In this article, we will tell you in detail about the rapidly developing phenomenon of telegram channels, how to create, design, conduct, advertise and how to diversify the channel's content.
You will also find what useful and interesting functions Telegram has provided for channel owners and administrators. If you are thinking about creating your own Telegram channel — this article is for you.
- What is Telegram Channel
- How to Create a Telegram Channel
- Is It Worth Creating a Channel
- Channel Idea and Theme
- Telegram Channel Design
- Channel Multiply
- How To Promote The Created Channel
- Channel Monetization in Telegram
- Monitoring Statistics
What is Telegram Channel
A Telegram channel is a blog led by one or more editors. You create a channel, after which you can send messages there, and Telegram users can subscribe to your channel and read what you write there.
Channels in Telegram are personal and non-commercial, either from a brand or a large company. Channels allow you to broadcast text messages to a mass audience.
Telegram channels can have an unlimited number of subscribers, but the subscribers do not see each other, and they do not know who else has subscribed to this channel besides them. Few other messengers offer such functionality.
Channels in Telegram can be private and public. Private Telegram channels are available by invitation only. To access a private channel, or even just find out about its existence, you need to find a link-invitation to the group somewhere, or the administrator himself must add you to subscribers.
Public Telegram channels are available for search. This means that you can go to the application and find the necessary Telegram channels on the topics of interest to you in a special search bar.
In this way, you can find a small number of channels, since the search system in the messenger is poorly developed. Therefore, we recommend an article about all the ways to search for channels in Telegram.
How to Create a Telegram Channel
The functionality for creating a Telegram channel is equally available in Telegram on Android, iOS and in the desktop version:
- Select "Create channel" from the Telegram menu.
- Write the name of the channel and its description;
- Select the type of channel: public or private;
- Invite the first subscribers;
- Channel created!
Next, we will go into more detail about the process of creating a channel.
To create a telegram channel on the iOS operating system, select the “Chats” tab and then find the message button in the upper right corner and click on the “New channel” function.How to create a Telegram channel.
The desktop version is almost identical to the Android version. You will need to click on the three-bar icon at the top of the screen and then select the “Create Channel” option.
Choose a name, set a channel photo, enter a description
After you have clicked on the “Create channel” button, you will have a menu in which you will need to enter the channel name you have chosen, set the channel's avatar, and add its description. In the channel description, write a means of contacting you and, preferably, tags (up to 5).
When finished, click on the checkmark in the upper right corner of your screen. You will have a tab in which you will need to select public or private you are creating a channel, as well as choose a short login for it.
After choosing everything you need, click on the checkmark in the upper right corner. Telegram will offer you to add up to 200 subscribers to the channel from the list of your contacts. You can add if you want or click “Skip” this tab.
Clicked? Your new channel has been created!
If you want to delete the channel you just created - just click on the button at the bottom of the “Delete channel” page.
You can only delete a small or newly created channel. It is impossible to delete an old Telegram channel with a large number of subscribers in one click.
There are a few things to consider before creating a channel:
- Channel login length must be in the range of 5-32 characters;
- The name cannot exceed 255 characters;
- No more than 10 public channels can be created from one account;
- The number of Telegram channel subscribers is unlimited;
- The channel owner can appoint up to 50 administrators;
- Up to 20 bots can be connected to the channel;
- A channel with more than 1 thousand subscribers can be deleted only by contacting Telegram technical support.
Is It Worth Creating a Channel
Solving for yourself the question "is it necessary to create a telegram channel?" try to determine what exactly you will get as a channel creator, as well as what your subscribers can get for themselves by reading this channel.
If you can answer both these questions and you have something to share with the world, then creating a Telegram channel is definitely worth it! Sometimes completely unexpected things can be the source of filling the channel, for example, posting content might be a byproduct of your main job, your creative pursuits, blogging efforts, or even simple chat comments on free topics.
Very often, telegram channels are a good help in doing business, or it itself becomes a source of your earnings.
That is, the goals of creating a telegram channel can be very different, but you can still try to group them into the following categories:
- Coverage of popular and / or demanded topics, with the aim of subsequent monetization;
- Personal or corporate blog;
- Creation of social media capable of influencing public opinion;
- Generating additional traffic to the site;
- Advertising or selling certain products;
- Notifying customers and regular customers about new products on the market, as well as discounts and promotions;
- Using the functionality of a closed-channel, with information that is available only for money.
The presence of at least one of these reasons is already a reason to think about creating your own telegram channel.
When you start to create a new Telegram channel, make sure that the presentation of the material is informative, meaningful and interesting for your audience. The audience in Telegram is very wide and we can safely say that there will be a reader for almost any niche in the messenger. The main thing is to find and subsequently attract the target audience to the channel, which we will also talk about further.
Channel Idea and Theme
Before creating a channel, you should at least roughly decide on its topic, language, design and audience to which the channel will be targeted.
If you have chosen the name of the channel that is suitable in your opinion and decided on the topic on which you will write, then you can then proceed to the steps to create a Telegram channel.
In our opinion, channels with unique, author's content have advantages, therefore, it is important to select the topic of the channel not only from the point of view of positions “to interest the audience”, but also from the standpoint of how interesting it will be for you and the whole team to create content on a given topic.
For the further promotion of the Telegram channel, one of the important parameters is the quality and number of posts per day, and therefore, for a large channel, it is desirable to maintain a given rhythm of posting, which is very difficult without a keen interest in the topic on your part.
At the moment, the most popular areas of Telegram channels can be conditionally divided into the following categories:
- Entertainment channels — jokes, funny stories, memes and funny videos;
- Information channels — this includes the media, news from any field and education;
- Commercial channels — information about products, services and promotions. In this case, the channel is primarily a tool for selling their products or for informing about them.
However, one must understand that this is not an exhaustive list of topics, and in general, the topic of the Telegram channel, as well as the purpose of its creation, can be absolutely any.
Telegram Channel Design
The most important element after creating a Telegram channel is its name and design. The name should as clearly, succinctly and concisely express the essence and theme of the channel, in harmony with its description. Ideally, you should not choose a long (longer than 3 words) channel name, otherwise it will simply become unreadable both due to the technical features of the messenger and in practice.
The channel description is almost as important a design element as its name. Try to describe in a few sentences what your channel is about, what its subject matter and what area the authors are interested in. Optionally, you can add something to motivate people to subscribe. Also, in the description, you can indicate the means for contacting you directly: e-mail, a specially configured bot or your telegram account.
You and only you decide how your channel will look visually. However, it is still possible to advise something about registration. A picture or a special logo of a channel should attract the attention of readers, and, optimally, overlap with the theme or branding of your channel, not necessarily directly, but at least at the level of associations.
To design your Telegram channel graphically beautifully, you can contact the designer, find a suitable picture somewhere on the Internet, or refer to one of the many free picture banks.
Channel Multiply
There are no special requirements for maintaining a telegram channel, however, regular and active posting of content was certainly a positive practice.
In the event of long downtime and large intervals between the publication of content in Telegram, people may be disappointed in their expectations and start unsubscribing from your channel.
For those who are just starting to run a Telegram channel, the question sometimes arises: which posts are better to publish, short or longread? This question can be answered as follows: each type of posts has both its advantages and disadvantages, however, practice shows that it is best to alternate long and short posts on the channel.
An extremely important element in the process of creating a Telegram channel is the selection of a team. The pace of modern life is very high, so it will be easier for several administrators to fill it with content. Find people who are interested in the topic of the channel you can trust and give them administrator rights.
Why Do You Need Channel Administrators
The creation and management of Telegram channels has its own list of problems, especially considering the potentially unlimited number of subscribers on the channel. Messenger has created many tools and functions to help you manage your project. Let's now talk about organizing the administration of the telegram channel.
Sooner or later, you will need helpers to manage the channel, as well as other handy tools for working with the project.
Telegram has a function that allows you to add / remove administrators, determine the scope of their rights, view a list of recent administrator actions, and monitor project statistics.
Adding administrators to your Telegram channel will allow you to manage your channel as a team. Depending on the scope of rights you choose, administrators can:
- change information about a group;
- send messages;
- edit messages;
- delete messages;
- add subscribers;
- add administrators.
Telegram provides the channel owner with the opportunity to set a set of permissions individually selected for him for each administrator.
How to Add a Channel Administrator
To add a new administrator, in the settings of your channel go to the "Information" section, then select the "Administrators" tab and click "Add administrator".
To manage administrator permissions, go to the "Information" section, then to "Administrators" and click on the name of the "Administrator" for which you want to configure permissions.
Messages in the telegram channel can be published without indicating the authorship of a specific administrator. In addition, you can allow administrators to sign messages they send with their name, emphasizing different authorship of the content.
How to Publish Content
There are several equal ways to publish content, which are easier to choose based on your own tastes, knowledge of the functionality and the amount of content.
The general rule here is: try not to publish gray homogeneous arrays of text, try to actively, but use markup, different fonts in Telegram, suitable emoticons and emoji, hashtags, if necessary, add polls.
Standard Features
Let's start with the fact that you can publish posts in telegrams in exactly the same usual way that you send a message in a private chat or in a group. Just enter your text in the input box and send your message.
By long pressing the message sending icon (airplane), you can call the postponed message menu and select the time for posting postponed post.
In this case, you can attach files, photos or attach a poll to the message by simply clicking on the "paper clip" icon. You can also add emoticons to the message using the emoticons tab, insert links into the text and format the text, highlighting the fragments you need with special fonts.
In addition, there are also many different bots in telegrams, the use of which can seriously make life easier for any administrator.
If you wish, you can find most of these bots yourself using the telegram search, however, we will tell you about several of the most famous and popular bots now:
- @ControllerBot and @fleepbot are handy bots for deferred posting;
- @markdownrobot is a text formatting bot.
Telepost
Telepost is a standalone free service designed to make life easier for Telegram channel administrators. With the help of Telepost, you can put posts on postponed publication, use the visual editor:
- It is convenient to attach photos, links and polls
- Set a post auto-delete timer, pin posts, create drafts, publish albums
- Diversify content with a wide range of emoticons and emojis
- Track reader reactions
Use many other no less useful tricks in Telegram. In order to take advantage of all this rich and varied functionality, you need to register on the site.
Different Features
Telegram has a number of additional, extremely useful features and ways to diversify content. For example, in the process of filling a channel, you can use hashtags, polls, quizzes, create groups associated with the channel, and also pin important messages. We will talk about most of these chips separately further.
Hashtags
A hashtag is a keyword auxiliary word or multi-word construct preceded by a hash #. Used hashtag on social networks and blogs when searching for material.
The main benefit of this tool is to help structure the material on the telegram channel. And it is in vain that many underestimate the usefulness of hashtags, because even the Telegram team and Pavel Durov actively use them in their messages. Hashtags are useful not only when searching on a specific channel, but also when searching in all channels and chats you subscribe to.
The use of hashtags is limited only by your imagination - you can come up with as many of them as you want.
Polls
In an effort to improve the functionality of Telegram, the developers have created three different types of polls:
- Open;
- Anonymous;
- Quizzes.
You can create polls not only in channels, but also in groups and chats. To create a poll on your channel, you just need to click on the "paper clip" icon in the message input field, and then select the "Poll" option in the lower menu bar.
Then enter the wording of your question, write down the answer options in separate lines and set the settings for the poll itself by selecting its category.
The poll can be made public or anonymous, with one answer or multiple. If you choose the open voting option, you will see which of those who voted for which option gave their vote.
Also, polls on channels can be done using special telegram bots. For example, @vote is a handy tool for creating polls. Create a poll with this bot, add answer options and publish. The same thing, only with more advanced functionality, is suggested by @QuanBot.
Quiz
As we already wrote, the updated version of polls includes the ability to create quizzes. In the quiz, you need to choose only one correct answer, all other answers in the quiz are incorrect.
To create a quiz with multiple questions and multimedia, you need to use @quizbot.
Groups
When you link your Telegram chat with your channel, then all messages that you publish on your Telegram channel will be automatically posted in the chat.
This means that you can have a public Telegram channel where you will broadcast updates to anyone who wants to read them. And you can link a private group (chat) to the channel, where you can invite the most experienced and engaged readers who want to get real feedback.
You should actively use Telegram chats when you are looking for interaction with your audience. Chats not only allow you to conduct surveys, but also directly ask your audience what they think of your content.
After all, Telegram chats are actually group thinking. They will allow you to bring ideas to life. Your audience will give you feedback and maybe even turn your idea into something you didn't even think about initially.
Regardless of who your audience is, you will be surrounded by people who just want information and people who really want to participate in the discussion. Telegram allows you to satisfy the needs of both.
Pin Messages
To pin a message to your Telegram channel, press and hold the message you want to pin, and then select the pin message option.
How To Promote The Created Channel
Promotion of a telegram channel is a rather troublesome business, but if there are sufficient financial resources or a willingness to spend time and effort, it is not difficult.
Let's list the ways to promote the created telegram channel:
- Invitation. At the very early stage, when your channel has just been created and has not yet reached the size of 200 people, the channel creator has a function that allows you to invite people from your contact list.
- Distribute a special link among your friends, by which people will go to the channel;
- Agree with the administrators of other channels of similar or overlapping topics about mutual reposts, mentions, recommendations or placement of special cross-advertising posts;
- Use telegram channel advertising exchanges. Advertising exchanges can be found both on external sites and directly in the telegram itself.
- Order advertising of your Telegram channel on external platforms, attracting an audience from there, for example, from Facebook or Instagram.
- Post detailed data about your telegram channel in public catalogs (for example, on TGstat);
- Advertise your channel in chats and groups by uploading reposts, mentions and links to your materials there.
Channel Monetization in Telegram
There are many ways to monetize your Telegram channel. Let's discuss the most popular and interesting monetization models:
- Sell ads. This is an extremely popular and widespread option. Ads can be sold to other channels for cross-promotion or to companies and brands;
- Charge a subscription fee. The most popular paid subscription model in Telegram consists of two main components: a public channel with a large subscriber base and an additional private channel (or closed group) with premium content, which is available only to paid subscribers;
- Donations. Allow your subscribers to send a one-time "tip" for posts, or set up a recurring donation through Patreon;
- Sell your products and services. With the help of the channel, you can sell almost any product or service, including consulting;
- Paid messages. Niche message boards are a good example. These job boards exist in the form of telegram channels, which allows you to receive a fixed fee for job posting;
- Sell third party products and services. Use affiliate networks.In this case, monetization takes place using the CPA model (using an affiliate network). This is a Cost per Action model - an advertiser pays for the actions of users who came to his site with your help. If a person makes a purchase in an online store by going to the site using the affiliate link posted by your channel, then you will receive a percentage of the purchase amount;
- Promotion of the telegram channel for the purpose of subsequent sale.
Use these methods and with the right strategy and some patience, you can generate income from the comfort of your laptop anytime, anywhere.
Monitoring Statistics
An important parameter for any channel is post readability. You can get this information by paying attention to the number next to the image of the peephole under each published message. The number next to this peephole will let you know the number of people who saw your post.
Channel owners who have more than 500 subscribers can view the statistics of their channel built directly into the telegram. To do this, open the full version of your Telegram channel and click on the icon with three vertical dots in the upper right corner. You will see a menu in which you need to select the "Statistics" item. Select this item.
You have entered a new tab. You can now scroll down to see all the statistics for the channel.
Here you can find complete data on channel growth, subscriber dynamics, enabled notifications, channel views by hour, view source, information about the sources of new subscribers, the language of people reading your channel, activity data, as well as a list of recent posts indicating the number of reposts.
However, not every channel has 500 subscribers, so this function will not be available to you at the earliest stages of channel development.
Good detailed statistics on ratings, citation index and channel ERR are always provided by the external tgstat service. In addition, tgstat data is available in Telegram itself, thanks to @TGStat_Bot.
We have previously published a detailed article on how to use the benefits of tgstat, so you can familiarize yourself with all the intricacies of telegram statistics simply by reading our previous material.
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