Meet Avery

“My server is called 100 gecs, based on the band of the same name. We made it right before the band's first album came out, as a small fan community with a few hundred folks in the summer of 2019. The band joined the server almost immediately and started sharing it, and we've been a growing community ever since.”

Avery’s mission is for the community to provide a safe space where users can talk about music, their hobbies, their interests and other things without hate or toxicity. 

“I know that the internet can be an unwelcoming place and I want to provide someplace different. Besides the overall theme of the server being about the band, people come here to talk about all sorts of stuff in their daily lives, and I want the server to continue being a place where they can do that safely.”

How the 100 gecs Community Used Community Events to Grow

The community has grown significantly since it was first started in 2019 and currently has around 6,300 members. The main driver of this growth has been its unique Community Events.

Alongside keeping existing community members engaged and active in the server, 100 gecs community has also welcomed hundreds of new members through Community Events.

“Our server is known for hosting online music festivals such as Summer Nights. We'd get dozens of musicians to come and perform in a voice channel for us, the band themselves even played for us! So besides the popularity of the band giving us members through Twitter and Reddit, we'd get a large influx of members from people listening to our music fests."

"Nowadays when we aren't hosting fests, our member growth comes from Server Discovery, the subreddit for the band, and the official website for the band links to us as well.” 

Learn how to grow your community with events!

Server Promotion

In addition to having the band’s support as a big part of the community’s growth, the 100 gecs Community is incredibly active in promoting across their social media and website. Still, Avery thanks the community members and musicians who help promote the music fests.

“We gain hundreds of members per month without any extra events, around 500 or so, and that growth is stable and doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.” ‍

Members can often be our biggest advocates. Learn how to grow your community through member referrals!

Adapting Your Server to Community Growth

Managing and moderating a growing community can be daunting and comes with additional work to be aware of. It’s important your server is able to adapt to its growing members and is still able to keep the community safe. 

“Moderating a server with thousands of people is always going to be a difficult task, no matter the resources or knowledge you have on your side."

"That being said, an issue we've faced is a lack of resources. We're rather low on moderators for a server of our size. Despite putting out calls for mods, we didn't find many capable or willing members. To help fix this issue, we made our permissions and auto-moderation system stringent."

"By doing this, we made sure many trolls or spammers are automatically punished, which lowers or entirely removes the need for manual moderation in a few types of cases."

"Overall, most issues are handled quickly and quietly, and our AutoMod buys us time to find more talented moderators.”

Growing Your Community Intentionally

Bigger isn’t always better. Maintaining a healthy and welcoming environment will always be key to the community’s long-term success, whatever its size!

In addition, setting expectations as to what new members should expect when joining the community will also be important in ensuring new members stick around for a truly valuable experience. 

Avery’s advice is: “Give people a reason to come to your server. What do you provide that other spaces do not? For example, do you provide events that are unique and interesting? Is your server about a more niche topic or interest? Are you the official space for your community to meet up around a content creator or brand? What is your server known for? Anything and everything can make up your server's unique identity.”

Remember, “member count isn't everything, your community is. Most people would rather be in a server with a small but strong community than an unhappy huge one. Having a happy community means that any growth is more likely to stick around and be active as well!”

Thank you so much to Avery for their help writing this article. If you’d like to join the 100 gecs server, click here to check it out. If you’re interested in learning more about growing a community on Discord, click here to find out more.