POST LAST UPDATED: May 14, 2020
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: May 15, 2019
Let’s take a moment to talk about Telegram, an instant messaging app that you may not know about just yet. Why? Marketing on Telegram may be the next big thing!
At first glance, Telegram is just another chat app with messaging, calling, and ephemeral chats. Telegram is not widely known in North America, but it is a leading messaging app in Russia (despite being banned there) and is wildly popular in Brazil. Telegram has 400 million monthly users, and counting!
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the U.S. and Canada may also be familiar with the app thanks to the recent craze of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), whose participants have opted to use Telegram to communicate with other prospective token buyers.
Why talk about Telegram?
After all, there are countless messaging apps on the already saturated market. Whatsapp and WeChat lead the way in Europe and Asia, respectively, so what’s another competitor to the giants?
Telegram is an interesting case because of its serious focus on privacy and end-to-end encryption that Russian authorities are having such a hard time with.
More importantly, Telegram is independent — it is not beholden to Google or Facebook. Last year’s rumours of Facebook merging its family of apps into one super-messenger show that privacy is a big sticking point for Facebook. You will find a lot more people starting to look for an alternative for their go-to messaging app.
A lot of them will land in Telegramland. And you should already be there when it happens. Marketing on Telegram may be new to Canada/the U.S., but it is not news to the markets where the app has already taken hold.
Telegram is a powerful marketing tool that can connect you directly to your audience — with no distractions or fees involved.
Did I get your attention now?
Telegram and Its Main Functions
Telegram is a messaging app ideal for 1-1- communication. You can send direct messages to your contacts, attach files, share photos and videos, including short videos and audio clips that you can record right in-app. There is cloud storage, folder functionality, and desktop support.
There are regular chats and secret chats. You can start both with any of your contacts, but secret chats also offer an optional ephemeral function. You may set a self-destruct timer that would remove every message after it was opened. The timer is flexible, offering ranges from 1 to 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week. Secret chats are not synced to the cloud, so they are only available on the device you have set them up on. Furthermore, secret chats do not support message forwarding!
But, fun secret chat functionality aside, a huge part of Telegram is its groups and channels. They are what you need to care about the most for marketing! Because Telegram is ad-free and always will be, organic posting on Telegram is the only way to engage your audience, although there are multiple paid ways to build it.
Telegram is a powerful marketing tool that can connect you directly to your audience — with no distractions or fees involved.
Telegram Groups and Channels
Blog posts about Telegram have been appearing on the web, and some of them even talk about marketing on Telegram. However, so many of them fail to address the crucial difference between Telegram groups and Telegram channels.
Telegram groups are essentially group chats, whose every participant is able to send messages to the group. Groups can be public or private, have multiple admins with varying levels of privilege, and grow to up to 200.000 participants. That’s one big community right there! Read more about the group functionality straight from the source.
Telegram channels are broadcasts, one-way communication tools. Telegram channels are public and have no restrictions on the number of subscribers. Some of the most popular Telegram channels worldwide boast millions and millions of followers. This stat holds for the most popular channels in English as well.
Both Telegram groups and channels serve a valuable purpose, but they are distinct tools that can be employed to reach different goals. Plus, a variety of bots that anyone can build make managing channels and groups easier. Bots may help with post scheduling, group chat moderation, sticker creation and more.
Marketing with Telegram
So why bother with yet another communication channel? Is marketing on Telegram worth it?
Think about your audience’s communication goals. Do you:
- want to build a news-like feed to broadcast to your customers (that’s not email)?
- need to get time-sensitive updates to your network quickly?
- start a casual chat that’s not annoying or data-harvesting, like Facebook?
- plan to build a content-rich resource with compelling storytelling in a format that is fresh and hasn’t been done before?
Telegram is a fantastic tool for all of the above.
Telegram group chats are great for engaging your customers, allowing them a platform to reach you directly and ask questions. When organized right, group chats may serve as community forums where users help each other, with minimal involvement on your part.
Telegram channels are great storytelling opportunities. You can construct narratives, build information bases, showcase products, share customer testimonials, and so much more. Some channels publish updates several times a day, while others focus on long-form pieces weekly or even bi-weekly. It is all about finding the right cadence to connect to your audience.
Both Telegram groups and channels serve a valuable purpose, but they are distinct tools that can be employed to reach different goals.
Telegram’s Big Advantage
A major marketing advantage of Telegram is its 100% audience reach. That’s right, you heard me. When it comes to channels, every published post is visible to every subscriber. Every. Single. One. Unless a subscriber mutes notifications, they also get notified about every post. Talk about content delivery! (Whether they choose to read the post or not is another story, of course.)
When it comes to choosing between a Telegram channel or group, be extremely specific about your goals. Choose wisely, and the decision will pay off with careful audience building and solid content creation. As a seasoned marketer, you will know best how to engage your audience and make them want to devour every piece of content you produce.
In conclusion…
With more people looking for alternatives to Facebook-dominated social and chat tools, the likes of Telegram will only grow and spread in popularity.
Marketers inevitably follow the consumer, and Telegram is one of the frontrunners in this race — get in on it early to reap the rewards. Consider becoming an early adopter of Telegram in North America and start building the following for your brand before anyone else. Your competition will jump on the bandwagon sooner or later anyway.
Would you like to learn more about using Telegram as an individual and as a business? Let us know and stay tuned!
