Thoughts and advices on being a Telegram Content Creator

I have been posting on my Telegram channel Dagmawi Babi since June 9, 2018 GC, almost 7 years now. And my channel has gone through different changes and expansions. Currently it’s at 4.7k members and has led to the recognition of my brand and even gave rise to my extension channels like my Files, Podcast, Jobs and Community channels.

With that out of the way I won’t waste any more of your time, let’s get into the core of this blog. Here are advices I think will help you if you are looking to start a new channel or even grow and manage the one you already have well.

The Why

Okay first and foremost, you have to figure out why you’re doing this. Because in the long run, the “what” or “how” to post don’t fade away, the “why”, on the other hand, fades away often and you’ve got to regularly polish up and get on board to keep going. So it’s very important that you figure this out as early as possible so that your first impressions can be great. And if you’ve a long running channel but still haven’t figured out the why, take a moment for yourself and figure that out and basically start again but with the new why you’ve figured out.

Often I see people creating channels for the sake of doing it, just because they have to and saw others do it, but one thing you should know is that You actually don’t have to create a channel, it’s not a requirement for anything. You don’t have to be a content creator or a channel owner. Infact creating a channel just for the sake of doing it results in one of the worst channels out there. So it’s better to have a good why before you start posting a lot.

The why is the single most important thing. It’s because once you figure out the why you’re doing it, you’ll pick the right format, tools, audience, content, and optimization to accomplish the why and that’s what grows the channel and you as it’s creator.

The You

Once you’ve gotten your why, you can move on to other important aspects. And one of the most important aspects about your channel is You. You are very important to the channel you’re running. The channel depends on you, it is you who can give the channel life or watch it die. The important thing to know is that when people come to Your channel, they’re not here just for the content but for the content You chose to post.

So you should know that people are more interested in other people than content. So when you understand that a channel is an extension of your thoughts, your likes and essentially an extension of your identity is when you unlock vast potential and quality in your content. The more your content reflects your thought process, heart, ideals, life and interests the more you’ll get people engaged. That’s why even channels that spam have huge engagements, solely because we get to experience and see the person behind each post and what that person stands for.

Remember, consistently creating and curating content is really difficult, it will wear you down, it will affect your mental and physical health. Often I have found myself lost, energy drained and fighting the urge to delete the channel or stop posting at all. Obviously don’t make decisions while you’re in this state. So best thing to do is just to stop posting and take some time out. I personally allocate the entire month of April or May every year as my break from posting on my channel. I love and look forward to it. An even more healthier approach is setting curfew everyday or week. I personally stop posting right after midnight. I don’t engage with the community, I don’t share or do anything relating the channel after that time. I’ve found this to be so helpful in preserving my energy and time. You could also set weekly curfews like avoiding posting in the weekend or every other day and more. It’s very healthy and I encourage it. Because the healthier you are, the better quality your content is.

I’ve also found a way to set the theme to my audience. I announce that I am online, will be posting and available to engage with by simply texting a greeting. And announcing I am unavailable by saying good night. Did this regularly enough that it has set the tone of the days. So when I say Hi, they expect content and when I say good night they know they can venture off. Doing this gives you freedom of commitment. The posting starts only when you are ready and everyone’s expectations are set properly. So find your own way of setting the tone.

The People

The people that subscribe to your channel have a huge effect on you and the direction your content is steered on the long run. They’re the eyes and feedbacks that will definitely make an impact on your content. Infact they might affect you to the very point of completely changing the why you’re doing this. So don’t take the people involved carelessly.

When you create a channel and start giving your subscribers value by making and sharing content, you should know that among everyone involved, you are the one that benefits the most. It might not look obvious, specially to channel owners with less engaged communities, but it is a fact that despite the amount of effort the channel owner takes to provide value for their community, it is the owner themselves that benefit the most.

The owner initially benefits while in the process of content creating. The very act of researching, editing, compiling, merging, fact checking, and more will polish your thinking mind and enhance your skills. The act of creation is beneficial to the creator even when no one is there to see it. Next up, sharing what you’ve been busy creating will benefit you in so many ways than you expect. The initial benefits are feedbacks from your community. Getting feedbacks on your content is very crucial to keep making more quality and more valuable content.

If you’re launching a project for example, having access feedback from a wide range of people, across different backgrounds is an incredible benefit. Surpassing that, people will actually start helping you on your projects and fixing things you weren’t able to, adding new things you didn’t have the time for, and even marketing it for you to audiences you had no reach. All of these are expensive benefits average people rarely get.

When it comes to your mind, it gives you the space to blurt out rough ideas, concepts you’ve found hard to grasp, ideas you’re being conflicted with and the community around your channel will help you sharpen your thoughts and help you understand complex things. This will also provide a platform to hear about different perspectives on a single topic, which’s very treasurable.

So like I said, though it’s time and energy consuming to produce valuable content, at the end of the day you’re the one getting X-times more value back than you give out. So let that push you and make you feel hopeful. Also it’s very crucial to understand that the more valuable your content is, exponentially more value you’ll get back. So with every single post you make or curate, make it double, triple, or quadruple the value of the last one you posted.

While on the point of people; take good care of each and everyone of them. Not everyone that engages with you during a certain season will last throughout your journey, but while they’re still engaged you should make their stay as great as possible. It doesn’t matter if they only comment once a year or comment every single day, you should give out great treatment to everyone as much as you can. Because they’re spending their time and effort to actually checkout your content, think about it and care enough to give you feedbacks.

Treating your community well starts with having a good and structured environment for them to comfortably engage in. The comment section has a tendency to easily be toxic and unhinged. Make good effort to set guidelines and some rules for everyone in it. Additionally, having community mods that understand and enforce these rules is a huge thing. So get some of your voluntary, loyal and active subscribers to do this role. Having an environment for your subscribers to tell you what they thought or contribute in some ways in a very structured and civil way, without them getting a beatdown from other members is a huge quality to have.

The Content

Moving on to your content… the difference between useless and quality content is organization. Some of the most disturbing channels are the ones that are unorganized, undescriptive, unindexed and flat out a giant stash of resources or spam. These channels should just go private because they don’t grow. One of the main reasons they don’t grow is that they’re hostile to new joiners. How can a new person find a certain resource or post? Are there tags? What’s with all the undescriptive links? Who is this guy? What’s the purpose of this channel? … and on and on. Not to mention that unorganized posts can get overwhelming pretty easily. So try your absolute best to make things very organized, tagged, descriptive, categorized, less cluttered and more.

People are digitally lazy. You should understand that clicking this, then that, waiting for it to load, and finally seeing something is digitally tiring for people. People would prefer to go to the channel that did all the clicking and loading and finally presented the content than the channel who’s posting link, after link and putting the burden of browsing on the consumer. So as much as you can try to make people remain in your channel while browsing content as much as you can. Present them all the visual and auditory information right there in your channel (or near it), explain things and be very detailed on the core things. So links are then for the digitally energetic.

Try to be as unbiased as possible. Don’t just post what everyone else is posting. Try to be distinct and original. Try to find content and news most people haven’t discovered. But when you are posting typical trendy news at least do everyone a favor by commentating your thoughts, feelings and ideas about it or deeper insights than what others mentioned.

Posting spiritual or content that’s feared to be edgy is fine despite what most people say. Just try to be understanding, honest with your posts and make sure that what you’re posting is making a positive influence than a negative one. Make sure it’s valuable to your audience than preaching for selfish reasons. And most of all preach what you’ve experienced so that it’s better conveyed.

The Final Notes

Not everyone will like you, your why or your content, but who cares? The point isn’t to be liked by everyone but to produce good content enough that you form or attract people that do like you. And It’s better to have 50 people that are actively engaged than 5 thousand that don’t. Cause as an influencer, what’s the point if you can’t influence? And it’s far worse to gather people for what you have than who you are.

If you are creating a platform to gather people, to take time and effort away from them to listen to what you say, you better make whatever you’re going to say worth it. And trying to do this better everyday is the best path forward. You got this, good luck! And don’t forget to subscribe to my telegram channel :)