Telegram for business

As of this writing, Telegram is the fastest-growing messenger in the world. Every day, 25 million new users join it. Due to its rapid growth, more and more companies are starting to look at the messenger and implement it in their work processes. It has many specific features that are missing in Whatsapp or Viber, which are great for small and medium businesses. In this article, we’ll break down the benefits of Telegram for businesses.

Let’s look at the main differences between Telegram and other messengers:

• A level of data security and privacy that no other messenger will provide;
• Synchronization with IOS/Android/MacOs/Windows;
• Unlimited cloud storage;
• Separation of chats into folders;
• Voice chats within a group;
• Multifunctional chat-bots;
• Free API for developers.

With the differences sorted out, now let’s take a closer look at the tools that will be useful to businesses.

Telegram tools:

Chats and groups: are used for conversations. In a conversation, you can write messages, send files, assign administrators. If a group reaches more than 200 participants, it can be transformed into a super group. Recently a voice chat feature has been added directly in the group.

Feed: a tool for sending information from “one to many”, something similar to Twitter. A channel can be private or public. To join a private channel, you need an invitation. A private channel is great for providing exclusive content to a small circle of people. Recently, the public channel has the ability for subscribers to comment on publications.

Bots: the main feature of the messenger. In simple terms – it is a program that facilitates the life of the user, imitating the actions of an ordinary user. Bots can be divided into: bots informers, game bots, bots assistants and chat bots. I.e. bot helps, without leaving the messenger to solve problems with simple commands. To be fair, it is difficult to divide bots into categories because one bot can perform several mechanics and tasks simultaneously.

How to Use Telegram for Business

1. Communication with the client.

Telegram’s functionality allows you to do everything the same as any other social network for business. You can subscribe to it and draw information about promotions, offers, company news, etc. However, the engagement of Telegram users is much higher than any of the social networks. It is possible to run your channel on a particular topic without directly linking to your business, giving useful information and natively integrating the services of your business. Telegram support is also a great idea. An additional platform (in our case Telegram) to communicate with sales managers increases the conversion rate up to 15%.

2. Sales.

Telegram is a great platform for direct sales. Creating a loyal audience through a Telegram channel, advertising a product or service, you can close the deal directly in the messenger. You can also use bot in Telegram to create an online store with a shopping cart and regular mailings to customers.

3. Automation of business processes.

Having mastered all the advantages of bots, you can delegate a huge number of routine tasks to them:

• Technical support;
• Informing about special offers;
• Consultation on the choice of services or goods;
• Processing of orders and informing about the status of their fulfillment.

4. Team communication automation.

Thanks to the API telegrams appear services such as AssistBot, which through the bot in Telegram can monitor the performance of tasks, hold stand-up meetings, anonymous voting, measure the motivation. The bot collects the results in the form of analytics in a personal account. For small and medium-sized teams, this service is capable of replacing the task manager. Combined with the capabilities of Telegram, AssistBot is a good alternative to complex CRM-systems.

5. Personal brand.

Creating a personal brand is a very important part of your business. If you are a charismatic leader of your project – you can use Telegram as a platform to promote your personal brand and accordingly your business. Telegram channel can become an analogue of the super-popular in its time, Live Journal. People buy from people.

6. Stickerpacks.

Stickers are an interesting modern method of promoting your brand. Your task is to draw creative (branded with your brand identity) stickers relevant to your business. Stickers can be made in the form of working memes or funny situations that your business encounters. If your sticker pack (set of stickers) is creative and resonates with people in similar fields – brand loyalty and recognition will increase.

In conclusion, would like to say that an important advantage of Telegram is a principled position of the messenger’s management regarding the protection of users’ personal data. Changing the privacy policy of Whatsapp pushed a huge number of people to switch to telegram, and this means that using the messenger features now – you will be one step ahead of your competitors.