If you are afraid of losing subscribers in your Telegram channel or group, then this instruction is for you.
Telegram: effective ways how not to lose subscribers
Telegram is a dangerous platform:) Any post we publish on the channel leads to a wave of unsubscribes. Even more subscribers simply turn off notifications from the channel or move it to the archive. Bottom line, for every post we pay a portion of the audience – and that’s the real money we paid to attract them. Below I tell you how to make this fee minimal.
In general, a high percentage of unsubscribes on the site – says well about this site. The minimal percentage of unsubscribes in VK is due to the fact that no one watches the news feed, and those who do, scroll through most posts without noticing them. In Telegram, people actually go to the channel to read something – this is a conscious manifestation of the desire to receive content from this channel, and those who do not have such a desire, unsubscribe.
How and why people unsubscribe from Telegram channels and lose interest in them
Everything that applies to other social networks is true for Telegram. Part of the audience loses interest in the channel over time. Someone loses interest in the very topic the channel is focused on. Others stop using Telegram. In this regard, Telegram is no different from VK, email newsletters or YouTube – https://lowcostsmm.com/ .
And, of course, as in other social networks, people unsubscribe from sites with uninteresting content. A banality that most content makers don’t take into account.
Over time, the amount of cooled audience accumulates, and the older the channel, the higher its percentage. This is normal, because if the overall channel is well managed, the number of warm audience grows anyway.
For a young channel, the reach may well exceed 50% of the number of subscribers, and for a two-year-old channel, 20% is a good indicator.
On Telegram, users react to content acutely. Imagine that an uninteresting post appeared in your Instagram or Facebook news feed. Most likely, you won’t even notice it, you’ll just skim the feed further. Even if someone has a whole series of unsuccessful posts, you’ll hardly pay attention to it – especially since, because of smart feeds, unsuccessful posts often just don’t make it into your feed. It’s a little more complicated with email, but not critical either – we get daily newsletters from stores we bought something from a couple years ago. Most people are used to garbage in their inboxes, and if someone sends them an uninteresting email, they don’t pay attention to it.
It’s different on Telegram. Telegram channel administrators go into the holy of holies of subscribers – into their personal accounts. In Telegram, subscribers correspond with friends and discuss business in work chats. This is a person’s personal space, and they strive to keep it clean. One bad post can be enough for a subscriber to leave the channel. And another subscriber will miss a new post from the channel a couple times, get used to the fact that this channel hangs in his chat list, and stop paying attention to it.
In Telegram, people don’t like it when they see a lot of missed posts. Here’s a man went on vacation for a month, and he didn’t care about your Internet. He comes back to town, opens Facebook and quietly looks at the news feed. Over the past month, the groups and bloggers he subscribes to have made thousands of posts, but the man doesn’t see this mountain of material, he just reads what the Facebook newsfeed found most interesting to him – i.e. news about the war and SEALs. He can log on to Facebook for 15 minutes while taking a cab from the airport, study some of the new posts, and then look at the news feed again in the evening. It’s different in Telegram – a person comes back from vacation and sees that during this time he received 100 messages from one seemingly even good Telegram channel. The person thinks: “I don’t have time to study these materials now. I’ll read them later, and for now I’d better watch Insta stories”. We all know what all these “later” mean in practice:)
Paradoxically, this is a problem primarily for good useful channels. It’s easier for a humor or news channel – a person will go to it, quickly scroll through new posts and move on to another channel. But a person cannot do that with serious channels – he wants to study everything that has appeared during his absence. This leads to the fact that people first postpone the study of new materials, and then simply stop noticing new posts from this channel.
How to minimize the loss of subscribers
Post what is interesting to the majority of subscribers.
In Instagram or VKontakte you can post something that only a small percentage of the audience will like – this small percentage will appreciate the material, and the rest will click through. In Telegram, every loyal subscriber will specifically go to your channel to read a new post – if the subscriber doesn’t like it, he may get upset:)
Wrong
Place on the channel about business post about the nuances of setting up some unknown CRM-system. Such material will need a tiny percentage of the audience who are interested in this particular CRM-system, and even going to customize it themselves.
Place on the channel about the design of advertising a course on programming. Too many people will take in the flip side of such a deviation from the topic.
On a channel that has always posted serious analytical articles, suddenly post a meme. Subscribers expect quite different materials from this channel.
Correct
Place on the channel about business selection of the best CRM-systems. Such material will be interesting to everyone, including those who already use CRM.
Place on the channel about design advertising freelancer exchange. It is quite acceptable to deviate slightly from the main direction of the channel, if this topic is concerned about the majority of subscribers.
Try to place different materials: serious and humorous, large and small, texts and videos. Subscribers will not get used to a certain type of material, and you will have more freedom.
Lifehack: if you have pages in social networks, first post materials there. By the number of likes, reposts, and comments, you will determine how much the audience likes the material. If the audience engagement is suddenly low, it’s not worth posting the material on Telegram.
If you have large materials, post no more than five times a week (you can post one).
It takes time to study large materials, so many people do not open a message from a serious channel right away. If subscribers have accumulated a lot of unread messages from our channel, it starts to stress them out. Some feel guilty because they have neglected useful materials. Less loyal subscribers are simply annoyed by the growing mountain of unread messages. In the end, subscribers don’t unsubscribe or move our channel to the archive (because they still find our channel useful), but they stop noticing it. This is similar to when a person adds a difficult task to their organizer, but doesn’t tackle it, and it stays on their To-Do list for months. To prevent this from happening, you should not post large pieces of content more than five times a week. Moreover, even one material per week is enough for Telegram – it’s just that the audience loyalty will grow a little slower than with regular posting.
Advertising – no more than 10% of all posts. If advertising your products – no more than 20%.
We are used to the fact that in social networks we have to sell all the time. If we launch a course, we need to make 10 posts and 50 stories about it. If we’re selling a product or service, we have to talk about it every day. We do this in order to get in the field of vision of the maximum number of subscribers – because in social networks, someone will not notice any of our material, and most subscribers will not see it in the news feed at all.
This is not the case in Telegram – people who follow our channel will definitely see our new post. That’s why we love Telegram – the value of subscribers in it is very high, because they really follow our materials. Accordingly, there is no point in constantly reminding subscribers about the opportunity to buy something – it’s enough to write about it a couple times a month. And advertising something that subscribers are not interested in, causes a sharp negative reaction, because he specifically goes to the channel to read something interesting there, but instead has to study the ad.
Lifehack: advertising can also be useful and interesting. Post a good post, and at the end – add an advertisement. Thanks to this, the post will be liked even by the audience that is not interested in this advertisement at the moment.
Keep track of the time at which you post
In social networks, the time of the post does not matter, because it is not us, but the smart feed decides when the subscriber will see it. In Stories, the time matters, but not critically – for example, you can post a story at midnight and it won’t bother anyone. It’s different in Telegram – about 20% of the total reach a post gains within an hour of publication. And these 20% are our most loyal audience, who do not have notifications from our channel turned off and want to read our new posts immediately. This is the audience that should be especially valued.
Since many people will open our post as soon as it appears, we need to follow a couple of rules:
- Do not post materials after 10 pm and before 9 pm. If you don’t have a local project, you should focus on Moscow time, as most subscribers live by it.
- Large materials should be posted when people have time to study them. Monday through Thursday – 9-12 hours or 17-20 hours. On Friday and weekends it is better not to post more materials – as practice shows, at this time people react worse to serious posts. The exception – videos, it is better to post them on weekends, when subscribers have an opportunity to watch them in peace.
- It is worth taking into account the mode of the day of your audience. For example, entrepreneurs and freelancers can read a great post on Wednesday at 18 hours. At the same 18 hours, most of the mixed audience will be standing in traffic jams and holding on to the handrails in the subway.
The general rule of thumb is don’t overthink it
I’ve written a lot about how easy it is to lose subscribers on Telegram. But this is just a consequence of the fact that subscribers on Telegram are very careful about what you post. No other social network gives you that level of attention and engagement, and subsequently, sales. And even though we lose subscribers in Telegram many times more than in VK – it doesn’t matter, because the value of a subscriber in Telegram is dozens of times higher. You will see a wave of unsubscribes after every post, it’s completely normal and it happens to everyone. If for some reason you want to violate any of the above recommendations – feel free to do so, just don’t do it often.
