When I started at RØDE in March 2023, we had around 350 members. In the year since then, that number has grown to around 4500
This chart just tracks data since July 2023 – that’s when we installed the extension that helps us track this data better. That big spike at the end was our most recent promotional campaign.
Additionally, this user & engagement growth has only required explicit promotion from the brand’s socials on two occasions, otherwise, the server’s growth has been through word of mouth, and static placements in RØDE’s Linktree and website.
In addition to membership growing, engagement has been growing alongside it.
Improvements to our users’ help seeking experience
When I arrived at RØDE one year ago, my goal was to massively improve our users’ experience attempting to get help on our platform.
To do this, we created:
- new community values
- new moderation policies
- a new community structure
- a tool to automatically paste optimal responses for frequent messages
- a tool to help power-users track requests on the server and reward helpers
- a tool to allow users to create help requests directly on the server
- and a monthly prize to reward our most helpful users
Early results speak for themselves
Eighty-one support queries were tackled in January 2024 alone! This extrapolates to potentially hundreds or even thousands of cases historically resolved organically within the community.
- While the place of gamification techniques in community design deserve further discussion in another piece, our approach has definitely worked thus far.
The number of messages in our product help channels, over time. In July, we switched from text channels to “forum channels”. There used to only be one channel per product, so in a text channel, you could only have one conversation about a product at a time. After switching, and implementing the custom features discussed previously, this volume massively increased.
🚨 Subjective opinion alert (no data zone) 🚨
I genuinely believe that since starting this plan, our brand image has improved. I’m biased, but I’m also the only one who looks and each and every word, image, and video which is posted about or in response to RØDE, everyday.
So, am I thinking of ways to test that hypothesis using more scientific methods? Yep, you bet!
What did we learn from making this all work?
🏠 What I Learned Building the RØDE Community
Community structure:
💜 Community Strategy (Respect helpers, give them tools)
Community content strategy:
🎓 Community Content Strategy (Learn from audience misconceptions)
Using community data:
😎 Using Community Knowledge (Yep, another guy making chatbots)
Creating custom solutions:
🗺️ Creating a Meaningful Community UX (with Discord)
Service design:
🪄 Service Design (Brands compete on user experiences)
Proving it:
📈 Proving It (Result- chart line go up!)
Misc.
🌐 Why Discord? ❔ Further questions for discussion 📜 Footnotes 👋 Meet the team- one other guy