If you’re a blogger or an aspiring streamer, networking is such a huge part of building your audience. That means Discord is too good to ignore, especially if you’re in the gaming scene.
You can join as many servers as you like, or even create your own server to communicate with your own budding community at no cost! I have used Discord to get video feeds for interviews, organise tournaments and so much more.
But here’s the thing: you can join and create these servers at will, but there is something even more important that you need to do, and it’s this step where I always come unstuck.
You have to actually interact with these servers, and more than once!
Typically, when I join a new server I’m pretty good (for me) and I make sure I introduce myself. I’ll participate in a few text conversations and then I’ll go about my business as usual.
The next time I return to Discord, I’m lost. The conversations I was a part of are now over and I need to try and pick up on new ones, which is more annoying than anything, but this isn’t where I get bad at Discord.
It’s when I look at my phone.
Servers are set to send notifications by default, and when you’re as infrequent at checking Discord as I am, these pile up pretty quickly. Every time someone types something in a text channel my phone vibrates.
Now imagine you’re in a super active server… yeah I bet you can see where this is going.
I do what any rational person would do, and I mute the server. ROOKIE MISTAKE. Once a server is muted, it’s soon forgotten about entirely. Rest in peace, awesome Discord community. I barely knew you.
There’s probably a billion easy fixes for this, so the real issue here isn’t so much my phone as it is me not prioritising Discord enough.
If I’ve got some spare time during my lunch break I’m much more likely to be trolling Twitter than I am to be on Discord, and if I’m home and on my computer I want to be playing something rather than talking about games. Same goes with talking in Twitch chat.
Don’t be like me!
Remove any servers that don’t spark joy and make sure you some time chatting with the ones you do care about! Not just for the networking benefits, do it because finding people who like the same stuff as you and who share the same passion is probably why you started blogging or streaming in the first place.
Plus Discord means you can keep that conversation going even when you’re on the go, and that’s pretty sweet too. Just make sure you customise your notifications first 😉
Neri Approves! 
Well, I haven’t done any networking at all apart from joining the Blaugust Discord and linking my Twitter to WordPress, so I don’t really have a lot of experience in this, but usually, when joining a new discord server, I suppress “@here” and “@everyone”, so that I don’t get pinged by those every time. And I mute some channels on those discords like the bot-spam-channel or whatever there is. I think, that’s quite helpful to deal with notifications. Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing more posts by you and the others 🙂 Keep it up, for Blaugust is here!
This is excellent advice. Depending on the server, @here is about the only one I don’t mute, just because it’s usually something important. There have been other, much bigger ones where that’s gone in the bin too though.
Thanks for the words of support! I hope you’re feeling a bit more like yourself now 🙂
Trying to “keep up” on Discord can be a challenge, especially with folks being in different timezones (which is very much a thing on the Blaugust Discord Server) and real life getting in the way.
Because I’ve taken the role as a Mentor in this years event, I feel an added responsibility to get involved with the conversations, so I make time several times a day to trawl through the chat I may have missed and try and be supportive or helpful. Hopefully it is something I’ll continue in the future on other servers.
Oh my goodness how did I forget time zones! They definitely add to it, especially when I’m in such an odd one.
You’re doing an amazing job of keeping up with it all. And if it becomes a habit, then Blaugust has had a surprise added benefit I guess!
I tried being in a busy discord server once. I had to mute it to make it through the work day without being interrupted ever minute of the day. Bye server! (Great post btw, thanks!)
Oooh they are the worst! I did a video forever ago that was reviewing some stream community that popped up and their Discord was straight up nightmare fuel for that very reason. Never have I seen so much @everyone abuse IN MY LIFE. Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Server bloat is very much a thing, too. I very bad at culling down on servers as I rather unfortunately have a number of split friend groups. Sometimes even just individual friends where I don’t want to leave their server but holygoditssobusyherepleaseshushnow!
I have about 5 core servers (incl. Blaugust!) which I do interact with to varying degrees and are not muted. The rest recently found there way into a folder group which is… as a whole… muted. *cough*
I find the big overwhelmingly busy Discords to be just too much to keep up with, much prefer the smaller more manageable affairs.
But! I’m not generally speaking using Discord as a distribution or advertisement channel, so it’s a bit different I suppose than if you were attempting to grow a more general interest Twitch/YT channel. 🙂
YOU CAN MUTE FOLDERS?! Best news ever! I’m with you though, I prefer the smaller ones to the absolute behemoth ones.
I think Blaugust is the only one I’m active in at the moment, and I use the term active very loosely here! I might try to aim for five as well.
Sorry, no. 😦 I still had to mute each of the servers individually, then drag them into the folder which I’ve just titled ‘Muted’.
Although hopefully being able to apply server notification controls to Folders is something on the Discord cards already… Might even take a wander over to their suggestions forum and check. xD
Ahhh I get you now! Still a very clever way to do it. Haha, and please do drop that suggestion!