Telegram 101: How to Build a Brand Community on Telegram

Last time, we called Telegram the rising star of conversational commerce, and more and more brands have been moving onto it. This article offers a first look at how brands can use Telegram:

(1) Use cases for Telegram Channels, Bots, and Groups
(2) A brand's first step into Telegram
(3) How Telegram's setup compares with other messaging apps for push messages

There are three ways to run a community on Telegram: Channels, Groups, and Bots.

Don't rush to pick one just yet. You'll have a clearer sense of direction once you've read the whole article, and we'll follow up with detailed tutorials on how to create and run each one.

(1) Channels

The quickest way to understand a channel is to think of it as a bulletin board. Given the features Telegram offers, channels are the best place among channels, bots, and groups to push messages and publish posts. You can send messages to your subscribers*, but subscribers can't interact with the channel in any way. Think of it as a Facebook Page with no likes, comments, or shares, where all you can do is post.

* Subscribers:
1. The audience that has joined the channel.
2. Each time a subscriber opens a message, the view count goes up by 1 (in other words, reach).
3. Subscribers can also mute notifications, leave the channel, or report it.

⭐️Because leaving a channel takes more steps, user behavior shows that most subscribers mute notifications rather than leave;     

Judging by the numbers alone, channels rarely lose their audience.

‍

For one-to-one push messages to users, we compared the push messaging limits of each messaging app:

⛔️ We say “basically” because in our repeated tests, a channel post sometimes failed to go out to the linked group at the same time. When that happens, you can post manually to work around this small bug.

Channels
1. Public: can be found in search and joined directly; anyone can invite members without admin approval.
2. Private: can't be found in search; people join via a link and need admin approval.

‍

Telegram channels can also connect to third-party bots, which add interactive post formats.

Connecting them is fairly complex, and the method varies by service, so we'll share connection tutorials for a range of third-party services in the future!
For now, our advice: just open a channel and get familiar with how Telegram communities work.

‍

(2) Groups

If you've ever joined or run a LINE group, you already understand the basics of a Telegram group.

For community management, the biggest difference between groups and channels is that when you post in a group, you can't see your reach.

In a group, any member can invite others, and a single group can hold up to 200,000 people. Because groups are where people chat and discuss, we recommend focusing on quality over quantity; too many people makes a group hard to manage.

Here are the key features of groups:

‍

Telegram group admin permissions:
1. The group creator can decide whether new members see the chat history
2. The group creator can set slow mode (e.g., one message per minute, so the group isn't flooded)
3. The group creator can restrict whether admins can:    
send messages/files/stickers and GIFs/create polls/add new members/pin messages/change group info
4. Each restriction can be set separately, so you can give admins different permissions and let each one handle their own role.

‍

(3) Bots

Bots on Telegram are built around functionality. They can add interactive formats and automated push messages to your channel posts, among other special features. Bots can also run games, help you search for stickers, and offer other utilities.

Many Telegram marketing articles outside Taiwan describe bots as Telegram's super-app. Put simply, almost anything an app can do, a Telegram bot can do something similar.

Because Telegram is largely open source and its open API is more flexible than LINE's, engineers have long been building bots with all kinds of features. These bots can join channels and groups and act as assistants for running a brand.

But!

Bots' versatility is both their biggest strength and their biggest weakness. When running a brand, I can certainly find a bot for the function I need, but since bots come from different developers and work in different ways, a string of problems follows:

Bots are the most direct helpers for running brand channels and groups, but they come with more uncertainty, which turns into a hidden cost of community management!

That's a quick introduction to the three things every brand needs to know on Telegram: Channels, Groups, and Bots. If this cleared things up, give us a clap!

Next time, we'll show you how to create a Channel, Bot, and Group.

📣 Join the Telegram Taiwan Marketing Lab and talk shop with everyone

🛩 Rest your eyes: listen to our podcast and get up to speed on Telegram trends in a few minutes   

⏩ Spotify : https://reurl.cc/e50q8b
⏩ Apple : https://reurl.cc/4gkEmv
⏩ TuneIn : https://reurl.cc/qD9y8E

‍