Week 7: Conversational Social Media

    A key factor for any business is maintaining a good relationship and effective communication with its customers. Thankfully, conversational social media platforms allow businesses to easily connect with their customers. Platforms like X (Formerly Twitter), Reddit, LinkedIn, and Discord allow businesses to form a virtual but authentic relationship with their loyal community. Most of these platforms have their own distinct features, such as conversations/chats, media sharing, and polls, which allow for this relationship in the community of the business. A platform with many of these features, I decided to research was Discord.

    Discord was initially a platform intended for the gaming community, but it has expanded beyond many other communities. Discord's main function is to allow people worldwide to connect through virtual communities called "servers." These servers include people who have the same interests, such as video games, music, movies/series, sports, and fashion. Most of these servers are private, which allows for more community-based communication and engagement.

    As stated earlier, Discord offers a range of features that facilitate communication. Within each server, there are different channels. Most servers have an "information" channel that includes the rules, FAQs, and announcements of the servers. There is also a preview mode before you join a community, which limits your view until you join it. Each server includes roles and bots to keep the server in order. Discord also allows for live virtual communication through video, voice, and text chats. You are also able to share different media, such as videos and pictures, and screen-sharing. For more privacy, Discord allows group chat DM's up to 10 people within the server.

    For businesses, Discord is a beneficial conversational platform. Businesses can create their own server and communicate with their customers. It allows brands to form a loyal community. For example, brands can converse and ask questions about what their community would like for them to improve or what products/services they would like in future releases. Business owners can also answer questions that their community has through the virtual communication features in real-time. Another way Discord can be utilized by brands is to use the server as an exclusive community where they can show their work behind the scenes. This helps build an authentic and trustworthy connection between the business and its customers. 

    Overall, conversational social media platforms can be beneficial for both the business and the customers. They help to build a loyal community and can help build exclusivity towards the brand. I plan to create a server for my brand in the future. I would maybe offer discounts for my products if people join the server, which is something I've seen other clothing brands do already. I think it would help me go for the exclusivity and the loyal community I want to create for my brand.