I failed in my attempt to establish an AI illustration community. In truth, this was something I had been trying to do for a while, but my Discord community stagnated at around 20 members, and various issues arose, leading to its ultimate failure.
Reasons for Failure
- Lack of clarity about the purpose of the community, even for myself.
- Weak ability to attract members.
- Poor management skills.
While there are various reasons that can be identified for the failure, they can be broadly categorized into the two points mentioned above.
Unclear Purpose
One issue was that I did not have a clear understanding of what I wanted to achieve with the Discord community I had created. While I don't believe that a community necessarily needs a strict purpose, simply inviting people into a community without any activities or goals is unlikely to be successful.
Initially, there were quite a few people who joined, but due to my lack of management skills, I eventually gave up.
Weak Ability to Attract Members
Currently, this community is using a certain social media platform as its entry point, but that's the only channel being utilized. In other words, if you're not using that particular social media platform, you wouldn't even be aware of the existence of this community.
Furthermore, even if people are aware of the community through social media, they may not be willing to put in the effort to join a Discord community unless it's a well-established community with a certain level of recognition.
Therefore, it seems reasonable that the community struggled to attract members due to its lack of simple name recognition.
Poor Management Skills
I had implemented several bots in the community, but looking back, this was likely a misguided strategy. While I had single-handedly launched the community, no core group of members emerged from it. As a result, I, as the founder, had to continue playing the role of a manager indefinitely. However, as the founder, I also needed to focus on social media promotion, content creation, and other tasks. Content creation, in particular, is an extremely time-consuming process, which raised the bar even higher.
The Collapse of the Lifeline
Another contributing factor to the failure was the banning of the social media account I was relying on. For the creation of this community, the influx of members from social media was crucial. However, when that social media account was suspended, it turned the whole situation on its head. This was undoubtedly the most painful mistake.
At the same time, I gained several valuable lessons from this experience.
Try Again Before It's Too Late
If I don't act on the lessons learned promptly, this failure will truly be a meaningless one that perpetuates itself. Whether these lessons are put to good use or wasted depends entirely on my subsequent actions.
In fact, this failure occurred around mid-March, and we're now in mid-April, a month later. The reason for my silence during this time was that I was contemplating whether to rebuild the community or not. And now, I've made a decision.
To put it bluntly, I will be completely withdrawing from the Discord community.
However, I intend to continue with the AI illustration community. The truth is, even the core content creation aspect has stagnated, and there's a palpable sense of inertia. Nevertheless, I want to reorganize and significantly shift the direction we're taking.
Despite this setback, I remain committed to the AI illustration community and aim to learn from my mistakes, refine my approach, and create something truly valuable and engaging for its members.
