Telegram has more than 500 million monthly active users and is among the top 10 most popular social networks in the world.
What does that mean for marketers?
Telegram can be used as a marketing tool. It is a messenger app and therefore uses messenger marketing (like you might do on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp). Using Telegram as a marketing channel, you can grow your brand awareness, create loyalty and help your community grow and explore your service.
Before we jump into how you can use Telegram to grow your business, let's first look at why you would want to.
Some of the benefits of using Telegram include:
There is a global shift in communication happening. People are using gifs, voice notes, and other media to communicate. Telegram gives you creative options to communicate with your audience.
WhatsApp holds the top spot among messenger apps. However, its major drawback is that group sizes are capped at 200 users. Telegram in contrast has a limit of 200,000.
Users on telegram are engaged and the user base is growing. In September 2019, the official Telegram News channel reached the app's highest average post reach of 1.6 million.
To take full advantage of all that Telegram offers, you need to build your own brand channel.
As with most organic marketing, starting from zero is tough and it's not likely you will see overnight growth. But consistency is key and over time you will watch a highly engaged and valuable audience grow.
Some ideas to start growing your first telegram channel include:
There are two main options for growing your business through telegram: using your own channel and using other channels.
Once you have established a successful channel for your brand on Telegram, you will want to start promoting your content here.
Your channel can be used to share content with your followers. You can instantly create and share messages with everyone in your channel, and start and moderate conversations between those in your community.
You can instantly spread the content among your members, and a major plus is that the analytics tell you how many views each message has received.
You can take advantage of established channels and promote your content here to reach wider audiences.
With public channels, you can freely become part of the channel. In private channels, you have to be invited or request access. And administrators can decline your request.
Changes to algorithms on many social media platforms are making organic reach harder for brands. This is where instant messaging takes over.
Content is created and directly distributed to followers, making it simpler for your brand to ensure that your content reaches audiences.
This is why it's well worth investing in distributing content on established channels with large and relevant audiences.
You may be able to approach the channel owner for paid promotions. Some channels allow this with specific rules about being a relevant product the audience would be interested in.
Alternatively, you can also contribute to the channel. By becoming an active member of the community and building trust with the members, you will not appear salesey or spammy when you make an occasional post about your product or service.
Telegram has great potential as a marketing tool. It is often overlooked in favour of larger social platforms. However, it is seeing rapid growth and presents numerous advantages - especially for brands that are seeing their organic reach decline on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
See inspirations here:
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