As a community manager in the video game industry, you know it’s important to keep a close eye on the social media platforms your audience is engaging on. As a participant in the Coursera and Northwestern social marketing program with an interest in community management I found an excerpt from a recent instalment of the Game Dev London Podcast that is of some interest.
In a video put out on YouTube by Game Dev London titled “Social Media and Community Management in GameDev”, which features the first 13 minutes of a recent episode of their podcast where the hosts QuangDX, the Founder of AsobiTech and Stuart De Ville, the Founder/Director of Game Dev London talked about social media and community management in GameDev. In the episode they talk about various social media platforms and offer tips for posting on each as well as how each of their algorithms work. And the biggest takeaway there was to start on Twitter and grow an audience there before moving to other platforms such as Discord.
In the full length podcast they offer several tips for running a Discord server, but one of the more important points they made was not to always talk about your game and have other things to do and talk about in your server. They offer up channels for memes, pictures of food or pets as great ways to engage with your audience.
Drawing on these insights, as well as my own experiences learning Social Media Marketing on Coursera, in addition to my years of experience helping multiple Twitch streamers moderate their stream and Discord servers, I have listed three tips for developing a community server.
Establish Your Rules - Create a list of rules you want your community to follow and have a channel dedicated solely to the displaying of those rules.
Get Moderators - As your server grows, consider getting a few server moderators to help deal with any trolls or conflicts that arise, as well as help keep people engaged.
Be Smart With Channels - Obviously there are a few staple channels you’ll want to have for memes or food as mentioned in the podcast, but outside of that just create channels based around what your community wants to do or talk about.
So, going forward if your company doesn’t have Twitter, start there. However, if you’ve already established yourself on Twitter, consider starting a Discord server to further engage with your community on a variety of topics.
