Are you exploring effective channels to grow your audience online? Then Telegram is a great platform to try. It is affordable, scalable, and reliable — everything you make the communication process swift and effective.
Messaging applications have evolved to a whole new level. A few years ago, if you had told that you could reach individual customers virtually using a 6-inch device, people would’ve laughed.
But that thing is currently a thriving reality.
There are so many messaging apps — Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Hike — that provide a great user experience.
Using these platforms, you can attract new eyeballs and grow your audience.
Telegram is one of my favorite tools to grow my audience.
You can leverage Telegram not only to build an audience but interact with them daily.
Let’s explore more about the Telegram platform and try to determine whether it is indeed a better platform to interact with your users on a personal level.
What is Telegram?
Telegram is a cloud-based messaging service. It is a chatting application available on Windows (PC and Phone), macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android platforms.
Telegram’s headquarters is located in London, United Kingdom, and operational offices are in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It was first released on 14th August 2013.
This chatting application is currently serving 400 million users per month. That number is 100 million more than the previous year. As per this calculation, 1.5 million new users sign up on Telegram every day.
Such a massive rise in monthly active user base how much people like using it.
Just after 2.5 years of its initial launch, Telegram has delivered 15 billion messages daily.
Now, you may argue that statistics don’t equate to results. Even though these numbers are good, are they viable to decide whether the chatting platform can help me interact with my audience?
Does it have the necessary features that make my communication seamless?
Well, let’s find out.
Why should you be on Telegram?
Because it is free for everyone
This is the fundamental reason that you should leverage Telegram for talking to the audience.
First, it’s a messaging app. So, you can have one-to-one communication. Second, it is available for free. You don’t have to pay anything to use Telegram.
There is no subscription cost or license to use Telegram for commercial goals. Your audience doesn’t have to pay the Telegram owners either for using its features. Therefore, you can have maximum ROI through Telegram, period.
Many users are already on Telegram
Telegram is a popular messaging application.
Sometimes when your audience is not using the platform, convincing them to trust and create an account on the platform, let alone join your community can be tough.
With a current user base of 400 million, many of us at least have an account created. Therefore, your job has become to make people join your group or community. Because it is highly likely that most of them would at least have a Telegram account.
With so many people already using Telegram, you have tremendous opportunity to increase your audience and grow imminently on digital platforms.
As a marketer, knowing and leveraging the channel where your users are already using is a goldmine of creating more business opportunities. So, you must be on Telegram to interact with people.
You get 100% organic reach, every time
Brand awareness, engagement, and reach you get for your content through Telegram is 100% organic.
Telegram does not have any indirect or direct ad selling platform where you have to pay to get the impressions.
So, every result for your blog or brand is completely free.
Due to its 100% organic nature, budget bloggers, or brands with low marketing resources can leverage Telegram to build and interact with their audience.
Possible to advertise, engage, sell, or support your audience
Telegram’s layout and features are developed to support online selling, engagement, and advertising.
That’s the excellent point of Telegram as it doesn’t limit itself just to engagement.
You can actually pursue your prospects and convert them as buyers.
If you have a team of people who look into communication, support, sales, or marketing, everyone can log in to the Telegram account and do tasks.
Interactive content, polls, quizzes (native and 3rd party bots)
On any online platform, content matters the most.
Whether it is social media, email, search engine, or instant message, you have to focus on the type of content you are sharing online.
Speaking of content, Telegram has different ways of communicating with your users. You can implement interactive formats like polls and quizzes to make users engage in the community.
With such types of content, you can understand your audience better.
You can get their feedback, which you can then use to modify your communications if necessary.
You get stickers to make your communication readable and clear. You can use native or third-party bots, which we are going to discuss below, automating conversations.
Easily accessible due to hybrid apps
Nowadays, almost every entrepreneur or sales executive has to be online to talk to users. Now, you may have to create separate accounts and use different profiles.
This is the most essential feature of using Telegram.
Telegram has user-friendly apps for desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphones. You can download and login easily to your Telegram profile.
Most importantly, you can log in to one Telegram account from different devices. You can effectively manage the same media, files, communications, and contacts from all the devices.
Telegram’s apps are straightforward. So, all the tasks —talking to the audience, finding a contact, media, or file is effortless on Telegram.
Schedule messages on Telegram (personal, group, or channel)
If you have some exciting news to share, you can schedule your messages on Telegram.
This way, you will never miss a chance to interact with your user and stay up to date and fast for all your communications.
You don’t have to remember the time and date to share a particular thing with your Telegram audiences.
You can pick a date, and Telegram will automatically send your message during the scheduled time on personal, group, or channel on Telegram.
This will give you a lot of mental peace because, as a blogger and marketer, you cannot remember every single time you have to message your contacts.
How is Telegram different from WhatsApp?
Members cannot see each others’ phone numbers.
Telegram provides better privacy than WhatsApp. Because the latter doesn’t reveal phone numbers of users who are members of the same group.
Users can interact with each other through usernames.
This way, as an admin of a group or a channel, you don’t need to worry about the privacy of users.
A single profile can be accessed across multiple devices
This is a huge benefit and fundamental difference that sets Telegram apart from WhatsApp.
You cannot access your WhatsApp profile from two smartphones or tablets at the same time. However, a single Telegram profile is accessible across all the devices.
You can have a single Telegram account, and each member of your team can moderate and manage channels and groups effectively from their respective devices.
Robust server storage
All the conversations on Telegram are permanently stored on the cloud.
All your media, images, files, and videos, which you have shared, will be stored on the Telegram’s cloud server.
Whenever you sign in to your Telegram account from any device, you can access the storage and download or upload data.
Media compression
Whenever you send any image or video through WhatsApp, the app compresses it.
Therefore, you would observe lower media quality for the images and video shared across WhatsApp.
But when you share media on Telegram, you can choose whether to compress or send the uncompressed format.
Even while downloading the file, the recipient can choose the preferred format, compressed or uncompressed, while downloading. Even if you don’t download, media is stored forever on the Telegram cloud.
A Telegram group can hold up to 200,000 users.
Initially, a group on Telegram can accommodate 200 users. As soon as the limit is reached, the group is converted into a supergroup that can hold up to 200,000 users.
A WhatsApp group’s limit is 256 members only. Then, the admins have to create a separate group. But with Telegram, you can maintain a huge amount of audience effectively.
A channel can have unlimited users.
A Telegram channel is similar to a Telegram group.
A channel is like an open directory where you can broadcast public messages. A Telegram channel can have unlimited members.
If you have millions as your audience, you can leverage Telegram channels and interact with them.
Moreover, you can assign special privileges and access to specific users on a Telegram channel.
You can choose who can share posts and who can view the post. Users can search for a conversation, media, and file inside a channel.
Secret chat
In the Secret Chat feature, you can set a timer for a message to self-destruct itself when the timer goes off.
That means when the timer is over, the message will be deleted automatically.
This is a great way to provide exclusive offers and giveaways to your audience. You can leverage scarcity and enable urgency for your offers and quickly generate more conversions.
Bots
This is one of the core reasons that can make Telegram a powerhouse for building a loyal audience for you. If you can nail this part, you can achieve profitable results.
If you have a wide audience then managing and moderating groups or channels can be tempting. Therefore, you can have a bot that is always there to take care of some common scenarios on your behalf.
Telegram allows you to create bots. You can develop your own bot from scratch if you wish to.
Usually, bots are helpful in the below scenarios.
To manage group
You can send welcome messages with group guidelines for everyone who is using part of your group. You can deploy followup and reminder messages to let users know about the offers you have shared.
To answers common questions
If your channel or group is related to gadgets, electronics, or ‘how-to processes’ of some niche, users will come up with some common questions.
Whenever they ask some common questions, they will instantly get a response from the bot. The bot will provide the necessary answer and resolve their query.
To keep users engaged.
Keeping your channels and groups engaged is not easy. So, with this type of bot, you can deploy engaging content and automate messages in activities to keep users involved with the communications.
To keep your subscribers updated.
This type of bot will automate messages to explain details about recent changes in the group. The bot will automate the message whenever you make some changes in the policy of the channel or group.
These are basic bots. Based on your requirement, you can automate almost everything on your Telegram channel and group using bots.
Dynamics of Telegram Chats
With Telegram, you can have one-to-one communication with other people; just like you do on WhatsApp — you can connect with people that are in your contacts.
But there are certain areas where Telegram gets more advanced and dynamic.
You can create groups and channels and invite people by sharing a short link. Usually, the short link will be in the format of ‘t.me/shortcode.‘
Groups and channels are private and public. Private Telegram groups/channels are not found through the global search on the app. These groups/channels are invite-only.
Only if you get an invitation link from the admin of the groups/channels, then only you can join them. While the groups/channels can be found by using the global search of the app.
Channels can have unlimited members, while a group can have 200,000 at maximum.
Whether it is group, channel, or direct communication, you can share files, images, videos, documents, and location.
You can also do quizzes and poles in your channels and groups to keep the communication interactive.
Telegram Growth Strategy
Join relevant groups in your niche
Growing your audience using Telegram is a straightforward procedure.
First, just like any other channel, you have to identify the right people who would be interested to learn and read about what you want to share and provide.
The best way to find them is to join other relevant Telegram channels of your industry.
For example, if you are sharing content on health and fitness, search the same keywords, health, and fitness in the Telegram’s global search, and you will get the list of relevant groups and channels.
You can go to each and every group and see what type of conversations members are having. And you can join whichever you feel would help you grow your audience.
You can also do a Google search about relevant Telegram channels and groups of your niche.
Engage and share on other channels
People who are part of Telegram channels are serious about the content shared on those channels. And everyone loves high-quality content.
So, you can tap into that behavior, and start contributing to the Telegram channel.
Eventually, you will make connections, and your reputation in the group will grow.
For example, you are part of a Telegram channel related to digital marketing, and you have a blog yourself. So, you can genuinely discuss and help people about marketing based on your expertise.
This way, eventually, people would connect with you personally, and then you can encourage them to subscribe to your emailers or join your channel.
Share your content/group in other groups and channels.
Whenever you are a part of a group, make sure you never miss promoting your content there. However, please abide by the group guidelines before you do so.
You can showcase your expertise with fellow members and generate free traffic to your landing pages through promoting, but you cannot bombard your links and spam members unnecessarily.
Promote your Telegram channel and group on your website and social media
Mention Telegram channel’s link on your website in social media channels.
You have to utilize every digital platform to promote your channel and build a thriving Telegram community.
You can also mention it in your email newsletters.
Get your channel added on the channel aggregators’ list.
There are so many websites and resources that create a list of particular types of channels on Telegram.
Find such websites that have shared a list of channels for your niche and outreach its author.
Request the author to add your channel as well. This way, you can get more people on your channel and interact with new users.
Create your own stickers for branding
Telegram provides thousands of interactive and attractive stickers you can use while chatting with users on personal, groups, or channels.
You can also upload your own stickers on Telegram.
So, as part of your branding activity, you can develop your own sticker and upload it to Telegram.
For all your conversations on your Telegram channel, use these stickers. They will be an interactive form or advertising of your brand.
Curate industry-related news and share it on your channel
Even though you have created a Telegram channel to promote your content and interact with your audience, you can also share industry-specific news.
Your focus has to be on improving the lives of users and giving them a good user experience. If you share only content, then it will always be about you. You can take a holistic approach and world-class content of others just once in a while.
Advantages of Telegram
Forever Free
This is the top advantage of using Telegram.
You don’t have to pay anything yet to get an organic platform to interact with your audience.
No Ads
The user interface, both on mobile and desktop, is intuitive and very clean.
You don’t get bloated elements in the form of annoying ads and irrelevant display banners on the platform.
Therefore, Telegram can provide an uninterrupted user experience, which will lead to higher engagement and satisfaction.
Share unlimited files with members
Being an Admin, you can share unlimited photos, videos, and files to your audience through the Telegram channel.
Up to 1.5 GB, you can store many files securely on the robust cloud of Telegram.
So, every time you log in to your Telegram account, all those files will be intact.
Groups with 200,000 members
With Telegram, you can accommodate a massive audience into a single group.
Unlimited members in a channel
If you have an audience in millions, leverage Telegram channels, and interact with them effectively through a messaging platform.
Disadvantages of Telegram
No personalization
Even though Telegram is a chatting application, no structure in it allows you to personalize your messages.
Unless you write all your messages manually, there is no way you can send custom messages to interact with your audience.
Cannot export your contacts
If you wish to export the details of your audience in a PDF or CSV format, you cannot do it.
Limited analytics
Telegram does not provide a feature where you can analyze and track engagement in your channel.
You cannot know click-through rate, impression, purchase, or any other metrics inside Telegram.
Spam has to be actively managed
Since Telegram provides a comprehensive structure of privacy, there might be a possibility that a fake user might join the group or channel and start spamming.
Or while discussing in a group, members go off the board and discuss unnecessary things.
If that happens, you have to be very agile and responsible for managing spams in your Telegram channel.
When is Telegram not right for you?
Personalization is your top priority
If personalizing chatting is what you are looking for, then Telegram is not for you.
You cannot have a default feature like “mail merging” on Telegram. You have to write custom messages on your own.
Your targeted audience doesn’t use Telegram
This is important. Even though Telegram is a popular chatting application, make sure your audience is using it.
If your targeted audience does not know about Telegram, they might not trust the app to create an account, so let alone join your group or channel.
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Examples of Interactive Telegram Channels/Groups
PPC Updates
This channel is suitable for search engine marketing enthusiasts. Admins of this channel share PPC updates, trends, and news from top online marketing blogs on the web. So, people don’t have to do a google search to get the latest trends in the PPC industry.
Data Science by ODS.ai
Data Science by ODS claims to be the first Telegram channel based on Data Science.
It covers all the renowned and technical stuff that is going on in Data Science.
It covers topics of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Statistics, General Math, and Big Data.
DataFlair
Another popular Telegram channel that shares industry-related updates on technologies like Hadoop Spark, Data Science, Python, ML, Big Data, and much more.
Programmer Jokes
Programmer Jokes channel is only for entertainment purposes. You will find memes and jokes about programming. They share entertaining content that programmers can easily relate to.
Psychology Today
Psychology Today shares relevant news, articles, case studies, and researches on psychology. Famous psychologists, academics, psychiatrists, and writers share their points of view regarding the subject matter inside this channel.
Interesting Engineering
If you like technology, science, and engineering, then I am sure you would love the content of this channel. It share relevant articles, blogs, and content regarding the topics, so you don’t have to go anywhere to seek the latest trends, news, and studies.
Best UI/UX Ideas
Here, you will get creative ideas about the user interface in user experience for web and mobile applications. The channel shares useful case studies, articles, and content to improve the UI/UX of your web and mobile platforms.
Conclusion
This is why Telegram is better than almost every other chatting platform to interact with your audience.
I hope you find this article valuable and get some unique insights.
So, are you planning to try Telegram for your blog or business? Let me know in the comments.
If you have any questions about the topics discussed here, please drop them in the comments below.
