Discord Don'ts: Build an Engaging Community

Over-reliance on "Chatters": Employing paid "chatters" to simulate activity can backfire. It creates a crowding-out effect, feels inauthentic, and gives a poor first impression. Focus on organic growth by encouraging genuine conversations and recognizing thoughtful contributions.

Incentivizing the Wrong Behaviors: Rewarding message quantity or mass invites attracts spam and low-quality members. Instead, incentivize quality contributions like insightful discussions and helpful feedback. For example: reward users based on arcane level bots - the more you chat, the higher the level, or reward users based on invite competition.

Forcing Premature Mass Adoption: Pushing for rapid growth too early leads to low retention, missed learning opportunities, and negative first impressions. Prioritize gradual growth with engaged early adopters who provide valuable feedback. Ensure your product is ready for a larger influx of users. For example: Paying users to give you feedback.

Over-marketing on Your Announcement Channel: Constantly promoting your product or sharing irrelevant content in the announcement channel leads to user fatigue. Curate content for important updates and use dedicated channels for social media feeds. For example, asking members to like a tweet on your announcement channel at best will drive your users away.

Selecting the Wrong Moderators: Moderators set the tone for your community. Avoid moderators who over-promote (shilling your links all the time), engage superficially (asking people how's their day), or aren't aligned with your project's vision (never learn to use the same word as you do). Choose passionate members who communicate effectively and embody your community values, like a superfan that you can get via hype engine.

Read more here: https://blog.communityone.io/the-dont-on-how-to-build-an-engaging-discord-community/