The Telegram messenger app by Russian IT-entrepreneur Pavel Durov was launched in 2013, but already has about 400 million users around the world. The app is now extremely popular in Iran, Malaysia, Israel, Singapore, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and post-Soviet counties (such as Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus), while being not only a messenger but a great online platform for media. Leading American and British media (The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, etc.)Â already joined Telegram and got to grips with audience development.
Interhacktives explains what Telegram channels are for and why this messenger app has all the chances of becoming one of the most media-friendly platforms.
What are Telegram channels and how are they distinguished from private groups?
Channels are a great tool for broadcasting public messages to large audiences. Unlike private groups, they are not closed societies where a user needs to be added by the owner: each of the channels has a username (e.g. the name of media outlet), so anyone can find it in search and join. When you post in a channel, the message is signed with the channel’s name (not yours). Channels have an unlimited number of subscribers, and new subscribers can see the entire message history in a channel once they join.
Why is Telegram good for your media?
- It’s secure, independent, and (if needed) anonymous. These three principles are pillars of the messenger using end-to-end encryption, standing for freedom of speech as well as protecting its users’ privacy. Moreover, its embedded VPN tool helps to bypass censorship in countries where Telegram is temporarily or permanently banned by governments due to political grounds (like Russia, China, Iran, etc.).
- It takes one click to reach your audience. Telegram channels give your media the same access to the private space of a reader as well as newsletters do. As many people usually have their messenger’s notifications on, they hear from you every time you post something on the channel, that makes Telegram the perfect tool for both breaking news and long reads.
- It’s snippet and embed friendly. Telegram supports a range of multimedia features such as videos, pictures, podcasts, snippets, and instant articles. Messenger also has a desktop version, so you can adjust it to any social media posting tool as well as use a ‘delayed post’ feature to schedule your publications.
- There are no dodgy algorithms you should adjust to. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you don’t need to follow any particular rules for your post to be shown to your audience. The only thing you should remember about is muting. To avoid your channel being muted by followers, come up with a strategy that would make your channel look up to date, but not bothersome and distractive.
- Posts are easy to edit after publication. It’s never too late to correct a wonky link, replace a picture or fix a snippet in your post even if you published it a couple of hours ago. You can also use a thread feature to bond posts to each other (suits perfectly for off-diary ongoing news and story follow-ups).
- Ads and cross-mentioning are available. Many Telegram channels are profitable in some cases being the main source of revenue for organisations and bloggers. Apart from clicks to your website, it gives you an option to publish paid ads of other channels. Or promote yours through like-minded or just the most popular ones!
- Comment section to benefit your community. In October Telegram has introduced comment sections for channels, which would help media to build a community within the app. By now followers can post text comments, voice messages, stickers and GIFs, while admins can moderate it, so it won’t turn into a mess.
- Clear statistics tools. A simple interface allows you see the overview of how the channel is doing, and let you go in-depth statistics to track engagement, growth, views, shares, best posts, etc hour by hour. It is helpful as not every webpage statistic tool can correctly trace traffic from Telegram.
- It has its own publishing platform, so no webpage is needed. In case you don’t have your webpage yet or just committed to a newsletter model, you can always use Telegra.ph — a minimalistic publishing tool that allows you to create different types of articles, from short news to long reads. Embedded pictures and videos will make your piece look decent, even if you just spend 10 minutes putting it in order.
- Folders for monitoring and news-gathering. The Folder feature was introduced in March 2020 as a tool for separating channels and chats, so users won’t miss important work, study, or family messages. But many journalists adapted it for their needs and made a personalised newsfeeds similar to TweetDeck. Sorting the Telegram channels of other news organisations (e.g. by topic/country/language, etc.) makes Folder a good monitoring tool that notifies you about updates and breaking news published by competitors.
Russian journalist with a weighty news background exploring digital tools at City University.