How to promote a telegram channel from scratch and get your first thousand subscribers

External methods of promoting a telegram channel

In recent years, the messenger’s audience has doubled : more than 75 million people use it every month. We tell you how to develop a channel without “gray” promotion methods.

External methods of promoting a telegram channel

Internal methods of promoting telegram channels

Free promotion of channel in Telegram

Paid promotion of a channel in Telegram

How to analyze channels for advertising

Expert advice

According to a study by TGStat.ru, 60% of respondents choose Telegram for communication, and every second user conducts business correspondence with clients in it. Telegram remains the main source of news for 80% of users, 45% of respondents are subscribed to microblogs. The audience is solvent: the average user’s income is up to 70,000 rubles. Ignoring Telegram for business means losing profits and potential clients.

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External methods of promoting a telegram channel

Organic promotion in Telegram is impossible — there is no algorithmic feed. This means that posts are displayed by publication date, and the user sees all posts, not just those that become popular.

To promote a TG channel from scratch , you need to try different tools and analyze what exactly worked. Here are five options to start with:

1. Publish articles on aggregator sites

Register a company or expert blog on VC, Rusbase, Habr, Pikabu. Some platforms, such as VC, have paid business accounts with advanced features.

The site publishes materials on marketing, design, technology, careers, and author’s columns on other topics. The focus is on startups, business, and technology.

Companies and experts use different approaches: some duplicate posts from social networks, others publish original content. The text includes a mention of the Telegram channel with a direct link.

2. Provide expert comments in the media

To find options for placement in the media, you can use the Pressfeed journalistic request service. Authors of articles write questions and a deadline in the request. Experts register on the platform, select a request in the feed and respond in the form below. This is how they get a mention in the material – their name and regalia are indicated in the publication. Often, you can put a direct link to a Telegram channel in the text, this option depends on the editorial policy of the publication and the format.

3. Do cross-promotional placements

Cross-promotion is mutual PR, when channels post about each other for free in their channels. The formats can be different: for example, an announcement or useful material on the topic – an interview, instructions.

Owners of channels with a similar number of subscribers are more willing to engage in mutual PR. If a brand or expert has 1,000+ subscribers, you can offer such a collaboration to channels with up to 2,000 subscribers.

Similarity in the subject matter is not necessary. Look at the target audience . For example, girls who are interested in fashion and style go to psychologists. Accordingly, a psychologist can choose a fashion channel for cross-promotional placement.

4. Place QR codes

The QR code for subscription is placed on the main screen of the channel profile, next to the invitation link. It is printed on business cards, added to presentations and articles.

5. Create a loyalty program

Give a small discount on a product or service to those users who post a link to the Telegram channel in their social media posts and explain why they are subscribed to it. This method is suitable for those who already have active subscribers.

Internal methods of promoting telegram channels

The platform is actively developing Telegram Ads — advertisements of no more than 160 characters that are displayed at the very bottom of the feed. By clicking on the message, the user is taken to the advertised channel. Advertisements are not shown to Telegram Premium subscribers.

Unlike other apps, Telegram does not track user interactions with advertising messages. The advertiser can select the approximate topics of the channels where the ads will be shown, or specific channels. A detailed overview of Telegram Ads is in this guide .

Services that officially handle placement in Telegram Ads, such as Elama , help set up ads . The minimum advertising budget in this case is €3,000, plus the service commission and VAT. Legal entities and individual entrepreneurs can pay in installments.

Internal methods of promoting telegram channels

Free promotion of channel in Telegram

Despite the high competition, conditionally free methods of channel promotion also work. However, in this case, the promotion of a Telegram channel will take a long time: it will not be possible to predict a specific result from placements. Here are several ways to promote a Telegram channel from scratch:

1. Publish announcements on social networks

Tell about the launch of the Telegram channel in the social networks of the brand, the company founders, key employees. Prepare 5-10 templates of such an announcement and send them to colleagues. Periodically remind subscribers in other social networks what the company shares in Telegram.

2. Publish the channel in directories

●  TGstat is a catalog that contains more than a million Telegram channels and chats, classified by country, language and topic.

●  Tlgrm is a catalog of Telegram channels, bots, public chats and groups, divided by topics.

3. Comment on channels with related topics

One-sentence comments should be avoided. They should be full-fledged responses on the topic of the post or, for example, a link to a lead magnet on the topic of the channel: it can be placed in pinned messages.

Paid promotion of a channel in Telegram

Even the most popular publics couldn’t do without advertising when promoting a Telegram channel. On average, an advertising post in channels with 15,000-20,000 subscribers costs from 6,000 to 15,000 ₽. Here are several ways to pay for promotion in Telegram:

●  Purchase advertising in Telegram channels directly

Common formats for purchasing advertising are a post with a link to the advertised channel; a place in a selection or folder with channels. In highly competitive niches – business, education, digital – the cost of attracting a user is 50-300 ₽. To promote a Telegram channel from scratch and gain 1,000 subscribers, you will need an average of 50,000-300,000 ₽.

●  Buy advertising through exchanges

Exchange managers check that the channels have a live audience, specify how much a post will cost, and sort the channels by topic. All that remains is to choose the channel of interest and pay for the advertising placement. Here are the three most popular exchanges:

1. Telega.in — over 300,000 manually verified channels and bots for native placements.

2. Telegrator is an advertising exchange with a built-in service for analyzing Telegram channels.

3. Tgrm — advertising exchange in Telegram — a catalog of channels, bots and stickers that help find a suitable channel for placement.

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How to analyze channels for advertising

Different ad texts are tested in small channels with different topics: they change the titles, layouts, formats and track the results. And then they scale up: successful options are taken into the advertising campaign. This approach allows you to achieve maximum return: quickly get the first thousand subscribers and grow further.

In order to avoid running into a channel with bots and not to waste your time, before paying for advertising, it is worth evaluating it by several parameters: indicators for views and reactions, the number of unsubscribes per day and week, content – whether it is an original channel or a collection of reposts.

To assess how successful the advertisement was, a unique link to the Telegram channel is created for each placement: menu “Channel Management” → “Invitation Management” → “Create a new link”.

If a post provides a link to a website, it is marked with a UTM tag . If you need to track conversion, a unique promo code will help. Usually, this method is chosen by online stores: they assign a personal code to the blogger, and users who come from his advertising post enter this code when making a purchase.