Where to build the community?

Depends on your audience. But I'd choose Telegram - no need to switch channels (like in Slack), less noise compared to FB.

We build out an initial community on a Facebook group and it used to be a great place to build out your first community. We realized as facebook pushed for more personal content and short videos our reach was stalled so we had to create our own tool to manage our community. We have now released it for everyone as UUKI.

I use slack now and have before managing communities. Discord as well. I find discord better if everyone is there for drops, launches, and updates. Slack has a more personal-person use case because it’s easier to stay organized and repurpose content from the community for social, email, and other channels. Because slack as a more work feel, you’re also less likely to get trolls - though it can happen. Discord is anonymous and was subject to more bs in my experience. Best of luck!

We also picked Discord, it's free and no learning curve in my opinion. And while it works now as we're growing, we want to have the ability to pivot later as well. One other I was considering was circle.so, we decided against it for now as its too early for us, but its good to compare and against each other. I really do believe is up to the company, level of engagement, and community members.

Discord has the most helpful tools for moderation which is really awesome because 80% of building an online community is constant spam fighting and blocking people. But the downside is unless your audience is super into it, it can be harder to get people to make the jump to Discord as opposed to using something their already comfortable with. Facebook has given more moderation tools as of late and this is probably your best bet if you want the most amount of people involved in it. Plus since you seem to be focused on people building a brand they all probably have a Facebook account they use for their business an ads so it would probably be the best bet. Despite being the more "un-sexy" pick compared to Discord.

We picked Discord over Slack. It has very similar features and it's FREE. So far I don't regret the decision.

discord is certainly an amazing place to do so slack is more work oriented i feel.

I think your targeted audience might be something to consider. Kids, young adults, & gamers all use Discord- not slack. Businesses, freelancers, consultants, etc use Slack (and Discord too).

I feel slack would be the right place

There is no one-size-fits-all platform for building an online community. The best platform for building an online community depends on a variety of factors, including your customer demographic, budgeted time for engagement, what form of engagement brings the most value to your product (voice, messaging, forum conversation, content sharing, etc.), and many other things. For example, if your customer base is composed of retired swimming coaches who are over 50 years old, you probably won't want to use Discord. Instead, you'll want to choose a platform that is accessible to your target audience.

Discord is probably the best platform for community engagement and building

Discord

I haven't used Discord but after reading this discussion, I think I should be looking for it.

Hey David. Wondering if you already made your decision on which way to go ? Would love to see how you kicked it off :)