Telegram is one of the platforms for social interaction and communities. It’s based on a messenger but goes beyond it. With over 400 mln monthly active users and the highest growth rate among messengers, Telegram targets to be №1 in the next few years. And it has solid reasons for that.
What is Telegram?
Telegram is an instant-messaging app launched in 2013 by the team of Pavel Durov. The main difference from other messengers is a high level of privacy and security. Chats are end-to-end encrypted and there is a special type of chats called secret chats. Apart from security, Telegram offers better usability and user experience with multiple tools to create communities, exchange files, make and share stickers, send voice and video messages, making voice and video calls. Telegram has both mobile and desktop apps.
What is the Telegram Channel?
Telegram Channel is a community tool to broadcast content for subscribers. It’s similar to groups on WhatsApp or Facebook Pages. In channels, subscribers can view and share any content, but they can’t leave comments for it (for communication with subscribers there are Telegram Groups). Telegram channels support broadcasting by schedule (or instant) of text, images, videos, links, files. Each channel has a statistic option – owners can track its growth, source of growth, the origin of users, their engagement.
Telegram channels are used for multiple purposes – sharing entertaining or useful content on the topic, blogging, business marketings, selling items and services, etc. You can use Telegram channels to increase sales, make additional profit from ads, increase brand awareness, enhance customer service, etc.
One of the main benefits of Telegram channels is the capacity to have an unlimited number of members and subscribers. For instance, WhatsApp groups allow 200-2500 users to join.
Types of Telegram Channel
There are two types of Telegram channels: public and private.
Public channels can be easily accessed by all users. The channel can be found on Telegram search or Google Search by the keywords. Public channels have short or branded URLs that can be edited at any time. For example, https://t.me/appsgeyserChannel. Before joining it, all users can scroll through the content and decide if it’s valuable enough for them to subscribe.
Private channels on the contrary are not open to everyone. Access to the channel is granted through the special invitation link that can be changed at any time. The link is generated by Telegram in the following format – https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAFZa1f0dNH0J4bJhAg. Private channels can’t be found by the search. Users can see the content before joining it.
Telegram allows creators to change the channel type from public to private and from private to public at any time.
How to Create a Telegram Channel?
You can create a Telegram channel through the app or desktop version.
- Open the menu on the left sidebar;
- Click “New channel”;
- Name your Telegram channel;
- Upload the icon;
- Add description;
- Confirm the creation;
- Choose the channel type: public or private;
- Set the permanent link for the public channel;
- Add members from your contacts or skip the step;
- It’s done!
Tips:
- You can add the first 200 members manually from your contacts;
- Put only important and relevant information in the description;
- Add contact usernames in the description block for getting feedback from users;
- Use keywords in the name, so users could find your channel;
- You can add up to 50 admins to the channel (it can be your friends or co-workers, for example);
- Keep the URL of the public channel simple;
- Use keywords in the name, so more users can find your channel on search;
- Put some effort into designing your logo and make it bright, memorable.
How to manage Telegram Channel?
Adding Administrators
Each Telegram channel has roles of creators and administrators. There can be up to 50 admin and only one creator. The full ownership rights belong only to the creator. Even after leaving the channel, he can join it back and still have his rights. All admins are added by the owner. Admins can change channel info, broadcast messages, edit posts, delete posts, add members, add other admins.
To set an administrator in your channel follow Settings – Manage Channel – Administrators – Add administrator – Select what the admin can do – Save.
Broadcasting content
Before starting publishing your posts, you need to consider your content strategy:
- What will you post – news about your company, news on certain topics, special offers, your thoughts and insights, industry cases, or something different? What content formats should you focus on?
- What problems are you going to solve for your users?
- How can you make your content unique?
- How many times a day will you broadcast? How many times a week?
- How will you manage content creation and publication?
To share the first new post, open your channel. In the Broadcast field, you can type the text and choose the media to attach. After publishing new content, you can edit it within 2 days.
Here are some tips from us:
- Don’t publish content at night, check on your users’ timezones. Since most users will be asleep, your view rate won’t be high.
- Don’t post more than 5 new messages a day. Users may get annoyed with constant notification and will mute your channel.
- Quality is better than quantity. If you copy-paste something from the web and don’t create unique content, you risk losing your users.
- Publish interactive content to get a higher engagement rate: polls, quests, links, etc.
- Don’t copy content from other channels, respect intellectual property.
- Don’t spam with GIFs. GIFs are great and fun but don’t broadcast them after each time you publish something great.
- Create your own branded stickers. The funnier they are, the higher chances they go viral.
For better user experience, you can use hashtags for navigation. Create different sections of content: news, thoughts, humor, media, offers, etc. Add hashtags to each post you publish and create a navigational post for your users, where they can see all sections. By clicking on the hashtags, they will be able to explore the relevant content on your channel.
How Can Telegram Channels Help your Business?
Apart from making entertaining communities with valuable content for industries like marketing, crypto, sales, or with media access to movies, books, audio… Telegram channels can help a business to grow.
- Increase awareness
The more company is presented on social platforms, the more users will get to know about it. This rule is simple.
- Gain new users
There are over 400 mln monthly active users on Telegram. Most of them prefer Telegram over other messengers and social media. Telegram targets 1 bln users in the next 2 years. That makes Telegram and its tools one of the most promising for business.
- Grow content performance
Telegram channels provide one of the best engagement rates for the content. View rate reaches up to 30%, while Facebook and Instagram posts reach only 10% of the subscribers. It happens because of push notifications. For each new post, the user gets a notification by default (no need to turn on notifications after joining channels, it happens automatically).
- Increase sales
Missing popular social platforms for business means losing income. By engaging with new users from Telegram, you can make more sales.
- Grow customers loyalty
Telegram proves itself as a reliable messaging app. Most users prefer it over WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger. Being able to communicate with friends or coworkers and access important information from the same app is a big value for users.
How to promote your Telegram Channel?
There are a variety of tools to promote Telegram channels:
- manual adding of members (the number is limited to 200);
- sharing channel link on social media and forums including Facebook, Quora;
- adding the channel to free Telegram catalogs;
- cross-promoting in Telegram channels;
- paid advertising in Telegram channels;
- paid advertising on social media (Facebook mainly);
- influencer marketings;
- buying bots and fake members;
- buying real Telegram members.
Among the free ways to promote Telegram channels, the most useful ones are manual adding of members, sharing links of Quora in relevant topics and questions (be the first one to answer and share your link), and cross-promotion (to start doing it, you need to have at least 2000 members).
Among the paid ways to promote channels, the most effective are paid advertising in other channels (you pay to get your link posted in big channels) and buying real Telegram members. The second method is faster and cheaper since no advertising can guarantee how many new users will get. By buying Telegram members, you can be sure to get as many subscribers as you paid for. The average price for members – $15 for 1000 and it depends on some factors: like the quality of members, the amount you buy. The delivery of members takes around 1-3 days for every 1,000 users.
