Telegram is the center of gravity of every blockchain community. Its popularity is being triggered by its security and encryption features, and it is becoming the de-facto standard communication platform for different sectors like politics, coding, entertainment, and business. There is definitely a rapid adoption of Telegram in the cryptocurrency/blockchain community. For different reasons, it is perceived as a professional and trusted alternative to WhatsApp.
Today, every solid blockchain project is expected to host its community on Telegram.
Telegram is used by blockchain projects for a number of different reasons. Most projects use it mainly for answering questions about their projects, some use it for communicating to their ICO participants, while there are a few choosing Telegram for technical discussions between their team and open-source developers. Telegram is the “go-to” communication tool for projects in the crypto space.
Telegram was officially launched on August 14, 2013. Telegram is the first messaging app to roll out end-to-end encryption to tens of millions of users in 2013. This was also the reason why Telegram became the first mainstream messaging app to fully open source its client code.
Aside from being known for its security features, Telegram also has a handful of other unique features that make it the communication tool of choice for blockchain communities. Here are Telegram's best key points you need to take advantage now:
• Telegram groups can have up to 100,000 members each, making it a suitable platform for blockchain projects to communicate to their community.
• Telegram channel: Unlike groups, Telegram channels are a tool for broadcasting public messages to large audiences of Telegram's unidirectional communication model, similar to broadcasting platforms where users are not able to comment or reply to posts. Telegram allows channels to have an unlimited number of subscribers, making it the perfect tool to publish news, announcements, and project milestones without the clutter of debates, feedbacks, and off-topic discussions. Notice that members cannot post, reply, or send anything in channels, keeping the timeline tidy and free of unnecessary content.
• Cross-platform availability enables a project’s team members/moderators to pick up where they left off. With this feature, Telegram users also have the ability to sync their accounts simultaneously in different devices.
• Pinned messages are widely used to highlight announcements of events, updates and other significant milestones of the project. New community members also find the basic information of your project in the pinned message. This info may include a brief explanation of what your project is, community guidelines/rules, list of official admins/moderators, etc.
• Advanced moderation tools. Admins have a fair amount of moderation tools on Telegram, from soft, partial to total bans and also time-limited or permanent bans. Moderators can manage your community with granular precision, allowing them to choose specific permissions and restrictions for easy moderation.
• Cloud-based messaging means that messages can be edited and deleted on both the sender and the receiver’s side, and messages remain available in synced devices.
Utilizing Telegram for your blockchain project gives a wide array of benefits both for you and the community. Here are the main advantages you can get from the go-to platform of every blockchain community:
With Telegram having 200 million Monthly Active Users (MAU) and 60 million Daily Active Users (DAU), presence here means visibility in the crypto space. Most crypto enthusiasts are on Telegram, so having a community here means being one click away from being discovered by an influencer, a venture capital, or a community of evangelists.
Presence on Telegram can boost people’s trust on a blockchain project as it means that the team behind the project is open to questions, suggestions, and criticisms. Transparency is incredibly appreciated by people in the crypto space - it draws the line between a credible project and a project that is only full of hype but no substance.
Blockchain projects can take advantage of Telegram’s speed. Having a Telegram group enables teams to promptly respond to inquiries and feedback from their community. It is very useful to obtain technical feedback from the developer community on Telegram. Feedback to product features, roadmap suggestions, or discussions about you whitepaper are some examples of the things you can expect developers to contribute through your community.
Telegram utilization must be planned along with the rest of your marketing strategy and roadmap from day zero. Here are some recommendations to boost your presence on Telegram:
Your projects need to provide a reason for individuals to want to join and engage in your community. Implementing the following strategies will surely contribute to the growth of your community and your project:
1. Create your official group. An official group is the place where you want all of your community members to be in. May it be developers, traders, or whoever it may be, you want them all in one place where they can engage with one another and build your community.
2. Create secondary/purpose-based groups. Groups for different languages, channels for announcements, groups for specific purposes like an airdrop campaign or a bounty program can help keep a community look organized, and keep your official group clean of traders and airdrop hunters, who can be quite insistent at some point (borderline annoying).
3. Grow your community virally. Invites are media resources that direct people to your group. It can be in the form of a link, image, video, or an ad. Sending your Telegram group’s link to a public group of enthusiasts can significantly increase the size of your community and gives you a good chance of having solid supporters.
4. Cross-channel marketing. This means utilizing all your marketing platforms in a way that each channel benefits from all the other channels. One trick that always works is adding your Telegram group’s link in your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts.
5. Incentives. Reward people for inviting their friends to your group as this also brings a lot of traffic. Certain announcements on Telegram will attract users interested to join, build, and stay in a community. You can collaborate or look for sponsorships from third-party organizations to help you incentivize your audience.
User retention must be part of your strategy from day one. This is to ensure that your community does not drift its attention to other projects, so you need to give people reasons to stick with you long-term. Eager to earn your supporters' loyalty? Here's how:
1. Reply fast. Keep the conversation going and the community members engaged by promptly responding to questions and comments in your group.
2. Have an answer ready. It is easier to focus on tough questions when you have answers ready for easy and common questions. Maintain a rich and updated knowledge base for your team members where all the answers to common questions are ready, clear, and accessible. Keep your internal knowledge/FAQ base handy for you to be able to reply to the questions in the community. Having a response ready also allows you to focus on being assertive with your responses.
3. Conduct seasonal activities.
Organize polls, AMA (Ask Me Anything) interviews, media resources creation contest, meme competition, etc. to keep your community members engaged and for them to develop a sense of ownership within the community.
4. Anticipate all kinds of users (personas). The crypto space is a diverse community which means that you’ll be dealing with different types of personalities, contexts, and motivations. It will be easier to deal with these people when you study and come up with ways on how to deal with each one of them. Create a persona analysis or a demographic research for your audience. Community members are typically categorized into developers, marketing professionals, traders/investors, newbies, crypto enthusiasts among others.
5. Keep the community tidy.
Aside from your group admins monitoring the community, bots can be a great help in making sure unwanted messages such as external links, ads, and the like are automatically deleted from your group. Traders and bounty hunters can be a bit aggressive and even annoying to other users at some point. They are of less value than engaged community members. Spammers, fudders (those who spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt), and scammers are all part of the game but it is not impossible to keep them out of the community with proper enforcement of community guidelines.
6. Provide 24/7 support. Your Telegram admins can provide access to community members and offer a place to ask questions about your project anytime while at the same time moderating and limiting the activity of spammers, shillers, fudders, and scammers.
In spite of its ups and downs, its diverse user demographics, uneven and seasonal activity, and community threats like spammers and shillers, engagement on Telegram is a must for blockchain/cryptocurrency projects since it is the go-to place to learn, engage, participate, invest, and support a product.
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