Before we get into the subject of this post, let's make some definitions clear.
What is a community
One community is a group of people who share common interests, values, goals or experiences. These people come together to exchange ideas, offer mutual support, learn together and achieve common goals. They can be formed in both the physical and digital worlds.
Human beings are social animals and have always organized themselves into communities.
For as long as the internet has existed, human beings have sought to organize themselves into online communities. It's not something that happened today. It all started back on mirc. The tools have advanced and, as a result, the communities have changed, but the essence of what makes a good community is still there. community online has always remained the same.
Why have a community
In an increasingly digital world, creating online communities has become an essential strategy for engaging students, customers and subscribers. But why are more and more people and brands creating communities to bring people together?
Knowledge Exchange
When you bring your students, clients or subscribers together under the same "roof", you create an environment conducive to the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Members can share their doubts, solutions and experiences, mutually enriching their journeys. This is particularly valuable in educational and business environments, where continuous learning and innovation are essential.
Feedback on what you are doing
Having a space where members can express their opinions provides valuable feedback on what is working and what is not. You can identify strengths and areas for improvement directly through interactions on the community. This not only helps with the continuous improvement of your products or services, but also demonstrates that you value the opinion of your customers, strengthening your relationship with them.
Sense of belonging
One community A well-structured organization creates a sense of belonging among its members. They feel part of something bigger, which increases retention. This feeling of community can be a competitive differentiator, turning occasional customers into dedicated and loyal members.
Notice: nobody has this feeling towards Itau, but almost all Nubank customers do towards the purple bank.
Collective Support
In a communityThe members tend to help each other. This reduces the burden on customer support and creates an informal support network where solutions often come more quickly. More experienced members can guide newcomers, creating a continuous and collaborative learning cycle.
Bringing students, customers or subscribers together in communities is not just a marketing strategy; it's a way of building relationships. By offering a space to exchange ideas, foster relevant content, and get valuable feedback, you're positioning your brand for sustainable growth.
Now that we know more about communities, let's get to the reason why you entered the post. Which is best for your community? Whatsapp or Telegram?
WhatsApp was launched in January 2009 as a status application, where people could update their contacts on what they were doing. In 2010, messaging functionality was introduced, turning it into an instant messaging app. In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for approximately 19 billion dollars, which helped to further expand its user base and capabilities. WhatsApp has become extremely popular due to its ease of use, wide user presence and comprehensive features. With WhatsApp, users can exchange text messages, make voice and video calls, share photos, videos, documents and much more. It is designed to be intuitive and accessible to everyone, regardless of age or level of technological ability.
Two widely used features are groups and mailing lists.
Groups allow you to meet and interact in a single chat. These groups can be used for a variety of purposes, including communication between friends, family, work colleagues or members of specific communities. Group administrators have the ability to control group settings, add or remove participants and set privacy levels.
Broadcast lists function as a one-way channel of information, from the owner to the members. It works as a form of newsletter modern.
WhatsApp also has security features such as end-to-end encryption, which ensures that all messages are protected and can only be read by the sender and recipient. This issue was even responsible for the app being down for 72 hours in 2016 following a court order. The court had requested access to messages exchanged that would help in an investigation and Mark Zuckerberg's app wouldn't deliver (because even if they wanted to, they couldn't because of the layers of encryption).
Telegram
Telegram was launched in August 2013 as a response to the growing demand for secure and private communication. Pavel Durov, co-founder of the Russian social network VKontakte, wanted to create a platform that would protect users' privacy and offer advanced features. Since then, Telegram has grown rapidly, attracting millions of users around the world.
Although it has similar features to WhatsApp, the platform stands out for its advanced features, such as bots, secret chat, channels and cloud storage.
It became popular in Brazil the first time Whatsapp was taken down by a court decision. Since then, Brazilians have gotten to know the group features and many infoproducers have started using it to create large communities
Whatsapp vs Telegram
Because they're free and already on most Brazilians' cell phones, Whatsapp and Telegram are two of the most popular tools for creating online communities today.
But which of the two is better?
When deciding whether to create a community WhatsApp or Telegram, it is essential to understand the main differences between these two platforms. Both offer features for interaction and communication, have an app and a desktop version, but each has unique characteristics that can meet different needs.
Group size
What's the point of choosing a platform if the group limit is 1024 contacts and your community have 5,000 people? A group size limit is essential if you don't want to end up screwing yourself down the line. An important detail is that this limit grows over time.
Today, the group size limit is 1024 participants. That's because it recently doubled. Until March 2023, the limit was 512. That's why the big Brazilian communities aren't on Whatsapp.
Telegram
Here the difference is stark. Telegram's member limit is 200,000. There's no comparison. I don't know the case of any community that came close to that limit.
Winner
Telegram, but the community on Whatsapp is only a problem for large communities.
Administration
You will be the owner and administrator of your community. It's important to be able to manage it in the best possible way. So let's take a look at the administration features of each one.
Administrators can add or remove participants, change the name and photo of the group and set some basic permissions. Although sufficient for smaller groups, these functionalities are limited for larger communities.
Telegram
It offers much more comprehensive administrative control. Administrators can set different levels of permissions for members, such as who can post messages, add new contacts, pin messages, and even use bots to automate tasks. This makes for more efficient management, especially in large groups.
Winner
Telegram
File Sharing
Unless you're only going to exchange ideas by text, it's important to know how the platforms behave when it comes to sending photos, videos, documents, audio messages, etc.
It allows you to send files with a maximum size of 100 MB, including photos, videos and common documents.
Telegram
It allows files of up to 2 GB each to be shared, making it ideal for sending long videos, presentations and other large files.
Winner
Telegram, but the Whatsapp limit is rarely a problem.
Backup and Synchronization
What happens if you lose your cell phone? A community cannot depend on your device. It is important to have a backup in the cloud.
It backs up conversations on Google Drive (for Android) or iCloud (for iOS), requiring enough space on these services to keep the history of messages sent.
Telegram
Stores all conversations in the cloud, allowing access to message history from any device without no need to worry about local backups. This is extremely convenient for those who change devices frequently.
Winner
Telegram
Privacy and security
Depending on the content of the communityPrivacy and security can be one of the most important topics to take into consideration.
It offers end-to-end encryption for all messages, ensuring that only you and the recipient can read the content sent.
Telegram
It only offers end-to-end encryption for secret chats. Normal chats are encrypted between the client and the server. In addition, Telegram allows self-destruction of messages in secret chats and has an anonymous mode for group administrators, increasing privacy.
Winner
Automations
All repetitive work can be automated. And when you're a manager, what you least want is to have to do repetitive work manually. It's bad for everyone.
It has some integrations with bots, but it's still quite limited in this respect.
Telegram
It's famous for its integrations with bots, which can be used for a multitude of functions, from scheduling messages to integrating third-party services. If you value automation, Telegram offers many more possibilities.
Winner
Telegram
Engagement
This is one of the most important questions when evaluating which messaging app is best. Engagement measures how much time the user spends in each of the applications. The more time, the better, because there's more chance of them being impacted by some of the content in the app. community.
No need to comment. 99% of Brazilians online use WhatsApp. We're talking about 147 million active users. It's very rare to find a person who isn't a Whatsapp user. What's more, the app is opened an average of 25 to 30 times. O engagement Whatsapp is huge!
Telegram
Here the story is a little different. Telegram is much less popular than Whatsapp. And those who have the app installed open it much less. One problem with creating a community in Telegram is to make people download it and then remind them to open it.
Winner
Whatsapp vs Telegram verdict
If you look at the score, it's 5-2 for Telegram. But that score is a little dangerous. I say this because engagement is the most important aspect to analyze. And Whatsapp wins.
Don't win. Goal.
But which is better?
I hate having to be the guy who answers "it depends", but I'm going to have to do it.
But I'll explain!
If your community is small or just starting out, WhatsApp will certainly suit you better. Although it doesn't have all of Telegram's tools, while community it's small, they're not needed that much.
If your community is already bigger and reaching a thousand members, Telegram is the right choice. You'll have to sacrifice a little engagement in exchange for all the other features, such as advanced administrative control and automation options.
But if your idea is to make (or make) the community pay, none of the options are very good.
There are even people who set up an operation by charging per pix and manually adding the payers to the groups, but this strategy becomes impractical when the community grow. It's too difficult to keep an eye on that member who hasn't paid that month.
Some tools have been created to help with this management, which makes life a little easier, but at the end of the day it's a workaround on top of another workaround.
If your idea is to charge for community or wants to join the community to other paid products you already sell, maybe the solution you're looking for isn't Whatsapp or Telegram.
Want a better option?
If you are looking for a community to boost your infoproduct ecosystem, there's a better platform than Whatsapp and Telegram.
Her name is Scarf.
Organization
Scarf is formatted in Posts and Comments. This makes it possible to have several conversations simultaneously without one getting in the way of the other.
In whatsapp and telegram groups, your question is often overlooked because another subject has started and changed the focus of the group.
Recognition
Another important aspect of community vibrant is recognition.
On Whatsapp or Telegram, all members are equal.
At Scarf, it is possible to create a recognition program to give status to the members who contribute most to maintaining quality in the company. community.
It may seem silly, but by creating this incentive, you can improve the engagement your community in up to 34%.
Insert an example of an emblem in the community Scarf.
Engagement
"Ahhh, but I'm thinking of using Whatsapp because the engagement is there".
You're right. O engagement is there.
That's why Scarf has created an integration with Whatsapp.
Every post created on community is sent via Whatsapp to the members of the community.
This way you keep engagementbecause the member is always receiving notifications of new posts, but also gets the organization of a community structured instead of the chaos of messaging apps.
Why wear Scarf
Scarf is not only community. It is the infrastructure needed to create and centralize your ecosystem.
If you sell info-products such as online courses, mentoring or consultancy, newsletteretc, there comes a time when you need to build a community for their students.
The Scarf delivery the community integrated with all the products mentioned above, so that you can focus on the content and not on figuring out which platform is the right one for each specific thing.
If you are looking for a community to add value to an ecosystem of services that deliveryMaybe WhatsApp and Telegram aren't the best option. Scarf helps to centralize everything in one place, giving you more convenience in management and more ease for your student, who has everything in one place.