a new Discord server, it’ll be empty. Naturally, the goal is to get as many members as possible.
However, you don’t want just anyone on your server, but rather people who are into your project or have a general interest in blockchain projects and NFTs.
Invite People
One of the easiest ways to get people to join your server is to use the Invite People option on Discord. Essentially, you can generate an invite link and send it to whoever you want or post it on social media.
Additionally, there are some useful customization options. For example, the link can expire after a set time or limit the number of people who can join through the link.
Promote on Social Media
Another simple yet effective way to get more members is to promote your server on social media.
If you’re working on a blockchain game or similar project, you probably have a Twitter account – this is one of the best places to promote your server.
Don’t forget to add a Discord link to your website as well!
Attract Members of Popular Blockchain Projects
An insider trick for growing your Discord community is to attract people from leading blockchain games or NFT projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club.
These are the people who are holders of major NFTs and have invested in blockchain games and other projects. That makes them more likely to support your project.
One of the ways of getting these high-quality users to your server is by doing collabs – but more on that later in the article!
4. Welcome and Verify New Members
If you’ve followed all these simple promotional steps, you’ll soon get a lot of new members. That also means you need to welcome them to your server.
Create a Welcome Message
Creating a welcome message for new users may be basic, but it’s a nice touch and makes people feel welcome. Furthermore, you can create a custom welcome screen. That’s useful because you can explain what your server is about, as well as link server rules or info about your blockchain game/project.
Another big part of welcoming new members is authenticating them.
Authenticate Users
This is a step you shouldn’t skip, as it’s particularly important for blockchain, NFT, and crypto communities.
Luckily, verifying users is fairly simple. We recommend using Discord bots like the Captcha.bot, which is a basic verification bot or Vulcan, which allows you to authenticate members’ wallets.
This brings me to our next big tip.
5. Automate Your Discord Server with Bots
Do you know what’s the secret to a successful Discord server?
Bots.
They’re easy to implement, can do a variety of tasks, and allow you to automate everything. That means you don’t have to do everything manually and spend all day on Discord to keep people engaged and happy. Bots do it for you.
It’s the fastest way to build a Discord community.
Here are the best ones.
Best Discord Bots
If you’re looking for multipurpose bots, we suggest Dyno, MEE6, or ProBot. These bots can do it all – from creating custom welcome messages, moderation, to social commands and music.
For engagement, GiveawayBot, QuizBot, Mushroom, and Hydra bots work great. To make your server more fun with games, use Rumble Royale, GarticBOT, Tatsu, and Idle RPG.
For a full list with descriptions and pricing, go to our best Discord bots article.
6. Moderate Your Discord Community
A Discord server is not something you create and then let run wild. You can imagine what happens when a group of people is left to their own devices online, without any rules or guidelines in place and no consequences for their behavior.
While it sounds like an interesting social experiment, we recommend that you moderate your Discord community to keep everything in check.
The key to good moderation is good mods. Mods do things like delete spam comments, answer questions, and interact with the community.
Mod Requirements
One of the basic requirements should be that they speak good English (or whichever language your server is in).
Moreover, there should be at least one mod online at all times. To accomplish that, you’ll need to arrange shift work, ensuring overlaps at the server’s most active times so there are two or more mods active at those times.
Make sure all moderators enforce server rules as well as model good behavior – the worst thing is having mods who behave inappropriately.
Spot FUD Early On
Finally, mods should monitor for FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
This happens often in blockchain and crypto communities because the market is unpredictable and volatile by nature. Sometimes people start losing faith in the project or become unsure whether they made the right decision investing in it.
If such a situation occurs, the mods should reassure the community that everything is fine and answer any questions they might have.
7. Work on Engagement
A big thing for blockchain Discord communities is engagement. You need to find ways to keep everybody interested and excited. That’s particularly important for projects in early stages, like those working towards their first mint or game release.
The goal is to have members interact with each other, post memes, participate in community events, and follow news about your project.
Some of the ways to encourage engagement are to reward member participation, gamify your server, as well as hold contests and giveaways.
Reward Participation
Start by rewarding members who actively participate in the server and bring new members. For example, you can assign them special roles or give out small rewards.
Gamify Your Server
Gamification is at the core of engagement on Discord – it’s a surefire way to make your server a fun place.
As I mentioned earlier, there are dozens of amazing bots dedicated to games, so make sure to add them to your server. All you need to do is sit back and let bots do the job for you.
Hold Events
Finally, events like quizzes, contests, and giveaways also work for increasing engagement. Once again, bots are your best friends. You can use them to set up and run all these events.
An important tip is to avoid giving away cash prizes or you’ll likely end up attracting users who don’t care about your project and are only interested in winning cash. From our experience in managing blockchain Discord communities, modest rewards like special roles, whitelisting users, or free mints work best.
8. Grow Your Discord Community Further with Collabs
The key to getting high-quality community members who are likely to invest in your blockchain project is collaboration.
Here’s what I mean by that.
Most people who are still active in servers of popular blockchain games like Alien Worlds or NFT collections like BAYC are most likely holders or people interested in investing in such projects.
These are the people you want in your Discord community, especially if you’re just starting out and trying to get people to invest in your NFTs.
Here’s how you do it.
Steps for Successful Collabs
First, research web3 communities you could approach for collaboration. From our experience, it’s best to shoot for alpha groups with holders of popular NFTs.
As an example, Ape List is one such group. It’s a private alpha community exclusive to BAYC and MAYC holders.
Then, you pitch them your project and they might decide to share it as a collaboration and run a giveaway on their server. We recommend doing a whitelist or a free mint giveaway.
As always, there’s a Discord bot that can help you with all this and make your life easier. One such example is Alphabot. It’s a raffle bot for alpha communities. It allows you to verify NFT holdings, validate a Discord server and role, and more.
Essentially, the community you’re collaborating with can run the Alphabot on their server and offer its members a certain number of whitelist spots or a free mint. Once the raffle is over, you’ll get the wallet addresses of the giveaway winners. You can then give them access to a presale for whitelist members, airdrop an NFT to their wallet, or whatever the reward is.
Cool, right?
Besides Alphabot, can also use other similar tools like Premint and our favorite – Superfine.
9. Hire a Marketing Agency
My last piece of advice is – if all this sounds like too much work or hassle, you should outsource community building.
A marketing agency with experience in the blockchain and crypto space is a great option as they’ll know exactly how to build a Discord community, plus how to create general hype around a project by building Twitter, doing influencer campaigns, PR, etc.
Final Thoughts on How to Build a Discord Community
The truth is, you can’t build a Discord community overnight – it takes time and patience. Furthermore, having a huge Discord community doesn’t always guarantee your blockchain project will end up being a success. But it’s a great start and it’s worth doing.
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