Is a networking channel on Discord worth it?
Shalin Doshi
6 replies
Hey,
I am Shalin here from India, I have been in the tech space for some years now and worked at a few companies, along with starting and building my own start-up. I felt networking on a daily basis with the right audience was lacking and I was struggling with it because of two reasons:
If you are a start-up single founder, sometimes you tend to get completely engrossed in coding or making your product the best and you don't have any time left for networking or marketing.
When you have the time with you, you tend to think about where to meet the right person for networking who is the right audience for it these kind of questions are arising at all times.
What I propose is a networking server on discord for across major industries [tech, media, plastic, finance and more] so if you need help or want to connect with the right person from the specific industry all you have to do is post a question/doubt in that channel for an answer, not only that we could have moderators from that particular industry who can actually guide you with a particular/specific question. If you are looking for a particular contact in a specific company via a reference to speed up things you can just post it on the channel and our moderators/members can try and connect you with the appropriate person [I know LinkedIn is a platform for such things, but this would be with some reference, hence more genuine and approved]
Also, if you are a startup and launching a product, you would have a set audience to review your work and help you test it out, these are some of the benefits of this networking server.
Moving ahead I'm in talks with a few start-up mentors and VC's to join the discord server [they are insisting on slack, but I prefer discord]. So I plan on getting some of them on board to review start-up ideas in a pitch channel where they can guide/mentor a start-up if need be for a fee also if any start-up is interesting they can surely reach out to them to take things ahead.
Note: I'm new to server building, this is my first attempt to build/run a community on discord, so if there are any screw-ups please excuse and if anyone of you is interested in becoming a Moderator and building this together, please contact me on shalindoshi@hotmail.com would love to have you guys.
Hence my question! Is it worth it?
Replies
Alina Ihnatiuk@antonovna
Hey! I have been working with Discord for over 3 months. I will say that as a communication this is a good channel, but using it for work (advertising, attracting a new audience) is a waste of time
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@antonovna How about for networking? What are your thoughts on slack for business networking?
Hey I've set up a discord for a business community in the past and had some experience setting up Facebook communities as well. I like Discord a lot and for tech founders, I think it would be very useful. We found with ours it was hard to build a community on Discord unless you're doing one for a specific tech space as a lot of people aren't familiar with it despite its popularity. And I think a lot of VC and marketing people would be more comfortable on Slack. People hate having to remember to check another app.
In terms of tips be super strict at first when moderating, set it up to ask questions when people join, and require a two-factor ID. It's so easy for online communities to become full of spam, people trying to sell weird alt-coins, and people asking useless questions. So set every post to have to be approved, set roles where people at first can only see posts but not comment to give you a chance to review their application. It will be harder to get members in but you'll build a much better community. Setting up some auto filters to catch common spam terms like "forex" and preventing people from posting outside links until their a certain level.
@shalin_doshi yep! Well moderated communities are really awesome and I love joining them and don't mind going through an approval process