[FAQ]

Good evening. My company is considering using Telegram to communicate with our customers, but I want to go in with my eyes open. Everyone talks about the benefits, but I’m more interested in the disadvantages.

What are the real-world limitations or risks of using Telegram as a primary business channel? I’m thinking about things like the lack of built-in customer support tools, the difficulty for new customers to discover us, and how to even measure success on the platform. Before I commit my team’s time, I’d appreciate hearing about the potential downsides from those with experience.

[Jeff Bullas]

It’s wise to analyse the limitations of a platform before committing.

Short Answer: The main disadvantages centre on its lack of discoverability, limited analytics, and the one-way nature of channels, which can impact your content strategy.

Let’s explore how these limitations create specific challenges for your various content formats.

You’ve hit on the key strategic points. Firstly, the platform’s complete lack of native discovery directly impacts your visual content. Unlike on other platforms, your high-quality product images and videos will not be organically found by new customers within the app; their primary function is to serve the audience you have already acquired. Secondly, the structure of channels creates hurdles for text-based community engagement. While you can broadcast text posts, creating a true two-way conversation is clumsy and often requires linking to a separate discussion group, which fragments the user experience and can lower participation. Thirdly, the minimal native analytics make it difficult to properly measure the performance of your audio or video content. You might see a view count, but you cannot easily analyse who watched, for how long, or what their engagement journey was. This makes it incredibly tough to refine your content strategy based on hard data, as you are essentially broadcasting into a black box compared to other business-focused platforms.

Cheers,

Jeff

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by Neil Anthony.

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