Telegram is no longer an ordinary messenger, but a popular social platform where today you can promote your business and earn money. Media, bloggers, private entrepreneurs and companies run their channels here. From our article, you will learn how to use it to successfully grow your business and generate additional income.
Why Telegram
In 2021, entrepreneurs realized that messengers can be used not only for correspondence, but also in business. This realization came to them after the developers expanded their functionality, taking them beyond the scope of ordinary communication applications. The emergence of new features has raised Telegram, Whatsapp and Viber to the peak of popularity. Of these three messengers, Telegram turned out to be more advanced than the others. According to statistics, in 2022, 500,000 new unique users are registered in it every day, who preferred it because of the relatively high level of security and ease of use.
What is Telegram business model? The founder of the messenger, Pavel Durov, seeks to turn it into a full-fledged social network and monetize it by creating an advertising platform on its basis. The introduction of a legitimized advertising platform can deprive numerous telegram bloggers of their earnings who place custom posts on their channels and conduct information campaigns. True, experts believe that it is unlikely that Pavel Durov will be able to achieve the stated goal, citing very strong arguments as arguments. And this means that the creators of Telegram channels will continue to successfully earn money on them and promote their business.
Benefits of a messenger for an entrepreneur:
- no usage fee;
- high speed of information transfer to colleagues and potential clients;
- ease of creating and launching a group and channel;
- the ability to automate work through bots, without the need to collect a collection of auxiliary applications.
Telegram has over 500 million monthly active users. They provide 430 billion views of posts posted in the messenger. According to analysts, its revenue at the end of 2022 will be about $200 million. This is an excellent base for developing an advertising Telegram business model and connecting other monetization methods.
Telegram for business
How can I use Telegram for business? First of all, this is a good platform for building communication with potential customers. But before considering the messenger from this angle, let's tell you how you can use it within the company to optimize work processes and increase productivity:
- Telegram business groups. You can create a group chat in the messenger, add all members of the team to it and discuss ideas for the further development of the company, creatives related to sales or promotions. Some managers additionally make several private chats, where the coordination of different areas of the enterprise's activities takes place and intermediate results are summed up at the end of each day;
- Documentation. In Telegram, you can not only correspond, but also send documents and other files of any format necessary for work. If your business is small and there is no need to connect a CRM system, you can organize workflow directly in this messenger. The transferred files are stored in the cloud with free access to them at any time.
- Calls. In Telegram, you can not only write, but also call. Free calls to the number of any of your contacts, regardless of the services of which mobile operator he uses and in which country he is located, are very beneficial. The ability to communicate live with colleagues working remotely and customers without restrictions and financial costs is a significant advantage.
Telegram for marketing
The Telegram messenger is an excellent platform for monetizing business content, as well as attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. It is best suited for companies whose core target audience consists of active young people from 20 to 35 years old.
Using Telegram for marketing purposes does not always require large-scale investments of resources (both financial and temporary). There are very simple low-cost and even absolutely free ways to increase sales and improve communication with customers. It will take no more than a day to implement each of them, and even a beginner who has recently registered in this messenger can complete some tasks in just 15 minutes.
Communication
Telegram can become an additional communication channel for a client with you or your manager. The expansion of communication tools will increase the number of orders, because for many potential buyers this messenger is one of the most comfortable ways to communicate.
Agree, it’s much easier not to annoy customers with calls that are not always convenient for them to answer, but to send short and understandable messages to Telegram. For example, you can notify them about the appearance of a product that they wanted to purchase earlier, about the start of new promotions, discounts or price reductions. In this way, you will also save your budget: you no longer have to spend money on SMS mailings and put up with low e-mail open rates.
Thematic channel
A Telegram channel is a good alternative to a Facebook page or group. It can be devoted to one specific topic related to the area or direction of your business, but at the same time not use aggressive, intrusive self-promotion in it. In fact, this is a blog with elements of content marketing, which is conducted within the messenger.
A channel created for your enterprise or personal project makes it possible to connect the most active part of the target audience to the business, which can be interacted with with just one touch on the screen of a mobile device. Here it is convenient to inform existing customers about company news and share useful content with them. In addition, the telegram channel is a good platform for posting official blog articles, notifications about changes in the product line, new products, launching promotions. With its help, it is easy to maintain easy communication and increase the activity of customers. What articles are better to post on a thematic channel? First of all, those that will interest the widest possible range of users. For example, for a fitness club, texts about proper nutrition, choosing options for physical activity, fighting bad habits, and a healthy lifestyle in general are suitable. For a bank, you can write about the rules of financial planning and how to make a profitable investment. Announcements of literary novelties will organically look on the bookstore channel.
Company channel
The difference between the company's channel and the thematic one is that it is dedicated exclusively to the events of the enterprise. Communication here is one-sided: the client does not have the opportunity to discuss posts, but only reads messages from the creator or administrator of the channel. What can you write about here? The most common topics for a company channel are: product news, notifications about discounts and promotional offers, the company's backstage.
- Automate the work with leads from the Facebook advertising account
- Empower with integrations and instant transfer of leads
- Don't spend money on developers or integrators
- Save time by automating routine tasks
Remember that most users are very selective about channel subscriptions. If notifications about new posts are often distracting, and the texts themselves turn out to be boring or meaningless, they will immediately unsubscribe from you. If you plan to run a company channel, keep in mind that you will have to work hard on the posts. Beautiful retouched pictures, like in Instagram, will not work here. Telegram blogs require really interesting up-to-date information with a special presentation. The brand you represent should turn into a pleasant conversationalist with whom it is not a pity to waste time.
Chat
Group chat in Telegram is a good way to improve communication with existing customers and even get new ones. Its advantage is a large number of users actively communicating on a topic of interest to them. It is best suited for those areas where each client is keenly interested in receiving information. Consider the example of the niche "real estate rental". If a realtor creates a telegram chat where those who want to rent and rent an apartment or house will communicate, he will be able to catch his potential clients there.
In addition, a group chat will come in handy if you have a small audience (students of an educational course, a choreographic school, a vocal studio, or those who are engaged in a creative circle). In this format, it is convenient to inform participants about changes in the schedule or some important events, as well as simply communicate with them.
Chatbot
Today, nimble chatbots in Telegram successfully compete with bulky mobile applications. What are they? These are programmed mini-robots created to carry out a series of commands. For example, they can answer the most common customer questions or send them the requested information. Some bots can even lead a training course, partially replacing a person. They send materials to students, collect completed assignments and give feedback on the results.
Platforms like Xenioo or SendPulse allow users to build a Telegram chatbot without coding. SendPulse also offers integration with Open Ai, so your telegram chatbot will be powered by Chat GPT.
To save on the monthly content of the support service in the messenger, it is recommended to order the development of a chatbot. Naturally, a person will give answers to difficult questions, but a bot will take care of the standard questions that most users usually ask. By the way, having a personal chat bot in Telegram, you demonstrate to your customers that you follow the latest trends in terms of technology, and thus add a plus to your reputation.
How to create a Telegram channel for business
Telegram channel is not suitable for every business. You need to create it if you are sure that your information is really valuable and interesting, you are ready to write about your cases, give advice and share with all the details of personal success. If your texts are simply copied from third-party sites or completely duplicated with posts on Instagram and Facebook, it will become extremely difficult to attract subscribers.
Never created a Telegram channel before? Step by step instructions on how to do this can be found here. (put a link to our article "How to create a Telegram channel")
Content
Telegram users make high demands on content, so you can’t hope for a simple copy-paste here. At the same time, even a high-quality unique text with an original presentation may not be enough. The main thing is that it is useful. If you start posting “everything and nothing” posts that do not answer subscribers’ questions, your channel will not bring you anything but time. For example, if a user is interested in fitness, exercise rules and dietary features, he will be happy to subscribe to a channel dedicated to this topic. If there are two such channels, but the content of each of them is unique, the user will subscribe to both, despite the thematic similarity. But 100% duplication of competitors' content is obviously a losing option. No one is interested in reading the same text on multiple channels.
Telegraph
Large posts should remain readable - both for convenience and as a manifestation of elementary respect for your readers. If you write large text, use the special built-in Telegraph service. Thanks to its functionality, you will be able to:
- mark the most important points in the text by highlighting them in bold or italics;
- Illustrate the post with images, animation and video (no restrictions on the number of inserted files);
- post text of any size in the messenger (an ordinary post can contain no more than 3000 characters).
Telegraph will help to lighten your long reads, make them comfortable for visual perception and reading.
Number and time of posting
In posting, in addition to the quality of texts, frequency is important. If you start posting only one post a month on the telegram channel, they will soon forget about it, even if the text was perfect. Posting 20 texts a day is also bad. Such intrusiveness will only cause a desire to quickly unsubscribe. It is better to stick to the rule of the golden mean: do about 1-3 posts a day. For convenience, you can use the service for delayed posting. So you do not have to constantly monitor the time so as not to miss the moment of sending the next post to the channel.
At what time of the day should you post so that the largest number of users see them? Fortunately, Telegram does not need to calculate the optimal posting time for the largest possible audience coverage. Here the text will not get lost in the endless content feed. No matter what time you choose to post, the subscriber will still read it when it is convenient for him.
Decor
How to create a business Telegram account? The first thing that visitors of the channel see is its name and logo. With them, you need to start. Most often, the channel is given the same name as the company. Thus, the reader forms a close connection between the information he receives here and the enterprise. Try experimenting with the presentation: keep in mind that people like to read what is written by a real user, and not by a faceless company, so it is worth developing a personal brand. All posts should be kept in the same style.
What else is desirable to observe:
- a constant color palette in the design of diagrams and infographics;
- the same filters for photo correction;
- the unity of the idea of the channel and the topics of the posts (the channel about healthy eating should not contain texts about origami crafts, no matter how touching they may be);
- unity of post style (many subscribers go to the channel not only for new information, but also to enjoy its presentation);
- placement of longreads only through Telegraph.
Summing up
Telegram is a promising platform for business promotion, as the messenger's audience is mainly represented by adults, educated and solvent people. It provides a good toolkit for the internal needs of the company and high-quality communication with users: chat bots, groups and channels. A good telegram channel can become an additional source of traffic, attract the target audience, and increase brand confidence. In addition, he is able to ensure that its creator becomes an opinion leader in his field. The main thing is to correctly use Telegram tools in marketing. Then you can take your business to the next level: increase product awareness and income from its sale.
Would you like your employees to receive real-time data on new Facebook leads, and automatically send a welcome email or SMS to users who have responded to your social media ad? All this and more can be implemented using the SaveMyLeads system. Connect the necessary services to your Facebook advertising account and automate data transfer and routine work. Let your employees focus on what really matters, rather than wasting time manually transferring data or sending out template emails.