Why Team Discord is the Greatest Recruiter

[Matt_O 896]

In November of 2018, I joined the Victory Hockey League. My cousin @TrevorC11 told me about this league, and I had an immediate interest. Unfortunately, he was confused about how it worked and wasn't as interested, and quickly became inactive. I tried to get him back into it and he got signed to the Wild, but never earned any TPE. He just didn't understand how to do it, and it frustrated him. I was new to it as well, so I couldn't explain the process of earning TPE to him because I didn't know much of it myself. He didn't return to the VHL until August, where I tried to get him to make a new player, but he just wasn't interested. All these questions he had when he joined could have been easily answered had he joined the vhl's discord.

 

At the time of his joining, he received only one offer and was confused on what to do. He never accepted the offer because he wasn't sure how to work the portal. I tried to explain it to him the best I could, but I was just as new as he was and I knew next to nothing. I would rely on the team discord servers to tell me how our team did in the playoffs because I didn't know where to find the game results. I also frequently posted vhl.com articles in the media spots section because I didn't know there was a vhl.com articles section. The biggest issue was that there was so many different functions of the league that I didn't know what I was doing even though I asked questions in the team discord. I figured it out eventually, but the problem is that people such as my cousin don't have the patience or as much interest as I did, so they get frustrated and leave. A lot of the information for new people are posted on forums and easy to access if you get guidance from other members, but the problem that I faced when I was new was that I didn't know what a lot of the stuff meant. I had access to the information, but I didn't know what the information meant. This is why I don't think it's a coincidence that once teams started using discord, recruitment and retainment skyrocketed in S66 and S67. While the effort of the recruitment certainly was important for that big boom in members, I believe that team discords made retainment of members much higher than it ever has been.  

 

The team discords are great for several reasons compared to looking at forums posts for help. First of all, many of the forum posts are locked so you can't ask questions, and even if you do, there's a chance no one will see it. In discord, it is not only a guarantee someone will see your question and answer, but the time it takes for them to answer is way faster than what it would take on forums. Discord also creates a much more friendly experience because you feel a bond with other new members as well as the team GM, which is key for retainment. Having team discords certainly helped to keep me active, because I would have no idea what was going on without it. 

[diamond_ace 3,106]

@Matt_O if he ever does want to come back, I'll gladly let him into Prague discord just so he has some people to talk to and ask questions of, until he's gotten more of the hang of things

[Matt_O 896]

1 hour ago, diamond_ace said:

@Matt_O if he ever does want to come back, I'll gladly let him into Prague discord just so he has some people to talk to and ask questions of, until he's gotten more of the hang of things

If he ever brings it up or if I can get him too I will let him know, but I think he found the league and was interested in it because he thought it would be more like be a pro rather than have to write stuff for tpe