So you’re looking to build a discord for your NFT project?

I can’t tell you how many Discords and Blog Posts/YouTube videos I’ve been through to better understand the basics to NFT Discord servers. Most people have a generic list that applies in all cases, and while I do wish to sort of echo those items, I’d like to add my own insight as to why these items are important (instead of just telling you to do it.) So without further discussion, here is my NFT Discord insights on 5 things to consider when building an NFT Discord Server.

1: Project Goals

Clear start to this thought process right? What is your goal in your project? Are you going for a social approach, selling NFT’s for building Community? Or perhaps you are doing a project on behalf of a company to sell tickets to events? You may even have the idea to do an educational aspect, providing utility in your NFT by selling your knowledge through seminars, classes, and courses. Whatever your goals, you need to have this figured out.

The ‘Why?’: Discord is your hub for all things communication when it comes to your project. Yes, there are competitors out there that can replaced Discord, and also: yes, you can replace the idea by combining other social websites and Web2 sites to gain the same benefit. Ultimately though, Discord is the source of all information on your project. Without knowing your project goals, how can you hope to build up your Discord channels and links, providing all of the basic and detailed information for your project, to your audience?

2: Audience

Speaking of Audience… you MUST know your audience to succeed in Discord. Based on your goals, you should think about who you are targeting.  Companies? Freelance Artists? Music Devs? Techies? Education systems? This step is crucial as you will be able to build your Discord accordingly.

The ‘Why?’: Similar to your project goals, this is the next step in the Brand Discovery that you probably have or are going through as you read this. Realize that knowing your audience allows you to focus on THEM. You will provide a much more niche service to those people who you think are most interested in your project and goals. Start to stray outside of that and your Discord will get messy and disorganized, likely leading to dead spaces, spam, and comments of displeasure from those of the community you never intended to entertain.

3: Founder/DAO Size

Whew. This one here is a tough one to figure out. Knowing what sort of help you might have is crucial in understanding what you can do. Are you a member of a 3 person DAO/Project Founder group? Or do you have 10+ people that can help you out in growing the discord? This is the step that I find easiest, combined with Step 4, to really take advantage of.

The ‘Why?’: Should be pretty clear, but I’ll explain anyway: when you know what sort of help you will have in your Discord server creation process, you’ll know not only how to split the load, but a nice little road map as to how to accomplish it. I cannot say what number of people would fit best as it 100% depends on Steps 1 and 2; however, I do know that you can easily accomplish a basic server with just one person and several hours of internet research (I’m a case and point.)

 4: Project Marketing Approach

As I stated in Step 3, you’ll really want to work well with your marketers here. Based on who your target audience is, you’ll want to discuss how you might reach these members to get into the Discord server in the first place, and then how to interact and learn from these members. I find this the most challenging of the process because, like I said in other steps, based on your audience, you’ll really have to get creative on what to do to drive engagement.

The ‘Why?’: This one’s challenging to answer generically as I do not know your specific details for your specific project, but what I can say is it’s importance is incredible. I’ve seen projects do the mass marketing where they create bots to do all sorts of automated ads; or create and pay social marketers to advertise on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook to reach a broader, more generic audience. I’ve also seen first hand much more dedicated and tactical approaches to marketing with live events and meet-and-greets only to spread the word for a project. This ALWAYS leads back to your Discord and needs to be thought about in your creation process as knowing who will actually be walking through your gateways will dictate how you react to those people (This one’s similar to Step 2, but with a sort of ‘error handling’ involved.)

5: Discord Vision

I put this one last on purpose, to sort of piggy-back the rest of them as it’s an extension of all the steps combined. What I mean by Discord Vision: Think about what your goal is with Discord, as it pertains to the goals and audience members you attain (both direct and indirect, as well as both intentionally and unintentionally.) Are you going to prevent certain members from getting in? What are your rules like? Do you have spaces for the un-targeted audience to learn more and maybe BECOME a targeted audience member? Spaces for all? Spaces for Holders vs Non-holders? Games? Streams? Music Bots? The list is immeasurable.

The ‘Why?’: Typing this out, this one’s a bit harder to explain until you are actually in the middle of building up a community using your Discord server. Basically: People join Discord to join the community. Just like any social event or party, people come through the doors of the facility and are immediately bombarded with information. What now? What can YOU do as the Discord Manager do to prevent that person from immediately walking back out the door? I’d love to answer this specifically, but it’s based on your target audience and goals. Think about this question in a first-person perspective: What would I want if I were joining this amazing new project? Go from there based on your own answers. (I find if you were to generically ask the first members and founders of your infant community this, you’ll receive groundbreaking information to guide you on your journey.)

Wrapping up

At the end of the day, Discord should be used as a community builder. It’s an amazingly adept tool that you can make as simple or complicated as you’d like; but be sure to always be disciplined about your approach so that you stay inside the vision you wish to create. Do your research. Run through a Brand Discovery and outline those project goals. Keep your audience always in your sights. And most of all, make Discord a non-optional, fantastic place for your members to interact and learn, essentially as an extension of your overall project.

If you’d like to see how we did it for The Forest, check it out: https://discord.gg/XWstXYaHNg