The different digital marketing strategies followed by companies to get their products and services in front of their audience have been evolving rapidly in the last few years. The mass mailing boom slowed down considerably after the GDPR law and companies shifted their focus to SEO. From here, we have seen a great growth in the sharing and promotion of content on social networks. These, because of their different characteristics, allow you to target your audience in a more focused way.
And we are seeing more and more how the current trend is for people to use their phones to connect to the Internet. So it should come as no surprise that 70% of people who have made the decision to click “buy” have done so via their smartphones.
In this context, using messaging platforms to reach your potential clients, and in particular Telegram due to its differential characteristics, is something that should be part of your digital strategy.
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Why Use Telegram in Your Marketing Strategy?
Telegram is a messaging application that has more than 700 million active monthly users. Cloud-based, it works on any device: smartphone, tablet, and computer. It is fast, secure, and free. It allows users to send text messages, share photos, videos, and files. You can also create channels and groups to better interact with your audience.
In addition, with its strong security features and cloud-based infrastructure, Telegram is ideal for keeping sensitive information safe while allowing you to reach large audiences with ease. It differs from other platforms in the following:
- High levels of security: it includes a sophisticated encryption system with which users can be safe when sharing any sensitive information.
- Contact without phone number: you can add users to Telegram without knowing their phone number, with just their app nickname, and they can add themselves to your channel with a link or QR code.
- You access from any device: Telegram data is stored in the cloud, which allows you to open the same account on different devices, whether it’s a phone or a computer. This is really useful if you have different administrators on your channel.
- Unlimited Media: Your messages can include any media with no size or time limits.
- Large groups: You can have groups of up to 200,000 members.
But perhaps the exclusive Telegram offer that differs most from other messaging apps is the option to create custom bots. In addition to the classic chatbot that can hold a basic conversation with your users, it has other bots that perform automated tasks that adapt to your needs.
This is what has allowed us to make it easy for you to share with Nelio Content the content of your website in your Telegram channels automatically in the same way you do in social networks.
Next let’s see how to connect Telegram with Nelio Content via a bot and schedule your posts to be published on your Telegram channels automatically.
How to Connect Telegram to Nelio Content
Nelio Content is a plugin that allows you to automate publishing to Telegram from your WordPress website without the need to add any line of code. Nelio Content not only allows you to post to Telegram, it also allows you to automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google My Business, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok, and Tumblr.
After installing and activating the free version of Nelio Content and having connected your Telegram account to Nelio Content as explained below, you’ll be able to publish messages promoting your posts in your channels and groups. With the free version you can publish a message in the channel you want every time you publish a new post on your blog and with a premium version you can schedule all the messages you want so that they are published when you indicate or even, if you want, Nelio Content can generate messages automatically to be published in the channels.
Let’s see the steps to follow to connect your Telegram account with Nelio Content.
Create a Telegram Bot
As I mentioned before, in order to automate the publications you must first create a Telegram bot that will be the administrator of your channels and groups and the one that will be in charge of publishing your content with Nelio Content. Below I summarize the instructions but you can check more details here.
After logging into your Telegram account, search for the @botfather account via Telegram search. This specific account is verified and marked with a blue checkbox.
Once selected, a new chat appears with instructions:
You will need to send the /start and then /newbot in the chat with @botfather. And then choose the name that will be displayed below the bot and type a unique username that is identifiable to the bot.
The @botfather bot will reply with a bot token which is the one you need later when connecting Nelio Content with Telegram.
Finally, add the newly created bot to your Telegram channel or group that you want it to be the admin of, to allow the previously created bot to share your content there.
Nelio Content
I’m so happy about Nelio Content that I will sound like a payed advocate… but here’s why you’ll love it: it works as promised, its auto-scheduling feature is top-notch, Nelio’s value for money is unmatched, and the support team feels like your own.
Panozk
Configure a Telegram Connection in Nelio Content
Connecting Telegram with Nelio Content is pretty much the same as you do it with any other social network. In the Nelio Content Settings, you must click on the Telegram icon.
Doing so opens a new window to configure the connection of your Telegram bot with the Telegram channel or group in Nelio Content.
Copy the bot token that @botfather gave you earlier and paste it in the Bot Token field. After that, you can test the validity of the token by clicking the “Test Token” button.
If the result is positive, you can continue with the channel where you want Nelio Content to publish your messages. To do this, you need the identifier of that channel. In this guide you will learn more about how to get channel ID on Telegram. Then, type the channel identifier in the Channel field and click “Test Connection”. If the test was successful, a new message will be posted in the selected Telegram group or channel.
Create Telegram Messages to Promote Your Posts
When you write any post, the free version of Nelio Content allows you to create a Telegram message so that it is published automatically at the same time you publish the post. To do this, at the end of the post, you will find the “Social Media” box where clicking on the “Add Social Message” link allows you to create the Telegram message.
If you only have one Telegram profile connected to your blog, a pop-up window will open for you to create the message in that account.
By default, the message that is created includes the post title, the permalink and the featured image of the post. You can modify the message text as you like, add hashtags, emojis, and some post fields like its title, author, excerpt, categories, tags, and permalink. You can also change the image of the post and preview the publication by clicking on the eye symbol you have for it.
After saving the message, it’ll be scheduled to be shared on Telegram at the time of publication of your post. You will see the message below your post in the Social Media box:
In addition, you can see it at all times in the Nelio Content’s editorial calendar, where you will also see the post and the Telegram message scheduled for publication:
By clicking on the scheduled Telegram message (from the Social Media box or from the calendar), you can go back to edit it and modify it as you want. And even if for whatever reason you need to reschedule the post to another date, from the calendar you just have to drag the post to the new date and, automatically, the Telegram message that you had scheduled for that post will also be moved to the corresponding publication date.
And that’s it! The moment your blog post is published, the message will automatically be sent on Telegram without you having to worry about anything else.
Automatically Generate Telegram Messages
If you buy the Premium version of Nelio Content (the price of an annual subscription for a site is €5 per month), it provides you with a set of automations so that the messages you publish on Telegram can be automatically generated.
After writing any post, in the Social Media box you just have to click on the “Customize Timeline” button and Nelio Content will take care of creating social messages on all those social networks or services that you have connected to your website.
For the messages to be generated automatically, Nelio Content uses various sources of information:
- analyzing your post and looking for relevant phrases,
- selecting the phrases of the text that you have previously marked as relevant,
- using the social templates that Nelio includes by default, together with the templates that you have defined for it, and
- using custom phrases that you have explicitly indicated for that post.
Customize Social Automations
You can optimize Nelio Content’s automatic message generation algorithm in various ways so that messages published on any social network or service appear personalized.
From the editing page of any post, you can select any piece of text and click the editor button with the down arrow indicating that you want to mark it for sharing.
Also, in the Social Templates tab of the Nelio Content’s Settings, you can define message templates for each social profile you have connected. Each social template includes the pattern that the social message will have. For example, the automatically generated Telegram message in the previous image of the Timeline, has been created using this social template:
And finally, Nelio Content allows you to add personalized phrases. In the Post’s Social Settings you can check the Custom Sentences box and write which phrases you want to add in the automatic generation algorithms of social messages.
Summarizing
Promoting your blog posts on Telegram will help you give it more visibility and get more visits to your website. With Nelio Content you don’t have to worry about having to go to Telegram to create a new message every time a new post is published. You can schedule the Telegram message to be sent automatically at the time of publication of your post, or to be generated automatically with a click.
Featured image by Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash.
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