What is Discord?
Discord is a messaging, and digital distribution platform specifically made and designed to create communities. It is an American Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. The users of this app can communicate via voice calls, messaging, and video calls. The service offers the feature of sharing media and files in private chats called servers. Discord users can create channels (text-based or VoIP) to communicate with other users. A user is allowed to join several servers from the same account.
The service is available as a mobile application and can be downloaded in iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, iPad OS, and web browsers. On July 21, 2019, it was declared that there are over 250 million users of Discord.
The concept of this software came from Jason Citron, who is also the founder of OpenFeint (social gaming platform for mobile games). In May 2015, the software was released to the public, with the domain name of “discordapp.com.”
Setting up the software is very easy; anyone can sign up in a couple of minutes and get an account for themselves.
Can You Use Discord for Business?
Discord was intended as a tool for gamers. Over the past years, Discord has become very popular even among the non-gamer community. This popularity has raised a question about businesses joining or considering Discord. Many businesses have recently joined Discord after switching from Slack and Microsoft Teams. This use of Discord has shown that it can be used for businesses and is not restricted to gamers only.
Why Should Businesses Consider Discord?
Discord can be a good choice for businesses because of several reasons.
- The base product is 100% free
- High server limit
- High-security features
1. Discord’s Base Product is Completely Free
The main features of Discord, i.e., signing up, messaging, voice calling, video calling, and sharing media and other files, are free. Anyone can easily set up a Discord account and invite his/her links without paying a penny. The screen sharing feature is also totally free for Discord users. The paid service of Discord is only needed if the user wants to boost the capacities of the video and live streaming and upload limits. The paid service doesn’t charge way too much money either. The users only need to pay less than $10 monthly or less than $100 for a yearly subscription to Discord Nitro.
2. High Server Limit
Another great feature that Discord has to offer is its high server limit. Discord allows one server to support up to 250,000 members at a time and around 25,000 online members at a time. This amount of members is quite large and more than enough for most of the business teams.
Other than the members, servers are also allowed to support around 500 channels separately, which will enable them to keep conversations on different topics completely organized.
3.High-Security Feature
For security, Discord features Discord 2FA and a client-server architecture that doesn’t let your IP address out and keeps it locked down. If anyone tries to login into your account from a different IP address than the one you use normally, you will need to verify through email. And lastly, only those users can join your server whom you invited yourself by sending them an invitation link that you generated. If you want to invite someone to your server, you have to click on the dropdown menu right next to your server’s name and click on the “invite people” option to generate a unique invitation code.
How to Operate Discord for Businesses?
Here are some steps you can follow in order to use Discord for your business purposes:
- Organizing Channels
- Sharing Screen with Your Business Team
- Using a Discord Bot
- Using Discord Integration
1. Organizing Channels
Discord is divided into channels, just like Slack. Specifically, Discord features both calling and texting channels that allow the users to call someone while still texting others. The voice/calling channels allow the users to video call each other and share screens. These channels can also be divided or grouped into different categories.
The categorization and grouping of channels help the conversations in a specific channel to stay on topic and also helps in organizing the workflow of the team. For example, a category can be created named “Management” in your server specifically for the management team of your business. Now, after creating this category, you can create several messaging and calling channels under it.
Other than this, Discord also allows you to create private channels in which you can discuss sensitive matters with only the selected members.
2. Sharing Screen with Your Business Team
Discord allows you to share the screen with your team. By sharing your screen, you can share important information with them easily. To do so, you will have to enter a voice channel first and then click on the screen share button that appears on your screen.
Your team will be able to join the voice channel, click on your server name, and view your live stream. During a live stream, all the participants can talk to each other. Your live stream can be seen by up to 50 people at once, which makes Discord the perfect application to share your ideas and other matters with your team easily.
3. Using a Discord Bot
If you want to keep your server moderate and add some fun to your workday, a Discord Bot will work just fine for you. Discord Bots can help keep the content of the server moderate so that the conversations stay on topic and teammates are refrained from sharing unnecessary links and files. Some bots let the participants share videos and music with their colleagues, play games, or conduct polls. In this way, you can take a break from the workload and freshen up your mind.
You can add a Bot to your server by searching up a list, and then you can add it to your server as easily as inviting other users to your server. Only the moderators and admins of the server can add a bot; other participants are not allowed to do so.
4. To Connect With Other Apps, Use Discord Integration
Discord has its own few integrations, and some of them have proved to be very useful for business purposes, for example, Droplr. Droplr is a screen recording and screenshot application that helps you save all of the images and videos in your secure personal space on the Cloud. Integration of Droplr allows the user to share and view GIFs, screenshots, and videos directly on the Discord server.
Screen recordings can be accessed by simply clicking on the associated cloud sharing link in your server. Discord can also be integrated with Zapier, which connects Discord with several other work productivity applications automatically.
Discord – An Excellent Platform for Businesses
In the end, the only question that arises is if Discord is actually right for your business or not? But the answer to this cannot be given with a simple Yes or No because Discord is great in some matters and not right in others. For example, if we talk about the content rights, Discord is not right because according to Discord’s ‘terms of service,’ it can remove or permanently delete your content with or without any warning or notice for any reason.
Besides this, there is everything that a business may want, such as public and private communication channels, live video and voice calls, etc. Therefore, if we keep the content removal policy aside, Discord is indeed an excellent choice for many businesses.