What is Discord and How Can Marketers Use It?

In the social media landscape, some platforms come and go so quickly, we're not even sure how best to use them before they're gone. One social platform that's relatively new but likely here to stay, however, is Discord. First launched in 2015, the platform is not experiencing a major period of growth as users (and brands) outside its original demographic have recognized its potential for effective communication and online community building. In this post, we'll explain what Discord is and how marketers can use it as a tool to connect with target audiences more directly than ever before.

What is Discord?

Originally, Discord was developed as a text/voice messaging app that appealed to the gaming community due to its streaming capabilities. As a chat and streaming platform, Discord made it easy for gamers to see which friends were online, organize an online match, and stream the game video and audio while also voice chatting with friends, all within one single platform. However, largely through word of mouth, the user base of Discord continued to grow and diversify beyond the gaming community. Today, Discord boasts a massive 250 million user accounts and is used for chatting, whether a game is being played or not.

Discord functions as sort of a hybrid between Skype, Slack, and Facebook Groups. Any user can create an unlimited number of Discord servers for free, and the idea is that every server is focused on a specific topic or theme. Within a server, you're able to create multiple channels to further organize different conversations between members of that server. Servers can be public or private, invite-only spaces, but the entire point of Discord is that the different channels and threads make it easy to facilitate conversations between users.

While there are many chat apps out there, Discord seems to have staked out its territory thanks to its simple user interface and array of special features, like the ability to add custom bots that perform automated functions in your server. As other chat platforms are less user-friendly or are connected to social media that may be more saturated (like Facebook Messenger, etc.), Discord has become a go-to platform that many internet-savvy demographics are becoming much more active on.

How Marketers Are Using Discord Servers to Build Communities

Discord should be an interesting avenue for marketers to consider because of the community-building opportunities it presents. Because users can join multiple Discord servers based on their own interests, creating a server is a great way for your brand to stay connected with your biggest fans (or simply a target audience that is interested in your industry or market). Because you can make multiple channels where users can connect with each other as well as your brand, your Discord can become a fun place that users like to visit in order to engage with others who share their interests. Following this logic, Discord can be a great platform for building an enthusiastic community around your brand and product that anyone can be part of.

At the same time, building your server will also provide opportunities to provide exclusive value to your target audience, like server-only deals or sales promotions. You can also use Discord to facilitate customer service and answer questions your customers might have in a quick and direct way. Discord is a great way to communicate important information to your target audience — information that might have otherwise been lost in the ever-changing news feed algorithms on other platforms. As the platform continues to grow in popularity and adoption, your brand has the chance to become a bigger part of your audience's social networking when you create and manage your own Discord server. And as we know, when you focus on building community around your brand instead of only making sales, you gain a more loyal customer base and more widespread brand awareness than ever.