The problem of promoting Telegram channels is very relevant even today when the general crypto panic has decreased and not so many people are passionately involved in reading the content from blockchain projects. I will focus on the crypto-thematic channels because it is believed that they need it most.

Many of my clients say that the large active community in Telegram is one of the important factors when planning, for example, IEO, and submitting applications to exchanges.

If you ask me how to start promoting a cryptocurrency project in 2019, I will never advise you to start with Telegram. In my opinion, Telegram is an excellent messenger, but not an easy social network to promote.

The problem is that Telegram does not have its capabilities for promoting channels and groups within itself. Perhaps the most obvious option — the struggle for ranking by keywords in the search — may come to naught since these Telegram’s algorithms are not yet refined.

Example, a request to search for channels using the key “bitcoin news” leads to a funny result:

In just 3 possible positions, large channels with 100k+ subscribers are adjacent to such a friend with 71 participants. 🤷‍♀️
Now here I can formulate the first rule for channel promotion in Telegram:

📌 Capture the relevant key phrase or word, including it in the name or address of the channel.

If you are only at the beginning of the project’s growth path, I advise you not to include the promotion of the Telegram channel in the first phases of your marketing strategy. Use the resource for its main purpose — communication. Getting feedback from an already formed community is exactly that Telegram will help you with for 110%.

Do not go into battle unarmed: check the created channel

A Telegram channel with a large number of subscribers will allow you to attract more traffic to your website and monitor the mood of your participants: voting, reaction buttons, comments (recently added feature).

Captain Obvious: if you don’t have high-quality content and organic audience influx, your channel will die as a source of traffic. Hence one more little tip:

📌 Do not drive a channel without a clearly structured content plan.

Define clearly why a crypto enthusiast will need your channel.
Create rubrics and an editorial portfolio, just like full-fledged media do, yes.
Decide on the structure: picture templates, buttons, reactions, calls-to-actions.

Client’s desire is a must: about the Telegram channel promotion

As I said, the possibilities of promoting a channel inside Telegram are poor. However, there is one way worthy of separate advice:

📌 Grab audiences.

Depending on the subject of the channel, you can pick up a certain circle of other people’s chats and channels and try to bring a part of the audience from there.

An important point! We are not talking about paid advertising publications in the “top-100-crypto-channels”. Please, forget about it right now. This does not work, and let’s not spend the text on it.

Determine which third-party channels you can share content with and what benefits you are ready to give in return. Providing trading signals? Write a short post about a single coin and invite its channel administrator to repost.

If you have a little more time (or budget), you can work with guerrilla marketing. Go to potentially relevant chats and leave information about yourself there. Spam will not work, please do not try.

Fresh blood: go to third-party resources

First of all, I want to start with the obvious, but surprisingly unpopular: let those who are already with you know about your channel. This means a link on the website and all social networks of your presence.

Now you need to select the channels for the “attack” depending on your budget and/or resources. If you are sure that your channel is really useful, I advise you to start with listings:

📌 Add your channel to all Telegram channel listing websites. For example, telegramcryptogroups.com.

Don’t forget the basics of SEO. Write good descriptions, embed keys. Listing websites are not good on their original purpose, but for search engine ranking.

It’s time to create a sales department: invite users in person

One of the few Telegram channels I follow has found me by its own. Through personal messages on LinkedIn, I received an invitation with a description of the channel’s value(they talk about marketing there). But I have never received invitations to crypto channels — take the niche first!

📌 Start inviting people manually or via paid campaigns.

Note: personal invitations are a resource-consuming process. You can try to use purchased user bases, but this is a dangerous way. Most often, nothing worthy is sold. I know only a few providers, whose databases give some results.

Besides, if you have experience in creating advertising campaigns and have budget available, then you need to set up ads. It can be a specialized targeted mailing of LinkedIn Inmails or a leadgen campaign. Yes, we all remember the ban on cryptocurrency advertising, so create ads by carefully selecting words.

Remember: return on investment is the most important thing. Therefore, if you are not confident in yourself — find someone who will conduct the campaign for you, or work only with manual mailings.

How to find people to send invitations?

At this point, you promised me that you would not create meaningless spam. Now let’s talk about finding audiences. I recommend creating a selection of groups and communities in social networks:

Facebook groups
Twitter Lists
Whatsapp groups
Slack groups
BitcoinTalk Forum
Competitors’ subscribers

Use keywords to search and rely on common sense.

At the junction of PR: start activity and collaboration

There are classic marketing methods that work in almost any industry — contests and promotions. I’m not saying that you should gift Mercedes on the channel each week to attract the audience. Be a little more creative.

📌 Create or participate as a sponsor in a unique promotion or contest.

Joint actions of several crypto-related projects began to appear more and more often. For example, trading competitions. Such contests are well covered in the media and push the audience to follow all the organizers. You may not even be one of the organizers — just ask the authors about sponsorship opportunities.

WSCOC’s post about one of the partners of competition

Too unique topic and traders are not your audience? Create an action by yourself and find several partner projects for its implementation. You can even contact me, I will generate a couple of ideas for you for free. 🙂

So, I briefly discussed the important points of promoting the Telegram channel, starting with your content, ending with classical marketing.