How to Increase Telegram Subscribers: Best Free Ways

Telegram is a great platform for promoting a company, personal brand or blog. Telegram is in the top 5 of the world's messengers, and the number of users per month is about 700 million. But unlike, for example, TikTok, it's not so easy to gain subscribers from scratch on Telegram. Usually, the messenger is used as a social network. A network to which you can "transfer" an already recruited audience. However, app does not stand still, and here, too, there are effective ways how to increase Telegram subscribers.

Effective ways to increase Telegram subscribers

Consider paid and free methods. First, let's pay attention to what is suitable if you already have an audience on other sites:

Adding subscribers manually

Telegram is primarily a messenger, so you can add members to channels manually. For example, people from your contacts list or those with whom you have ever communicated.

How to do it:

Open channel settings
Go to the "Subscribers" section
Add users

Links in social media

This is the old classic way without secrets and pitfalls. The bottom line is to add a link to your social media. Publish posts, in Stories, invite friends and followers. For the first audience will be just right. Telegram tools now allow you to post links to your channel quickly and directly. Don't forget that there are free multi-links. You can use services such as Taplink, SocProfile, Linktree. This is great for the initial stage to increase subscribers in Telegram.

Use ready-made

If you already have a ready-made website or landing page where you send your potential buyers, then do not be too lazy to leave a link/banner to your Telegram and other social networks. You can also leave a link and call-to-action at the end of the letter if you use email marketing and mailing lists.

QR code

QR code is a very convenient and affordable tool that many people underestimate. If your business is completely or partially offline, then leave a QR code with a call to subscribe to your Telegram. Leave the code in conspicuous places, boxes, packaging, or even on a street pole, what if someone is interested? Don't forget about the benefits for customers, for example, a discount for new subscribers or regular promotional codes in the Telegram channel. People love profitable and free, so give them a "barter".

Now let's pay attention to the methods that are suitable if you don't yet have an audience on other sites:

Advertising posts

This is also a great way to increase Telegram channel members. Telegram Ad Platform is the official Telegram platform for placing advertising posts. Advertising is placed on channels from 1000 subscribers, and the length of the post cannot exceed 160 characters.

The key disadvantage of this method is the lack of targeting for specific people, so the advertising budget can be wasted. Be careful and do not forget to test for small amounts first. Despite this, in setting up advertising posts, you can choose the topic of the channel on which the advertisement itself will be published; examples of specific channels; channel exceptions.

Note: before launching advertising, replenish your account in your personal account (min. 2 euros).

Mutual PR and partnership

Believe us, you are not the only one who is looking for ways how to get followers on Telegram. One of the most effective of the free ways is mutual repost and mutual PR. Look for channels with the same number of subscribers as you, with similar topics and a loyal audience. Turn your competitor into a partner. It's great strategy to gain the trust of the users and increase your Telegram channel subscribers.

The easiest ways to collaborate on Telegram:

Find channels through search and contact the administrator directly with an offer.
Join special admin chats for mutual PR and contact the right people, or leave your ad and wait for offers.

Don't forget that any administrator can wind up subscribers for himself, and then you will get nothing good from PR. In this case, we recommend you analyze the statistics of another channel. The Popsters tool can help you with this.

Popsters allows you to view the statistics of any channel in Telegram for a selected period, sort posts according to the desired indicators and see how the number of subscribers matches the real picture. For convenience, Popsters allows you to download the statistics of several channels at once and compare them without writing out individual numbers.

Placement of advertising through the exchange

Exchange is also a very good way how to increase Telegram subscribers. One of the brightest examples of the advertising exchange in Telegram is the Telegra.io platform. Thanks to this service, you can place your advertisements and download reports of running campaigns.

Life hack: try using the eLama service. This is a contextual advertising management automation platform that will simplify your work and teach you how to use advertising tools. Can be used with both Telegra.in and Telegram Ads.

Lead magnet

A lead magnet is a special offer for customers in exchange for their subscription.
This can be done, for example, through the Click.Bar service. It will be like a multilink and a mini landing at the same time. Prepare an offer that may be of interest to subscribers: a discount, a free lesson, a checklist, a contest, etc. and make it available only to your subscribers. Create a page with an offer through a clickbar or other service and leave a link to Telegram.

When everything is ready, you can launch targeted advertising for your target audience. For convenience, we recommend creating a simple bot, to which the link will lead, so that it issues a lead magnet for a subscription. Make a quality lead magnet so that people don’t unsubscribe after receiving a gift.

Cheat followers

We do not recommend using this method to increase Telegram subscribers. But it is obvious that people are afraid of an empty channel without subscribers and an audience, the "herd instinct" does not work, and a person may not react in any way, even if he likes the content. In this case, you can use services with paid cheats. But you need to understand that the quality of such subscribers will be at a low level and this will not make much sense except for a beautiful number. Use it wisely and don't overdo it.

Post quality content

We made this item last, not for just. You can use all the above methods, but not get the result, because your content is not interesting to people.

Post content regularly, with interesting headlines, but don't spam your posts. Remember that Telegram is a messenger and people get annoying notifications. If a subscriber turns off your channel notifications, then the chance of coming back and regularly viewing content will be greatly reduced.

To understand what the audience reacts to and what kind of posts they like, we recommend using the Popsters analytics tool. The advantages of the service are, first of all, detailed statistics of your channel, as well as channels of competitors. You can upload several profiles at once, including yours, and compare which posts get the most reactions, how you look against the background of others, and which content is completely uninteresting to the audience.

Don't forget to include reactions and comments on the channel, then the statistics will be more understandable. You can sort posts by reactions, comments, views, ER, VR and date. Thanks to this, you can adjust the content strategy and increase Telegram channel members.

Popsters also provides ready-made reports in PDF, Excel and PPTX formats.