Ok, ok, ok, if you haven’t been under a rock the last few years, you would know that the Marketing landscape is changing. We went from mass marketing, to likes, to “engagement” and every other metric under the sun you can think about.

People keep telling me about “engagement”, but what does that mean? Adobe have defined it as:

Engagement marketing is the strategy and content required to create meaningful customer interactions and build brand loyalty. It’s a cross-channel, inbound marketing approach that includes:

• Email marketing

• Content marketing

• Social media marketing

• Marketing automation

I don’t know about you reading this, but let's be real here. Someone sending me an email that goes straight to my junk folder? That's not engagement. And liking a picture of their product online? Nope, still not engagement. Even getting a follow-up SMS falls short. These are all great tools, don't get me wrong, but they're all one-way communication. The brand tells me what they want, and I can't provide any feedback. That's not engagement—it feels more like being back in school, lol.

Great, so as you can imagine, we are obviously big Discord fans around these parts. So let's dive into the advantages and disadvantages of Discord, a platform that many of us appreciate, and explore why big brands are increasingly using it.

First and foremost Discord provides a unique and vibrant platform for fostering communities and connecting with your audience. 

Discord is a great place to connect with your community, get instant feedback, and have real conversations with interested users. But we must remember, it's not just about your brand. The focus is on building relationships and making users feel like they're an important part of the creative process, allowing them to be involved every step of the way!

Advantages to Discord

Ease of Use and Communication

Discord is a simple place to use text, voice and even video chat.

Where do fans of your brand meet each other currently? Commenting under a post on Insta, fan meet-ups? Discord is an awesome place for fans to meet fans, and talk about their brand loyalty.

Want to host an event? Set-up a community event, or even set-up a live stage where you can interact and curate perfect AMA / Presentation environments.

Want to provide customer support and gather customer sentiment and feedback? Create channels in the Discord and let the community speak to you directly!

Building Communities

When you create a dedicated community space and manage it correctly, you start to nurture individuals around you. You can create dedicated spaces for people to feel at home and connected to your community, building a sense of belonging.

Don’t be the brand that talks AT your consumers. Be the brand that talks WITH your consumers.

Read that again before you move on… because here at Cassie, we want to help you do just that.

Customer Support

It’s easy to provide efficient customer support within Discord. Your team can assist users, answer questions, and troubleshoot issues in real-time. 

When you pair this with building a vibrant and loyal community, you’ll find that the dedicated individuals that respect your brand will support you just as much as your own team.

It’ll also allow you to see in real-time if your overall message is being portrayed correctly, or if sentiment on recent updates are good or bad, again, all in real-time.

Transparency

Ultimately, the best Discords are those that allow for open communication between brand and consumer, and consumer to consumer. It promotes a real sense of unity and respect. 

You no longer have to feel like a nobody compared to a business, because within a Discord, everyone is a community member! One of our clients commented that it was like getting 200 new employees, who tested products, gave feedback in real time, discussed upcoming fashion drops before they happened, and pre-tested demand for products. Lots of fun things.

Potential Negatives to Discord

Learning Curve

With Discord being an online platform, some users that are less tech-savvy, may find it challenging to adapt to the flow of communications at first.

But this can be overcome by a great onboarding process, and a clear server structure with plenty of explanations. So I'll say it's half of a negative.

Please note that we have turned multiple clients away because we don’t think Discord is the right medium for them. Reach out, and we will let you know honestly if we think it is right for you. We don’t want to work on a Discord that will suck, and we don’t want you wasting your money to find that out either.

Limited Professionalism

You know those handful of people that jump on your Insta and Meta posts and troll it for the sake of trolling? Yeah, we get ‘em in Discord too. 

Just an unfortunate part of the digital life we lead but, fear not, we have measures in place. Custom bots that scan conversations, ban controls and chat moderators that are based in each continent, scheduled to watch your Discord and engage with community members, 24/7 365.

Security / Privacy Concerns

You ever get those annoying texts asking you to click on a link to check your parcel that you never ordered so it can scam you? Yup, also on Discord too. Possibly even more often.

This is why it is so important to set the server up securely in the first place, making it a priority and not an afterthought. Don’t worry, we got you covered with that also.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Discord is not for everyone. But for those that it works for? It works incredibly well to build and engage with a community. Seamless communication, customer analytics, community building, marketing integration (and we haven’t even talked about generating revenue from subscriptions yet, but message us to find out about that ;)

Brands are stepping in because they realise the power and potential of community building on a platform like Discord, but it’s also very new to a lot of them.

Luckily, If you’re new to this, reach out. We will give you some free advice depending on what your brand needs.

Even if you’re not new, don’t let a weak server be something that ruins your brand's reputation. Let us come take a look and give you some feedback.

Nothing gets by us when it comes to Discord, and we're the best Discord community management agency around! We look forward to helping!