To effectively manage a group, your brand needs an instant messaging app that provides you with sufficient admin privileges and your members with enough privacy. Without these, trolls can send inappropriate messages and photos. Scammers and stalkers could victimize your members.
Right now, you might be using WhatsApp, but there’s a better alternative. Read on to find out why you should use Telegram for group management instead.
Higher Group Capacity
WhatsApp groups have a size limit of just 256 members. On the other hand, Telegram allows a massive group size of up to 200,000 members.
A large group capacity in an app is a strict requirement for any business. Two hundred thousand could be more than what some small businesses need. However, 256 is too small. Communities that gain traction can easily surpass that.
When building a community around your brand, you want to keep a headcount and give as many potential customers as possible the opportunity to engage with your brand. The more your brand interacts with consumers, the more sales you get.
Limiting your group size to just 256 members cripples your reach. With a limit of 200,000, you have plenty of room for more potential customers. Telegram is the absolute winner in this regard.
The Ability to Delete Messages and Photos
To create a healthy, engaged online group, you need to be able to moderate messages and photos. Otherwise, you’re sure to have trolls and other rude individuals posting offensive comments and inappropriate photos.
Not being able to delete offensive posts is highly detrimental to your customer’s satisfaction and your brand’s reputation. Even if it’s because the app doesn’t allow it, members will be put off, and their trust in you will be damaged. You may ban the offender, but you have limited options for damage mitigation if you can’t delete the post.
Unfortunately, this is the case with WhatsApp. Once something is posted, it’s there for everyone to see. Only the sender can delete their message, and the option is only available for an hour. Even if a member sent an offensive message without meaning to, they might not be able to take it back.
On the other hand, Telegram allows admins to delete posts from any member. As long as you have enough moderators, you’ll be able to delete offensive posts before they get read by many people.
Larger File Sizes
You need a reasonably large file size cap for sharing files and images with your group to disseminate information easily. If the app you’re using has a small file size limit, you may need to lower the quality of promotional images and divide or shorten documents.
There are workarounds to this. You could send images or files through email, for example. However, the people in your messaging app group won’t necessarily be on your mailing list.
In terms of file sharing, Telegram is the best messaging app. WhatsApp only allows 16MB for media files and 100MB for documents. Meanwhile, Telegram will enable you to share files of up to 2GB.
Access to Archives
Telegram allows you to archive messages. This helps you keep everything organized and tidy, and new members can see these archived messages.
Being able to archive messages is especially useful for answering common questions. For example, you could archive a frequently asked question so new members can refer to it. They won’t have to scroll back, and your group won’t be flooded with the same questions being repeated.
You could also use it to record photos of memorable moments like brand events. Archived messages may also help new members get an idea of the culture of the community, helping them integrate into it.
More Privacy
Perhaps the biggest reason to use Telegram is that you’re unable to hide your mobile number on WhatsApp.
In addition to everyone that has you on their contact list in WhatsApp, everyone in a group can see each other’s mobile numbers. This can be incredibly harmful to your brand community as spammers and stalkers can use these phone numbers to find victims to harass.
This issue has been with WhatsApp for years, and there is no indication that it will be fixed soon.
Telegram gives users more privacy. It allows you to add members to a group using a particular link. They can then set a username and a password and use Telegram without providing their mobile number.
Even if they use their mobile numbers to log in, there is an option to hide it. Your Telegram group members can stay anonymous and safe from spammers and stalkers.
Special Features
Telegram is filled with many useful features you won’t find in other messaging apps. These are just a few of them.
Secret Chats
Sometimes, successfully managing a group means having private conversations with specific individuals. You can do so with heightened security through secret chats.
When you start a secret chat with someone, all messages sent there use end-to-end encryption. This means no one, not even Telegram, will be able to decipher them. Messages can’t be forwarded to other chats, either.
Secret chats are device-specific. They’re not uploaded to Telegram cloud servers, so they can only be accessed from the specific devices where the secret chat was started. As long as your device is safe, your conversation is too.
Self-Destructing Messages
Secret chats also allow you to set a self-destruct timer for messages, causing any message sent there to be deleted after a preset time. You can also set them to be deleted at a preset time after they’ve been read. The delay between a message being read and being deleted can be anywhere from 5 seconds to a week.
Hide When You Were Last Online
Telegram tells your contacts when you were last online. However, you have the option to turn this off in the settings. You can even set it for specific people. You can share when you were last online to nobody, to everybody, to specific people in your contact list, or set exceptions and only hide that information from people you specify.
Professional Telegram Group Management
Build meaningful relationships and increase engagement within your Telegram community with Telegram group management services from Synapse Reality. We take a personal approach to community management, moderate your group 24/7, and produce compelling content for your members.
Discuss your needs with our team today by emailing us at info@synapsereality.io or by filling out our contact form. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.