Today, if you’re a blockchain company, you’re expected to have a presence on Telegram (blockchain Telegram marketing is rapidly becoming a must in companies’ go-to marketing strategies). Here’s why:
- The platform’s security and encryption features make it a far better alternative than WhatsApp and other similar platforms. It’s actually why 550 million users chose to move here, especially users who are interested in the crypto/blockchain space and who you wouldn’t be able to find on other platforms. This means that by choosing to build your community here, you’re closer to being discovered by potential clients, influencers, and investors.
- The fact that most crypto/blockchain projects host their community on Telegram, so the platform is associated with solid projects and trustiness. Having a Telegram group is associated with the fact that the founders are open to discussions with users and that they’re transparent; transparency is a big issue in the blockchain community.
- You don’t really have many other choices. Most of the established social media platforms ban anything and everything crypto/blockchain-related from their space, so Telegram remains one of the few communication platforms you can use to advertise your project.
Now that I’ve highlighted the importance of Telegram as a communication channel for blockchain companies, here’s what you need to know before creating your own community.
*Note: creating an account is pretty straightforward, but if you need help, here’s how to set up Telegram. You can also learn more about how to use Telegram from their FAQ section.
Telegram 101 for Blockchain Community Managers
Before I go into the strategy, let’s first see what Telegram has to offer. Choosing one feature over the other (or mixing them, why not?) depends on what you want to achieve through Telegram – is it to broadcast news? get the conversation going about your project? offer support? generate traffic to your website?
Once you know what you want to achieve, the path you need to take will become clearer.
Telegram Groups
There are quite a few features that make Telegram groups a great communication resource, but I’ll only mention a few you might be interested in:
- hosting up to 200,000 users
- built-in moderation tools (you can appoint admins, mass-delete messages, restrict members from posting specific types of content, etc.)
- the ability to pin messages.
You can find a complete list of Telegram group features here.
Telegram groups are a great way to communicate with your community and get feedback fast, whether it’s technical feedback, feedback regarding your product features or roadmap, requests, etc.
Now, all that sounds great, but I must keep it real and also tell you that Telegram doesn’t provide you with tools to promote your group within the platform, which means that you need to direct traffic to your group through other platforms (for example, you should have a link to your Telegram group on your website, blog, and other social platforms).
Telegram Channels
Unlike groups, channels are meant for broadcasting messages, which makes them the perfect option if you want to use Telegram to share news about your blockchain project.
Channels can have an unlimited number of subscribers, and also, each message has a view counter (which also counts views from forwarded copies), so you can see exactly how much reach your announcements have.
But just like with Telegram groups, you still need to direct people to your channel from other platforms. There’s also the possibility of using channel catalogs (such as @tgcat) for advertising your channel for free.
Or you can use paid promotion – you can pay the admins of other high-traffic channels in your niche to advertise your channel in their community. If you’re interested in this, I recommend you check out Telega.io, Telegram’s largest ad exchange platform.
Telegram Bots
Telegram bots are definitely not in the ‘must’ category, but they’re still worth mentioning. Although there’s virtually nothing they can’t do, there’s a catch: you need to be a developer (or at least have some programming skills) to create one. More Telegram Bot FAQs here.
There’s also the option to use premade bots.
As far as the uses for a blockchain company go, maybe you could use a bot as a moderator for your group, but I still think humans do a better job. Unless you have a highly engaged community of thousands of people and it’s impossible to keep track of everything everyone is writing in real-time, and you want to ensure everyone follows the house rules.
Telegram Stickers
Also not a must, but when used right, I think Telegram stickers are a great way to reach people you would not be able to reach otherwise. Stickers are publicly available to everyone on the platform, including people who have not joined your group or subscribed to your channel. If you make them enticing enough, people will be motivated to use them in their private conversations, and therefore they will become brand ambassadors.
As you can see, Telegram offers blockchain businesses a wide range of free or low-cost communication tools, which is why the platform is so appreciated in the community.
Building Your Community: Blockchain Telegram Marketing Tips
Now, no matter how blockchain-friendly Telegram is, you won’t get the best results unless you learn to leverage it. So, here are some actionable blockchain Telegram marketing tips:
Step 1: Set Your Goal
As Peter Drucker said, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Without a goal you want to achieve, you also don’t know if you’re on the path to success.
First, you need to decide what you want to use Telegram for and set some KPIs (for example, how many people you want to join your community in the next three months). Depending on that, you can decide whether you want to create a channel, a group, or both (although it can be significantly more challenging to grow a channel and a group at the same time).
This brings us to…
Step 2: Make Sure Your Channels Are Relevant
If needed, you can create multiple groups for different purposes (for example, a group for open discussions and a separate one for support, technical discussions with people who want to contribute to your project, specific purposes such as airdrop campaigns or bounty programs, or simply language-specific groups).
You can also create a channel to announce the latest news and updates. Just make sure your channels/groups have a clear purpose (it’s ok to want to keep things separate, but you don’t want to annoy your followers by requiring them to join too many groups either) and that they’re well maintained (you update them regularly, you have moderators who can take care of spammers and trolls, etc.).
Step 3: Grow Your Community
Easier said than done. At this stage, you already have your group or channel, and it’s time to direct traffic to it. To do so, make sure you use every opportunity to let people know you have a Telegram community:
- include a link to Telegram on your website, on all your other social profiles and pages, in your email signature and newsletter, in your videos
- encourage people to join your Telegram community when you attend meetups and conferences
- use referral marketing techniques to reward users who refer your community to their friends and get them on board, etc.
- use blockchain influencer marketing: this one’s a bit controversial, but, like in any other industry, having an influencer endorsing your project can be a powerful marketing engine. However, the problem is that there are only a handful of credible blockchain influencers, and they’re high-profile people who are unlikely to endorse you for free or even on small budgets.
Engaging Your Telegram Community: Tips & Tricks
Now, getting people to join is one thing; making them stay is another story. People will stick around if they find your content valuable, and this is where the previous point also ties in. Here’s what you should keep in mind:
- Share valuable content: getting people to stick around also depends heavily on your content strategy. If you only use your Telegram channel/group as a distribution channel and share the same things you share on your LinkedIn or Twitter, you can’t expect people to stay. You need dedicated content. This includes visuals, infographics, videos, polls, etc. Also, be mindful of sharing irrelevant articles or too many memes (sharing funny posts is ok if done in moderation and if the subject is cleverly tied to your brand).
- Get a moderator: if you don’t have house rules or you don’t enforce them, and you get trolls who spam or verbally abuse everyone, you can also lose followers; moderators are crucial in every community. Also, keep in mind that people can join your group from anywhere in the world, so consider having moderators in different time zones or working in shifts so you can answer in near real-time to every request. This is especially helpful if someone decides to wreak havoc overnight.
- Keep the response time short: as I’ve previously mentioned, transparency is crucial in the blockchain community, so if you let a message get buried in tons of others and you never manage to find it and reply to it, people might think you’re doing it on purpose to avoid replying (especially if the topic is a sensitive one).
- Set automated messages: speaking of replying fast, you can use bots and set up template answers. This will help you reply more quickly, especially if questions tend to repeat themselves.
- Pin an FAQ document: having an FAQ section pinned will eliminate repetitive questions, will keep the group cleaner, and will ensure users won’t get annoyed by seeing the same questions and replies over and over again.
- Organize contests: activities are a sure way to keep followers engaged. Sticker/meme contests, in particular, are loved by the blockchain community.
- Organize regular AMAs with the founding team to talk about where the project is heading.
- Create polls to gain insights and encourage followers to get involved.
- Offer perks/incentives: they can be tied to your product (like exclusive access to beta versions, prizes in tokens, etc.) or something different (a ticket to a conference where you’ll speak).
- Be consistent: if you started your group with the intention of sharing news about your project, but somewhere along the way, it transformed into a support group, you can expect people to leave or put you on mute, which will decrease the engagement level significantly (this can be the moment when you decide to create a secondary group).
Are You Preparing for Web3? We Can Help
If you think this is too much for a single person to handle, you’re right; blockchain Telegram marketing can easily get overwhelming, even though it seems pretty easy and straightforward at first.
But fear not; we’re here to help you with the advice we’ve learned the hard way while managing multiple communities.