How I grew my Telegram channels to 50,000+ subscribers in two months
An inside look into Telegram’s number one business & start-up channel
The startup community I’ve built is a true overnight success story. Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself. This active and engaged group has grown by the thousands every week.
On top of having the number one startup channel on Telegram, I’ve launched the first multilingual economics channel. With these highly active investment and entrepreneurship communities, I’ve been able to take an in-depth look at the social media behaviour of 50,000+ members.
I’ve had a unique opportunity to talk directly to them and hear what they want. Rather than selling to them, I’ve built relationships. With these connections to the community from around the world, I’ve been able to learn what real people want from real brands.
During this incredible journey, I’ve been able to pinpoint what it takes to grow a Telegram channel and get real brand fans. Looking to do the same? Keep on reading right here or get the full picture with my complete (free, no signup required) Telegram market report.
How to Get Telegram Subscribers: Give People Something They Can Use
Understanding the incredible value and potential of social media, I’ve created a unique interactive community for startups and investors. Not to brag, but it’s the only network that connects would-be entrepreneurs with industry experts, mentorships, and valuable resources free of charge.
More than just an educational site, I push members to be active and get closer to their goals daily. I’ve created an interactive mentorship that responds to them both individually and as a community. I arrange weekly contests that will inspire them to push themselves and promote their ideas. The community votes together, and if an idea turns heads, those brilliant members get expert support to develop it and walk away with cash in hand. And the losers? Well, they’re not doing so badly either! Even if ideas don’t win, they attract investors ready to put their cash into the next big thing.
The Real Trick to Telegram Engagement
Of course, offering giveaways and free education alone is not enough. Even the best ideas can fall under the radar at times. Why has my community been so successful? Social media, particularly Telegram, and the interactive community that it allows me to build.
As they say, social media is a great equaliser. Everyone with an internet connection has a voice. Every brilliant idea has the potential to be heard. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. Anyone can start the next big thing.
That said, having a platform is not enough. After all, not everyone with a ball can become Cristiano Ronaldo. Success comes from support. Finding mentors who have been where you are and done what you want to do is key. Just as I’ve helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs launch their startups, I’m here to show the world’s best would-be entrepreneurs how to turn their brand into a household name.
I’ve found the most successful Telegram channel booster is having a channel that legitimately improves people’s lives. Would-be entrepreneurs from around the world get a voice. For startup investors, this is a hotbed of new ideas with built-in market testing.
Why is Telegram Such a Big Deal for Brands?
You’ve got more than half a billion people standing in front of you. This is your opportunity to stand on a platform and be heard from Australia to Brazil to India to England. What are you going to do with it?
Telegram is one of the fast-growing social media networks in the world. In a single day in 2021, the platform gained 70 million new users. Now that the app has been downloaded more than one billion times, there is no stopping the growth.
From the established markets of Europe and North America to the emerging economies of Asia, South America, and Africa, the platform is exploding in popularity. Whether you are selling organic dog food or tax accountancy service services, your customers are already using this app. With global research and unlimited free access, this is a startup’s dream come true.
Why is Telegram such a big deal? Firstly, because it has all of the features of WhatsApp and Snapchat combined, along with the marketing potential of Facebook. While it is a newcomer in the world of social media, that has become its superpower. The creators of the platform were able to see the successes and failures of every network from Myspace to TikTok. Understanding their weaknesses, they created a powerful next-generation platform.
Today, this social network sees more than 1.5 million new users every single day. Marketing experts now predict that the social media messaging platforms will now have one billion users by 2022.
So, what would you give to put up a billboard that 1.5 million new people would walk by every single day?
Benefits of Telegram Marketing: Why Smart Businesses Are Already Here
After building an interactive social media community of more than 50,000 entrepreneurs and investors over the world, I’ve uncovered a world of secrets. Connecting with the future leaders of the world and the people who will fund them, I’ve discovered some trends that blew my mind. From social media behaviour to startup and investment trends, the world is changing faster than we realise. And, what’s at the heart of it all? Social media — — and Telegram is emerging as the leader of them all.
Whether you are a startup in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, or the Americas, your potential customers already have Telegram on their phones. With its number of users is predicted to grow significantly, it’s a marketing investment that experts believe will stand the test of time. In addition to its growing user base, engagement rates and user hours logged to make this social media network a strong pick for startups looking to maximise their marketing budget.
Telegram has an engagement rate more than five times higher than that of other social media sites. Its users also spend more hours per month than on the competing Facebook Messenger. Some of the most popular channels have a user base of 120+ million people around the world.
Benefits of Telegram Marketing for Startups
Coaching tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, I understand how difficult it is for new startups. They are all trying to do a little with a lot. Their staff is working overtime and the budget is always stretched to the limit. While it is a challenge, it is the nature of the business. Startups are all about pushing the boundaries. Social media marketing is an invaluable resource for these growing companies. The unique marketing tools of Telegram offer limitless automation and high customer engagement. Consider some of these key benefits.
How to Determine a Good Engagement Rate on Telegram
How is an engagement rate determined? To establish a channel or profile’s rate of engagement, experts look at the total number of reactions. Depending on the social media platform, this might be shares, comments, reactions, or likes. That total number of reactions divided by the number of followers shows the engagement rate. By calculating this percentage, we can see the number of followers that interact with a channel rather than passively viewing it or ignoring it altogether.
On Instagram, anywhere from 1% to 3.5% is considered a good engagement rate. Achieving a 3.5% to 6% engagement rate is considered very high. On Facebook, even having a 1% engagement rate is considered good. Meanwhile, to have what is considered a good engagement rate on LinkedIn, users aim for a 2% engagement rate. This provides a context for the average return on investment that marketers get with social media. With this in mind, consider the fact that the Idea Factory has an engagement rate that ranges from 18% to 25% on Telegram. That means that depending on the day and the content, up to one in four subscribers are interested enough to take an action.
How do we get such an extraordinarily high engagement rate? One particularly important thing to note about the success of Idea Factory is the focus on real, organic growth. We don’t artificially inflate our numbers with bots and paid users. Instead, we bring in users who are active, engaged, and truly excited to utilise our channel. We want to be valuable to our community and have a community that is valuable to us.
The Unique Value of Telegram Bots
One fundamental aspect of success on Telegram is the bots. A well-programmed bot will keep customers engaged 24 hours a day. Brands can answer frequently asked questions automatically and offer prompts that will get people talking. Within a startup community, bots are especially useful. Idea Factory bots allow users to engage with the channel on multiple levels.
Of the many uses for these bots, one of the key benefits is helping users pitch startup ideas. Within the initial weeks of developing the bot, more than 1500 entrepreneurs chatted with the bot. More than 322 questions were asked about the Idea Factory and 32 formal startup pitches have been sent via the bot.
From testing products to bringing startups to the MVP stage, bots are an invaluable resource for startups. These easy-to-develop free bots allow entrepreneurs to test the true market value of their business concepts, without the typical time, cost, and risk.
The Hidden Secret to Success on Telegram
As much as the Idea Factory has gained from Telegram, it is not perfect. A startup can’t simply create an account and wait for customers to show up. On top of being proactive, entrepreneurs must know how to maximise their brand’s potential on the platform. During my journey, I’ve found a few enhancements that have transformed our experience and boosted our reach and engagement.
One thing that the app lacks is an in-depth analysis of links shared within groups. This is a major gap in analytics that will leave startups with a hole in their market research. While offering links in a brand group chat is a key strategy for engagement, it is important to know which links are getting engagement. This is crucial to digging deeper and understanding the audience better.
At the Idea Factory, I use an URL shortener that gives my powerful data on each person who clicks on our links. We can see our total clicks as well as in-depth data on organic share clicks, organic share links, organic share top content, top links, user technology details, and user location info.
Engaging with the 50,000 new members that have joined our community over the past couple of months, we have focused heavily on this and other core tools. While our link tracking tools started as an easy way to shorten and add branding to our links, we discovered that was only the beginning.
Understanding Your Telegram Audience
The real value is in the audience intelligence that we have been able to gather. We can instantly see which links are interesting for people and which aren’t. We can experiment to see if links get more clicks if we post them in the evening vs morning, weekday vs weekend, and other elements.
To see what gets interest, we have added videos, emojis, and other elements that add a human touch — — and then we have taken them away. Experimenting with this type of A/B testing shows us what our community likes. We collect insights on our performance and put them under a microscope.
When it comes to links, our tracking tool has been a perfect resource for measuring campaign performance in one click. Working with a global audience, we have also found that it is important to track individual link analytics with geographical data.
To optimise our marketing efforts, we look at the full picture. There are a fascinating array of factors that impact clicks. It’s a true look into human psychology. Even from a glance, we can get a clearer picture of who is attracted to which links.
The Smart Way to Use Links in Telegram
It’s important to note that the average link on social media has a short lifespan that isn’t dictated by the clock. People tend to see all of the latest links within a few minutes of opening the app. They click on them right away and share them with a friend within the same few minutes. Most of that activity happens within eight hours of posting. With the nature of social media apps, time zones don’t tend to make or break links. People see them when they open their app and make a choice to click or not. Understanding this, I can fully examine my link impact.
Looking at two links from the Idea Factory, we might see that one of them is twice or three times more popular. We can see that one link connected with people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, while the other did better with people in Malaysia and India. With this information, we can make a few hypotheses that we then will be able to test. If I want to grow my UK audience, for example, I try to decide what worked well and what didn’t, then continue to test those theories to better understand our target market.
Takeaway Message: Telegram Success Essentials
As social media marketing becomes mature in the 2020s, the landscape is changing. Up and coming networks like Telegram are transforming the way that startups market their brand. Far from the world of one or two per cent engagement rates that we have been seeing from Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, this up-and-coming new social network is offering a real way to connect with customers.
This is the opportunity for smart entrepreneurs to bring subscription growth and engagement rate to a new level. This is also a chance for brands to maximise their marketing and customer service budget with low-cost bots that offer customers the 24 hours a day, seven days a week engagement that is expected in the modern world.
Want to learn more? Grab the complete (free, no signup required)Telegram market report.
Cheers to your success on Telegram!
— Jack @ Idea Factory
