Telegram can be an excellent marketing tool: what to know to make the most of it. Telegram is one of the most popular direct messaging applications. Competitor of other apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger, and Signal, it is free and available for iOS, Android, and even on desktop.
Use Telegram For Marketing
Despite being one of the least used solutions by companies, Telegram offers several marketing opportunities. The functional features of the platform provide interesting opportunities to mature and broaden company horizons. The importance of Telegram in corporate marketing campaigns can be mainly traced back to two determining factors. On the one hand, the Russian platform allows users to have anonymity. When a user subscribes to a Telegram channel, he can do so by keeping his identity secret. The owner of the Telegram channel, whether a private individual or a company, cannot become aware of any sensitive data connected to registered users. On the other hand, users are dealing with broadcast participation.
This means that communication within the channel is one-way. Owners can inform and talk to their customers without waiting for answers. This mode makes communication more like a newsletter than a real conversation. The features of Telegram for companies do not end there. Those who own a business can use Bots, applications that are developed by third parties and subsequently integrated into Telegram. Programmers specially design them to allow companies to interact with their users. Thanks to Bots, companies can automate many processes, including sending advertising messages. Thanks to their use, it will be possible to set up promotional campaigns simply and quickly, obtaining the maximum result with minimum effort.
How To Create A Marketing Strategy On Telegram
Telegram is a free application, but using it for marketing does not have a zero cost. It is necessary to understand how to create a promotional activity using the tools offered by the platform. Among the most useful features for building a marketing strategy, Telegram allows you to answer customer questions using automatic replies from bots. If, on the other hand, you need to update your followers on publications, you can share links to specific content to increase visits to your site or blog.
By applying this strategy, content is continuously offered to the people who follow the profile, helping them not to miss even an update or a promotion. To do all this without losing the thread, the advice is to create a PED, an editorial plan of the contents to be published. With this tool, you can intelligently manage publications, varying the contents and observing when it is convenient to publish and which are the most popular topics for the public. Within the PED, you can insert notices for discounts and good news to entice users to click on the links, using bots to check the best prices of some products or directly sponsor their own.
This strategy is very useful, especially for those with an affiliate program. You can create a group dedicated to offers or reviews if you want to distinguish the affiliate channels from the original Telegram channel. This way, you can share the links with the tag and earn thanks to the tracking programs. Brands that want to build their community can rely on Telegram. The app allows you to feed it by creating a fully automated channel. For example, bots like @AndroidNewsRobot can report all the news on the latest versions of Android. In this way, they feed the one-way conversation with the community, which continues to receive useful information without increasing the human workload.
On the other hand, you can also provide a community on the messaging app through manual activities, such as creating quizzes to increase audience engagement. The application also allows you to share and download audio. The channel owner can use Telegram as a real podcast platform to share previously recorded audio. Users can also download the audio to listen to them at any time of the day, even without an internet connection. Suppose you already own a channel on a platform dedicated only to podcasts. In that case, you can integrate the marketing strategy by inserting a few minutes of preview of the new episodes uploaded on the track in the Telegram PED.
The Telegram Groups
Telegram groups allow you to create rooms where users can generate public discussions focused on a particular topic of interest to all participants. Those who subscribe to the channel can be notified of any updates posted by the channel owner. The first step to creating a group on Telegram is to choose the name and insert a profile photo. Then comes the time to add contacts: unlike many other applications that allow the creation of small groups, Telegram allows you to add up to 200,000 contacts.
The groups are public and accessible to everyone. Any Telegram user who accidentally finds the channel or is directed by someone else can enter freely. This feature allows you to greatly expand your audience, even reaching people outside the classic circle, helping the owner to build a real community. From an organizational point of view, a disadvantage of Telegram groups is that each member can be an active part of the conversation. This can bring creativity and additional stimulation to the conversation, but it can also create confusion among users by leading some members to leave the channel.
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How Telegram Channels Work
Telegram channels have a very specific feature. That is, they do not allow interaction between users who are subscribed. Unlike groups, communication within the channel is one-way. This means that only the channel owner can post content within it. As with the group, you need a name and a profile photo to build a Telegram channel. In addition, a short description is also required, approximately 250 characters in length. An infinite number of users can participate in each channel. There is no maximum limit, as happens in groups, due to the impossibility of communication between members.
Like all Telegram features, the creation of a channel is also free. Each user can be an administrator of infinite media and participate in as many. When a user subscribes to a track, he will never be able to send messages to the administrator or any other member within the channel. Only administrators can send communications to subscribers. When the purpose is to promote interaction between users, the Telegram channel is not the best solution. If, on the other hand, you want to create a space that allows information to be passed, avoiding the disorder that a continuous exchange between users could generate, the channel becomes the perfect solution. Since it is a one-way communication, hashtags can differentiate the communications posted on the track.
For example, you can use the hashtags #offer, #video, #blog, etc. to allow users to select posts, know immediately what they are talking about and click only on those that interest them. Remember when creating the editorial plan that no automation tool can be used within the channels. Owners cannot, therefore, set up automatic messages or schedule posts in advance. Always dedicate the right time to create and schedule posts on the channel, calibrating the publication frequency. If you sell products or services, you can think of creating a Telegram channel for the most loyal customers, who make a higher and more frequent average spending.
Use Telegram Bots
To maximize what a Telegram channel can offer, a very good practice is to use bots within it. A bot is a program that is created to perform specific tasks. Thanks to their use, some processes can be automated: bots are instructed according to a series of very specific rules so that they can be activated even without the help of a human being. They perform tasks that mimic or completely replace human behavior, often much faster and faster. When you want to implement a bot on your Telegram channel, the first step is understanding and recognizing the best bots to use for your business.
What are the actions that could be delegated to a bot? What steps to make faster through automation? Answering these questions can help you understand which bots can help your business. Once you have chosen the most suitable bots, you need to add them to the channel. To get the list of functions, insert the symbol (/). Some of the most popular bots allow you to add polls in chats, create posts that will enable users to respond with comments, find out the lowest prices for a particular product and generate contests among their followers. If unsure which bot to choose, you can take a cue by accessing the Telegram page dedicated to automation processes. In this space, users can search for the bots that can be most useful to them, divided according to their interests.
Another way to create a bot is to type Bot Father into the search bar and start a conversation. Click Newsbot and choose the program’s name, ensuring that it always ends with the word bot. All that remains is to select the commands to enter it by following the instructions that the Bot Father will show in the chat. Depending on the type of business, many operations can be entrusted to a bot, especially when it comes to customer assistance. With a chatbot, the customer can be guaranteed continuous assistance thanks to a bot available to answer questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Other Telegram Features For A Marketing Strategy
In addition to the listed features, Telegram allows you to better manage communications within the app, even without being able to offer companies a professional tool designed ad hoc. After one of the most recent updates, the Russian application allows its users to create folders. Thanks to this function, you can organize your chats, dividing them into lists, for example, by following the different thematic areas that the profile is used to address. Telegram also allows formatting the texts sent in a chat or a channel. Among several options, account owners can choose to highlight bold text or insert a link to a word.
Many bots allow you to range between photos, surveys, reactions, and other elements that users can add to their posts, increasing user interaction. For example, among the responses, you can also choose emoticons such as a star or broccoli, unlike the little choice present in applications such as WhatsApp. Finally, if you want to publish long articles, you need to know that Telegram is a functional application for this type of content. Since many companies have a blog section on their website, Telegram can be used to sponsor it by sharing a direct link immediately after a new article is published. This way, the user will be directed to the report, increasing traffic to the website.
Give Visibility To Your Telegram Channel
You can advertise your Telegram account online to attract as many people as possible. To do this, you can take advantage of all the other social channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you have the budget available, you can decide to create a real advertising campaign or hire influencers to make the channel known to as many people as possible. Offline channels can also be very effective. From business cards to posters, up to paper coupons, you can print a QR Code on each branded object that refers to the Telegram channel. To encourage users to sign up, offering a welcome discount on purchases, a personalized benefit, or an experience reserved for a few selected customers is a good idea.
Observe The Statistics Of Telegram
After creating the channel and designing a campaign that could give it more visibility, it is also a good rule to check the track’s statistics. Some data are very important to understand, for example, what kind of audience you are dealing with, the general approval rating, and what type of content is most popular with users. Some metrics to consider are the number of new subscribers and those who decide to leave the chat. The views and reactions are parameters that can help indicate new paths or suggest continuing on the one undertaken.
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