What is Discord? Quickly explained!

Discord is a free communication platform that was originally developed for gamers (similar to Twitch in a marketing context). It enables text, voice and video chats and offers server-based structures on which users can interact with each other. These servers can contain different channels for different topics, allowing for organized and specialized communication. Discord has now established itself beyond the gaming community and is used by a wide range of interest groups, including educational groups, study groups and social clubs.

5 facts about Discord for marketers

1. Communication platform for text, voice and video chats
2. Popular with gamers and communities
3. Offers server and topic-specific channels
4. Supports bots and integrations
5. Free of charge, with premium options (Discord Nitro)

How does Discord work? Explanatory video

A video is worth a thousand words, isn’t it? Here’s Discord quickly explained for you:

Place advertisements on Discord

Discord offers various possibilities for advertising and marketing:

1. Partnerships and sponsoring
2. Discord Server
3. Discord Ads
4. Nitro gifts

Partnerships, sponsoring and Discord Server

Companies can partner with popular Discord servers or influencers to promote their products or services. Create your own Discord server to build a community around your brand. This can serve as a platform for exclusive offers, announcements and direct customer contact.

Discord Ads and Nitro gifts

Although Discord does not offer traditional Google Ads or Facebook Ads (or Meta Ads) style ads, you can advertise creatively by integrating bots and other tools. Read more about Discord Ads here. Nitro is Discord’s premium service. You can offer Nitro subscriptions as gifts or contest prizes to increase participation and interest in your server.

Marketing tips for Discord

How can you use Discord? Here are 5 quick tips and then an XL 10+ minute explainer video if you want to learn more about Discord in marketing. Let’s take a look at Discord, what you can do:

1. Community development
2. Interactive content
3. Personalization
4. Engagement tools
5. Exclusive offers

Community development and interactive content

Build an active and engaged community. Use regular events, polls and exclusive content to keep members happy. Use Discord features like voice and video chat to host interactive content like live streams, Q&A sessions and webinars. Customize your server and bots to match your brand identity. This creates a consistent and professional environment for your community.

Engagement tools

Use bots and other tools to increase engagement. Examples include music bots, game bots and moderation bots.

Exclusive offers

Reward your community members with exclusive offers, discounts and early access to new products or services.

Discord in marketing? Comparison with TikTok, Instagram and YouTube

Let’s take a look at the “3 biggest competitors”:

1. Discord vs TikTok
2. Discord vs Instagram
3. Discord vs YouTube

Discord vs TikTok: What to look out for?

TikTok focuses on short, viral videos and reaches a younger target group through creative, visual content and trends. In contrast, Discord enables in-depth interactions and community building through structured text, voice and video chats. While TikTok encourages quick, short-term engagement, Discord provides a platform for regular events and specialized discussions.

• Short, viral videos vs. in-depth community interactions
• Young target group and trends vs. specialized interest groups
• Short-term commitment vs. long-term commitment
• Discord vs TikTok

Discord vs Instagram: What do you need to know?

Instagram is a visual platform that is great for branding and quick updates, with features such as Stories, Reels and IGTV. In contrast, Discord offers server-based structures for specialized communication and continuous exchange through text, voice and video chats. While Instagram allows for quick, visually appealing engagement, Discord encourages regular and specialized interactions within communities.

• Visual branding and quick updates vs. specialized communication
• Stories, reels, IGTV vs. themed servers and channels
• Rapid engagement vs. continuous exchange
• Discord vs Instagram

Discord vs YouTube: What’s the difference?

YouTube is the leading platform for video content, ideal for longer, informative or entertaining videos and reaches a wide audience through subscriptions and comments. In contrast, Discord provides a platform for continuous interaction and community building through text, voice and video chats in topic-based servers. While YouTube focuses on creative, visual presentations, Discord promotes interactive and specialized communication.

• Longer, informative videos vs. continuous interactions
• Broad audience through subscriptions vs. specialized interest groups
• Creative video presentations vs. interactive community discussions
• Discord vs YouTube

Use Discord? Short explanatory video for companies

Target group: Generation Alpha & Z and Discord

Generation Alpha, born from 2010 onwards, is growing up entirely in a digital world. They are familiar with smartphones, tablets and other digital devices and prefer visual and interactive media. Discord offers an ideal platform to reach this generation. Use Discord to share visual and interactive content such as videos, GIFs and memes. Generation Alpha values both education and fun. Offer content that combines both to capture and hold their attention. With these strategies, you can effectively use Discord to reach Generation Alpha and build an engaged community.

Learn more about here:

• Generation Alpha

4 Advantages of AI avatars and automated video creation

4 advantages at a glance, then to the AI avatar guide with HeyGen(AI tool).

Efficiency: Produce in a fraction of the time

Creating videos can often be tedious and costly. AI avatars allow you to produce high-quality content in a fraction of the time. Enter text, adjust settings and the system creates a finished video.

Personalization: Digital twin

AI avatars can be customized to match your ideal online persona. You can customize the look, voice and even the language of your avatar to build a stronger connection with your audience.

Accessibility: Even if you’re not a natural in front of the camera

Not everyone is a natural in front of the camera. AI avatars offer an excellent alternative for those who want to share their ideas without being in the spotlight themselves.

Cost savings: Without camera, equipment, …

Purchasing equipment and booking studios can quickly become expensive. With AI avatars, these costs are eliminated, making it a budget-friendly solution. Compared to a set up YouTube studio, significantly 1) cheaper and 2) faster.

HeyGen guide: A look at the practice

HeyGen is a specialized service that uses these technologies to allow users to quickly and easily create videos with AI avatars. Although there are some limitations in terms of natural representation of human emotions, HeyGen still provides an impressive platform to create digital content effectively and efficiently.

Example video: This is what an AI avatar with HeyGen looks like

Harness the power of AI avatars and boost your presence online – it couldn’t be easier!

Explanatory videos made easy

Explainer videos are a powerful tool for presenting complicated concepts in a simple and understandable way. AI-powered tools can automate this process and help you quickly create professional videos that inform and engage your target audience.

Use on social media for more reach and leads!

By using AI avatars in your videos, you can reach a larger and more diverse audience on social media channels such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Videos with AI avatars are often unique and innovative, which increases the likelihood of them being shared and going viral – a fantastic way to expand your reach and generate more leads.

More tips:

• Explanatory videos

Social Media: Community, Channel, Advertising – Tax Advisor

Taxes are a complex topic that, compared to many other services, cannot be conveyed so easily that the final marketing message is reduced to a minimum. Similar to banks and insurance companies, which live on the trust of their clients, tax advisors also have to pay special attention to their reputation.

So your social media agency needs:

1. Know How in Social Media Marketing
2. Know How in Online Marketing (see later on aspects like Display Ads and A/B Split Testing, as an example)
3. Understanding taxes for simple messages (concrete problems → solution)

Do you have any questions? Here you will find your contact person:

• Contact

Attention span: content for fractions of a second

In media, especially in marketing and advertising, it is so important to present content briefly and concisely. After all, the target audience sees the ad or the content produced especially for social media, often only for a fraction of a second. Your window to the customer: Fractions of a second. At the same time, tax advisor tasks are complex.

Maybe you know it yourself, when carelessly swiping in a social media app: photo, photo, photo, video, post, photo, photo, that all in 10, 15 seconds. The possible time of perception is therefore extremely short and accordingly content must be well planned, produced and of course also marketed(paid reach).

But reach is not everything, ultimately it is also about performance (sales / reach). The better the metrics are, the more likely new orders, sales and deals are. This is true in general and of course also for tax consultants who want to do social media marketing.

Social Media One – One partner for everything in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or even Düsseldorf and Cologne in NRW. One partner, for Germany and globally, if you wish.

Customer lifetime value: What is a customer worth?

Acquisition pays off, whether tax advisor for private individuals (wages and tax return at the end of the year), tax advisor for companies (monthly sales tax, wages, up to the end of the year) or also creative tax design, for example in the area of asset management and real estate management. Products are mostly one-off sales, clients stay with the same tax expert for years, some for decades.

This also creates much less pressure on advertising costs, while often products need click prices in the cent range (to be profitable), tax consultants can also afford clicks from qualitatively high-priced segments (more valuable target groups). This expands the possibilities, target groups and strategies enormously.

Whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, new networks like Instagram, TikTok or on Twitch, social media marketing is a big playground where many mistakes (losses) can be made at the same time. That’s why there are specialized social media agencies that not only have the typical marketing channels in mind, but also alternative marketing methods. From additional display ads, which then, for example, play out your ads, in renowned online magazines, to the advertising insertion before specialized podcasts, which deal with the topic of finance, even better taxes.

In each case, it depends on the individual objective, whether mandates are to be acquired and / or, for example, products are to be sold digitally. Depending on this, other methods and strategies, but also social networks are used.

How much does “one click” cost? Example

If you simply “only” book advertising, then you pay approximately 3.34 euros per click, for German target groups. If you have a conversion (sales / visitors) of 0.2%, every 500th visitor buys a product or one of your services.

• Price per click (without optimization): 3,34 Euro
• Conversion rate: 0.2% (500 visitors = 1 sale)
• Cost per person (lead): 1,670 euros / sale

In addition, of course, you need the appropriate social media channel, content, offers, and even an extra website if necessary.

To ensure that the costs do not explode and are precisely measurable(reporting), tax consultants hire social media agencies.

Define goals, social media workshop

Everything starts with the first step, including your social media marketing concept. If you haven’t had any experience with a social media agency before, here’s a quick overview of the general onboarding process.

Start of cooperation: get to know the tax firm

With reputable agencies like us, we don’t start placing ads right away(social ads). That would be absolutely inefficient! Without knowledge about you as a customer, your specific target group, your offer, no target-oriented social media strategy can be developed.

The first step is always to get to know each other. Company, history, goals, previous buyers, previous marketing activities and products, as well as future target groups, buyers and products, if applicable. Only through knowledge about their tax firm, their services and also their additional services, strategies for advertising in social media can be developed.

Target group: private individuals (B2C), companies or groups (B2B)

In terms of target group, capacity also plays a major role. Have you just set up as a tax consultant or are you already positioned with partners or even with branch offices?

In addition, there is the focus: B2B (tax advisor for companies), B2C (tax advisor for private individuals), a mix or also with additional services, for example an integrated lawyer.

Many parameters that are finally brought into structure in a joint workshop. The following concepts and marketing activities (plan) are directly linked to the findings (workshop). The first creatives (media and concepts) are then developed from this. As a law firm, you will also be involved in this step, through a further meeting in which the first results of the creative will be discussed.

Tailor ads to target audiences (and languages):

Community management, channel building

Depending on whether social media channels already exist or not, the next step is to set them up (channel, community, ad manager, social media software, editorial plans and so on). You can learn more about this in our general articles:

• Social media agency

Community management: content instead of “news

Just as important as channel building, subsequently becomes active community management, yes also for tax advisors. The community refers to the people who follow your social media channel(s). Best practice example from Youtube, with over 100,000 followers show how interesting the topic of taxes is for millions of people.

Social media is not just a news channel, this is about interaction with fans and followers.

To ensure that your social media channel does not become a boring news channel, good social media agencies build interaction with the community. In its simplest form, this can already be reactions to comments, or replies to private messages that will reach your tax firm. In a broader sense, it’s also about action, actively engaging the community, being proactive.

Ideal case: Content is so good that it gets shared.

If you want to know even more about community management, read more on our social media blog here:

• Community management

Paid / organic reach: building

But how do you build a large community? The magic word is paid reach. Some people will say that organic reach builds itself. Let’s say you generate 1 follower per day and every 5th one gets another person to follow you (which is very optimistic and assumes good content). How long will it take for them to have 1,000 followers / fans? Even after a year, you would barely have 500 people.

Therefore, we now come to building reach and of course, selling services and products, through targeted advertising on social networks.

Placing advertisements: Facebook, Instagram & Co.

Advertising on social networks requires a lot of know-how!

Here we want to give you a little insight into how targeted advertising is nowadays, for example through pixels, targeting or more specific tools such as geo-tracking. Your community is built and with the initial data, (simply put) friends and acquaintances can be reached more easily. Young entrepreneurs may have a similar circle of friends. You can reach them with social ads. As well as new target groups, through said targeting.

Likewise, we give you as a law firm in the following insights into how the efficiency of individual ads, in the second step, is increased by the social media agency. Let’s start with the target group and the target.

Reach target groups: Age, profession, interests

Active social media advertising then specializes in very specific target groups that are relevant to you. This is also where the magic of social media advertising lies! Through the many data that users disclose about themselves, whether locations, active“like” comments or following other channels (friends, companies and influencers), target groups can be excellently segmented for the placement of advertising. The better certain groups can be distinguished from each other, the more targeted the advertising can be.

An example?

For example, you could specifically reach (target) people who are interested in entrepreneurship, finance, people who own a latest smartphone model at the same time, live in Berlin-Mitte, Charlottenburg or Grunewald (rather wealthy), aged between 25 and 35, allso young entrepreneurs who could become long-term customers…. and so on.

Target group 1 in the example:

• Interests: Entrepreneurship, finance
• Smartphone model: New and expensive
• Place of residence: Berlin or more precisely Mitte, Charlottenburg, etc.
• Age: 25 – 35 years (founding period, no tax consultant available)
• …

That for only 1 target group for advertisements. For this purpose, other clusters (groups) of target groups are formed.

Target group 2 could be:

• Interests: Entrepreneurship, finance
• Smartphone model: New and expensive
• Residence: Hamburg or more precisely HafenCity, Eimsbüttel, etc.
• Age: 25 – 35 years (founding period, no tax consultant available)
• …

You see in comparison, the only parameter that changes was the place of residence. So you can also see how many different target groups can be adressed for your topics. The database of social networks, the mechanisms of advertising are so sophisticated that this was really only a simplified example!

But not only the target groups differ. The ads themselves are also played out in different forms in order to determine the most effective approach (conversion rate).

A/B tests: increase the efficiency of the advertisements

Another, important method in social media marketing is testing different ads (as well as target audiences).

Within these tests, simply put, different options are compared with each other and their achieved results (metrics) as well. Simply put, “does the photo work better without the video”? In the end, which medium generated more deals and new mandates for your tax firm?

For example, tested are:

• Target groups (as seen above)
• Photos (for example, content, single photo, gallery, …)
• Videos (for example, length, text elements, models, …)
• Texts (for example, content, text length, emojis, …)

This comparing and testing of different contents, within different target groups, gives statements about which ways are most efficient for your personal constellation, which are less and which advertisements are inefficient; this also happens, but is just quickly corrected.

This serves to optimise the cost of advertisements over the long term and, of course, to optimise sales promotion.

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Co.

When it comes to choosing social networks, you have free choice these days. You can address a rather solid, older target group on Facebook, 20 to 35 year olds also Instagram, other target groups with a high thirst for knowledge can be reached via Youtube, e.g. via explainer videos or via ads that are played before these specific explainer videos.

Here, too, your social media agency is a valuable companion, because marketing activities on all these social networks, that costs a lot of money. Accordingly, you also focus the active use of networks that provide the greatest added value for your company. Better quality and an active community, see community management, than 5 different social media channels as a tax consultant and none of the channels is really cared for.

This is also how you achieve organic growth. Reach that everyone is looking for, after all, your own product gets around by word of mouth. That means referral marketing, for example because well-known people have marked a certain post of yours with “Like”.

However, all of this brings us back to a very important topic for tax accountants and social media marketing, understanding of tax matter.

Understanding and marketing tax

As mentioned in the introduction, marketing does not only require expertise in social media marketing, or the placement of advertisements, but also an understanding of taxes as a matter in itself, in order to be able to transport the content. Finally, the right questions must be asked, the right problems uncovered, so that the right and individual solutions can be designed in the marketing strategy.

Again, it’s all about efficiency, how many contacts should be approached without them becoming clients? Ideally, as few as possible (cost-efficient).

Advice and contact

You want to start as a tax consultant with social media marketing or increase the already existing performance? Then contact us now, we look forward to your inquiry and your project. Contact information and contact persons can be found here:

• Contact: Social Media Agency

Create an infographic (1): Step by step

The first step: Consider which content brings the most added value for your visitors. For example, if you run an online shop for pet food, make a graphic about “The 5 sweetest dogs”, “The 5 most popular pets” or “The 3 most popular birds for home”. This way you can create great content that your readers will appreciate, as well as the algorithm of search engines, but also social networks, because infographics are very popular among users. Tip: Include your logo and domain in the URL so everyone knows who made the graphic. This way you get additional reach, even if others share your infographics.

Example: Fruit and healthy food

In today’s example, we are looking at an infographic for our fashion magazine, more specifically, it deals with the topic of diet, healthy eating and, for our example: seasonal fruit in comparison. We want to show the 3 most popular types of fruit that currently come from the region (a good trend topic for autumn, winter and the beginning of spring). Additionally, the infographics contain interesting information about vitamins and minerals. This way the user gets all aspects that make a good infographics: Data, design, story and share.

Tip! If you want to learn more about the systematics of infographics, take a look at the Youtube video! Here you will find the 4 factors of good infographics and more videos for your Photoshop skills.

Explanatory video: Create infographics with photos (German)

Download: Template for infographics (English)

You can download the graphic shown in the video here for free! So you can see how it is constructed, but you can also become active yourself.

• Download: Template infographic – example fruit (zip-archive)

More videos: Infographics with Photoshop

In the 2nd and 3rd example we come to special and quickly created text infographics as well as a special: self painted infographics. Both examples and videos can be found further down in the article!

How is a good infographics created?

Every good infographics for blogs and social media contains four factors:

• Data the data basis
• Design the design of the graphics
• Story the content compilation
• Share preparation for social networks

Data: Data basis for interesting facts

The first important factor is your data basis. Without the necessary information no infographics can be made. For example, if you don’t know who will win the next US presidential election, you won’t be able to make an infographics of the winners. Accordingly, an existing data base is always the foundation.

Story: Content compilation and the teaser

Which data do you have and which pictures, if you want to use any? If you have a good data basis for your infographics, for example an evaluation, a study, an assessment as well as the necessary graphics, you should want to use pictures, e.g. as mentioned above in the field of pet food the “Top Five of Pets”, by using dog, cat, budgie and co.

Data is not everything, of course there should be a good story behind it. One of the easiest ways to do this is by ranking in toplists. Like:

• “Top 10 household appliances”
• “Top 6 of the most expensive Ferraris“
• Top 5 Most Popular Pets

Design: Design of the graphics

The story also always corresponds with the design of your infographics – how do you present the “story”?

For example, if you take up a relatively simple topic, as well as the mentioned top list, then the graphic design is relatively simple. However, if you are dealing with a complex topic and also a more complex target group, e.g. as in this example Social Media and Online Marketing Manager, then a graphic can be more extensive. But it is important that it summarizes many aspects and provides a quick and clear picture.

Example 1: Detailed information graphic

It is aimed at social media managers in companies. There are deliberate details for which you have to zoom (keyword interaction). The graphic contains new knowledge and thus has a high share factor.

Example 2: Viral infographics

How do you achieve relatively high virality? Think about tabloid themes: who hangs out with whom? Who makes the most money? Which fashion designers are in demand on the red carpet? in the example you can see how much an influencer earns. the graphic is from 2017 – oldie, but goldie!

Create infographics (2): Toplist with texts (German)

In the second example you will now learn how to quickly create infographics with text. As shown in this example, you can quickly and easily display the most popular first names of the current year of birth in an infographic.

This way you can create two lists in no time at all, for female and male first names. If you want to go even deeper into the search engine optimization, e.g. if you have an online shop for prams or baby food, you could have this infographic prepared by an employee for the individual years or even decades (70s, 80s, 90s, etc). This way you would have great and individual content, which would be appreciated by your visitors but also by the algorithm of the search engines.

How to create infographics with text in no time at all you will learn here in Photoshop.

Explanatory video: Create infographics with lists (German)

[ THE VIDEO WILL BE RELEASED IN A FEW DAYS ]

Download: Template for infographics (English)

You can download the graphic shown in the video here for free! So you can see how it is constructed, but you can also become active yourself.

• Download: Template infographics – Example names (zip-archive)

Create infographics (3): Graphics in video: Painted and transparent

In the third example from my “Infographics Special” on Youtube you learn how to import self-drawn sketches into Photoshop and save them afterwards. Practically you will also learn how to save these graphics transparently and how to use them in your own videos. This way you can increase the authenticity of your YouTube videos by using self-drawn graphics. Maybe you will soon have your own info product with individual graphics? Now you know how it works!

Explanatory video: Create infographics in-video (German)

[ THE VIDEO WILL BE RELEASED IN A FEW DAYS ]

Sharing: Viral factors for social networks

From design, story and the data available to you is the transition to sharing in social networks flow. The better your data is prepared, the better the little story is told, the clearer and quicker your graphics are to understand, the higher is the probability that it will be shared by visitors of your website or even fans of your social media site.

These were my 3 example videos for you! Create infographics with Photoshop, from design to SEO and viral posts. If you liked my free explanatory videos, follow my Photoshop playlist (German) or me on Youtube: Lukinski!

What does a good SEO Onpage Optimization cost?

Nothing, if you do it yourself! As I have already shown in my Youtube channel and in many blog posts, you can build your own great sites especially with WordPress, even entire online stores with strong preformance. Today on Youtube we’re going to look at an everyday problem: Onpage Optimization.

Is your page ranking 11th, 12th or even 10th on page 1? How do you get another push to get to 3, 4 or even #1? Sometimes it doesn’t have to be much at all. One step that makes sense is internal linking, as exemplified here always on exact keywords like when I talk about real estate listing optimize realtor or even better Photoshop batch processing. Step 2 are external media, for example from Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and my favorite for statistics: Statista.

Onsite: 4 tips incl. explanatory video

German tutorial.

Learn SEO online: Podcast episode

You want to learn SEO? The first tip to learn SEO is our marketing podcast and in particular episode #8 What is SEO? shows you the 1×1 of search engine optimization for platforms like Google, Bing & Co. all 100% free on Spotify, iTunes & Co. We answer the most frequently asked questions of self-employed, companies and businesses that start with SEO:

• What is SEO? Podcast episode
• More SEO articles in the blog

Learn SEO online: Podcast episode

You want to learn SEO? The first tip to learn SEO is our marketing podcast and in particular episode #8 What is SEO? shows you the 1×1 of search engine optimization for platforms like Google, Bing & Co. all 100% free on Spotify, iTunes & Co. We answer the most frequently asked questions of self-employed, companies and businesses that start with SEO:

• What is SEO? Podcast episode
• More SEO articles in the blog

Google Analytics Basics: Login and Embedding

Tip. Want to learn more about SEO? Watch free + premium videos in the Lukinski SEO Masterclass and here for free in the Social Media One blog.

• Writing SEO texts – 6 episodes on Youtube
• Set up WordPress – 5 episodes on Youtube

Google Webmaster Tools Basics: Sitemap to Analysis

WordPress setting: Pages, categories and links

SEO Onpage Optimization: 4 Onsite Tips with Content and Embedding

Photoshop batch processing and image SEO: Automatically edit photos

Photoshop, WordPress & SEO: Optimize real estate listings<

Duplicate stock photos for blog and rankings

Merge multiple text files: Notepad++ Alternative

Photoshop Tutorial: Realistic shadows around objects

Tip! Social Media Software & Learn Online: The latest tools, the best software and new: Online courses for social media managers. Automation of postings, newsletter marketing and learn new strategies online! Now on my Social Media Agency: Social Media Tool.

Shadow with effect layers and selfmade

In the following, most people initially use effect layers. You can activate these by double-clicking on the desired layer in the Layers window.

Afterwards a popup opens, in which you have different options. One of them is the drop shadow. Here Photoshop creates a shadow around your object. This is enough for many needs. But if you want to go a little further in your design and put realistic shadows on people, for example, you have to do a little more. We will come to that in the next step!

Do it yourself! Realistic shadows with brush + soft focus

Ideally, you should place a new layer under the object and paint the corresponding areas black. Depending on whether the shadow can be seen completely behind the person or only partially, for example on the floor. You can draw very roughly, because we will blur later.

After that you can control > Filter > Blur > Gray blur via the menu and set the strength of the effect.

Now you move your layer under your object and voila, the shadow is ready!

Of course it is worthwhile to position and align the shadow again.