Telegram is becoming a nice platform for marketing and building business.
How did Telegram start?
It was started by 2 Russian brothers (Durov brothers) who previously developed another popular Russian social media named VK. But they had to sell it due to legal complications and they got $ 300 million and they have now built Telegram. Telegram is totally free to use and it does not take money from the users.
The founders have a small team of 15-20 people and they are using that $ 300 m they got, to develop the services of Telegram. The platform is also supported by investors who don’t want governments to meddle too much in business and let the company run freely. The Telegram team also does not have a particular office. They roam around the world and keep working.
Telegram or WhatApp- Which one is better?
Telegram has end-to-end encryption feature in its message. However, its effectiveness is questioned. Still, it has a better reputation than Whatsapp. Factually, Whatsapp is the most used messaging app with 2 billion users but its growth has reduced. On the other hand, Telegram user count increased from 400 m in early 2020 to 550 m in late 2021 and keeps increasing.
Why is Telegram getting popular: 10 reasons why you should choose Telegram
1. Privacy
People are concerned about privacy and security. They are looking for an alternative of Whatsapp, which is accused of misusing user data.
2. New Features
Telegram keeps adding interesting features based on people’s needs. Many businesses are now using different features like Telegram bots, channels etc to engage users. Telegram added features like voice and video calls few months ago. However, the quality of these features may lack at times. Telegram team actually has another project named Telegram X, where they test the new features before finally including in Telegram.
3. Build an army
Telegram groups can hold 2 lakhs of members. Which is more than Whatsapp’s 256 limit.
4. Channels
Telegram channels can have unlimited people. Also, as a channel admin, you can choose to hide the phone numbers to avoid spam calls and thus security is improved. Here, only the admins can broadcast posts. Others can view the posts but not reply, so the chat remains free from spams. You can also create polls or quizzes to engage audiences.
5. Secrets
It can also facilitate secret chat where there is extra security with auto-destruct messages and not-saving the messages in server. The privacy level is so high here that you cannot take any screenshots or record the screen.
6. Super-Server
Talking about the server of Telegram, the pictures, videos or music shared in chat, these can be saved in the Telegram server instead of phone storage. And as the server has infinite space, you don’t have to think about phone storage. Users can send files as big as 1.5 GB in chat.
7. Device Independent
Telegram can be used on phone or PC independently. You don’t need to link device.
8. Business-Friendly
The email open rate is less than the rate of opening and replying to texts. Thus, Telegram is becoming more popular among businesses to connect with audiences. Here you can easily find people from groups and send texts. One can also use the ‘People Nearby’ option to find Telegram users and groups in nearby vicinities. Local businesses can take advantage of this facility.
9. SEO
Telegram has its own search facility with SEO. When a group or channel posts some contents, the search facility can help a user find the group with the relevant keywords in the channel’s contents, descriptions or name.
10. Bot Help
There are a lot of bots for listening to music, automating tasks etc. on Telegram to help the businesses and users. Your business channel can also enlist itself in telegram directories so that it can gain more visibilities easily.
How to earn from Telegram?- 5 ways to earn from Telegram
With all these interesting tools, Telegram is an effective social media to do business, but it is not like the user or the business can sit on own hands and expect to grow the fanbase automatically. The financial motto of a business is to earn money, so in this section of this article I will focus on that. Telegram does not directly give you money. But it is an opportunity.
The most important thing is to give your audience some value. Even if someone is using other social media, the person can build a separate follower base on telegram by giving something exclusive. It can be exclusive offers, early news and more.
Some level of content creation is the basic requirement. Think of it like capital for your business. If you create videos and upload on Youtube or if you create posts for Instagram its usual social media, you can keep a link to you Telegram channel in these posts and videos to bring traffic in your channel.
1. Earn from traffic
You can use something called ‘lead magnet’ to attract audience in your Telegram channel from other social media. When you post the videos or posts on Youtube or Instagram, in the description, keep the Telegram link and tell the audience about the additional value they will get from the Telegram Channel.
An example: Abtaran App Store’s Youtube channel will upload videos about apps. We will turn the app posters into NFTs and sell them. The NFTs will be promoted in our Telegram channel. So, in the Youtube video description we can simply invite the viewers to join our Telegram channel to find the NFTs we create. This will give additional values to the viewers and as they buy some NFTs, we will be earning money.
Another example can be like this- if you make videos on particular topics like trading, marketing, wealth creation etc. And you can tell in your video that you will be organizing a webinar and the viewers can find the webinar link in your Telegram channel. Your loyal Youtube viewers will surely join the Telegram channel to get the link to attend your webinar.
Another example can be like this, if you are an influencer and you are reviewing a product from a client. You can keep a normal affiliate link in the video description
(for fast access) but you can also keep another affiliate link with some extra benefits (extra discounts etc.) on your Telegram channel and tell the viewers that they can get more benefits by joining your Telegram channel.
Thus, the main idea is that the viewers should get something extra from your Telegram channel.
Another important thing to market your business suitably in your Telegram channel is to prepare a proper description of your Telegram posts and channel itself. As I have told earlier, Telegram’s search feature is SEO enabled. So, if a user searches with keywords that are in your content, your channel will be visible and your chance to gain more traffic will increase.
Affiliate marketing or selling some products (can be courses or premium services too) is a good way to earn from telegram channel. From a realistic viewpoint, all of your traffic will not buy from your affiliate link or attend your webinars. The traffic that comes into your channel will be the ‘Leads’ but the average ‘Conversion rate’ is around 2%. This means, if 100 people visit your channel, maybe only 2 will buy from your affiliate link or buy your products.
So, more traffic can give you more chance to earn. But keep in mind that, value creation is important. (Suppose someone visits your Youtube video and comes to your Telegram channel, they will be the ‘Leads’. If they become interested in the things you are selling and decides to buy; they will be ‘converted’ to paid consumers).
One way to bring more traffic is to repost popular contents. As an example, people like to watch movies. If you post movies on your Telegram channel and use relevant tags like ‘watch movies for free’, ‘movie channel’ etc, people will search with these keywords and your channel will get more viewers.
Same goes with blogposts or music, you can repost them from other websites and bring traffic. Feel free to use different Telegram bots and directories to enlist your channel so that people who search for particular contents can come to your channel by searching. You can also write blogs and keep your telegram channel link there to bring more traffic.
Now, you might think that- will there be any copyright issues etc as you are reposting contents. Well, there won’t be because you cannot monetise these contents. So, how can you earn money from this? You can earn by posting affiliate links or selling products etc. in between your posts or also by asking for donations from your channel viewers (like a Patreon). This is why, more traffic will give you more opportunities to earn.
Do keep in mind that in Telegram, you are bringing people who are interested to get benefits from you, so you need to continue providing values to them in order to keep the audience flow alive. Feel free to engage with your audience by creating polls or quizzes occasionally. Unacademy teachers often use this strategy to increase their student base outside Unacademy.
2. Influencer marketing
Another way to earn through telegram is to do ‘influencer marketing’ and ‘paid promotion’. After you get a lot of audiences in your channels, you can collaborate with other channels and make deals by saying ‘I have a lot of audiences on my channel, I will be happy to post your contents there. You will get more audiences and consumers. I will take a small charge from you for supporting you’. As simple as that.
On the other hand, if you want to grow fast, you can also pay the existing influencers and let them post your contents and links in their channel. This is called ‘paid promotion’.
3. Making bots
Another way to earn money from Telegram is by making bots. You need to know some coding for this. And if you make a nice bot based on people’s needs, you might gain a lot of users. After you gain a large user base, you can ask for donations from the channels that are using your bots.
Remember that the conversion rate is usually low, so try to build something that is valuable and irreplaceable. Or else, you might not receive any donation and you might have to discontinue your bot facility.
On the other hand, you can use different existing bots for your benefits. There are bots to listen to music, take payments, do SEO for channels.
Abtaran App Store Telegram Channel: Abtaran App Store | Abtaran NFTs
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