Building a Community: Why I'm Choosing Telegram

Telegram, it’s the app that people love to hate. From the notorious spam and mysterious Russian owners, despite it’s almost 1 billion strong user base people love to hate it. And yet, i’m betting the farm on it for my own personal community moving forward. Why?

What is a community and why

So, let’s talk about community and why it’s important to help with business. Brands are communities of people at the end of the day, it helps separate them from others; creating brand value and customer word of mouth. But people don’t follow brands, they follow people.

Some of the best communities around - and by best I mean most loyal and largest in number are those that follow people. Take Mr Beast, the YouTuber with now the largest following on YouTube and in the world with 266 million+ followers.

This is a community of people that live and breathe a man posting entertaining videos online. Other people with rabid followers from Cristiano Ronaldo to Elon Musk also leverage social media e.g Instagram and X, the build huge followings.

The future is private

The problem with the public social networks is the follower model itself is dying. TikTok and the fast-growing algorithm-based social platforms discard following in favor of AI. Who needs to follow when your content is served on a plate automatically based on what you consume.

But the follow model isn’t dead on private social networks e.g. WhatsApp and Telegram, just look at famous indie hacker @levelsio and you’ll see a thriving community of entrepreneurs.

With that said, why Telegram vs Discord or the plethora of other community type apps? I’ve called it the “Goldilocks and the 3 Bears” of social networks before. With community, if you want to grow you need a platform that ticks all the boxes.

Telegram essentially balances the simplicity of messaging like WhatsApp with the community power features of Facebook Groups. In short, it’s the perfect solution. Discord is pivoting back to gaming and while Reddit is mostly focused around interests.

So that’s why I’m betting on Telegram and starting my own marketing community on it. I’d recommend you try it also whether its for your own personal brand or startup.

And I’d ask, what do you think of community in 2024? And is that a channel you’re investing in? Let me know in the comments.