How to grow a Telegram channel without buying ads
Buying ads in other channels is the best-known way to grow, but not the only one. It keeps getting more expensive, and some subscribers from ads leave within a week. Below are ways to bring people into a channel through activity rather than budget. You can combine them with ads or use them instead.
First, a channel worth subscribing to
Any traffic is useless if someone arrives, scrolls three posts and leaves. Before promoting, check:
- It's clear what the channel is about. The name, description and pinned post explain in five seconds what's here and why it's useful.
- There's something to read. At least 15–20 posts, so a newcomer sees consistency.
- Consistency. Posts come out on schedule. A channel whose last post was two weeks ago looks abandoned. If you lack time, hand part of the work to Content Agent: it drafts posts from your topic and sources, and you just approve them.
Method 1. Comments in niche channels
Under the posts of popular channels in your topic, discussions happen every day. Leave a useful comment there, and some readers will open the author's profile — and from there, your channel.
How to do it right:
- The comment must relate to the post and add something: an opinion, experience, a clarification. "Great post, subscribe" doesn't work and annoys people.
- The account profile has a clear name, an avatar and a channel link in the bio.
- Many channels, few comments in each. One comment in each of 30 channels beats 30 comments in one.
Doing this by hand takes hours. Neuro-commenting does the same automatically: AI reads the post and writes a comment about its content, in different words every time. More in the article "Neuro-commenting: what it is and how it works".
Method 2. Stories and masslooking
When an account views someone's story, the owner sees it in the viewer list. People are curious who's watching, and some open the profile. If the profile links to your channel, that's a visit.
Masslooking views your target audience's stories at scale, using a list of members from chats in your niche. How to build such a list and keep a safe pace is covered in the article on masslooking.
Method 3. Inviting to a group
If your channel has a discussion chat or a separate group, you can invite people from topical chats. What matters is inviting your target audience — members of chats on your topic, not random people. User parser collects such a list, and inviting sends invitations with pauses and limits.
Method 4. Cross-promotion and folders
Agree with channels of a similar size on mutual mentions, or join topical folder collections. It's free and brings a loyal audience: people come on recommendation.
Retention: keeping subscribers
- The first post a newcomer sees is the pinned one. Make it a guide to the channel.
- Reply in comments and DMs. Real conversation retains better than any content. If questions pile up, NeuroDialogs answer in DMs from your knowledge base.
- Watch unsubscribes after posts. If people leave after a certain format, drop it.
Turning it into a system
All of this works better together: content retains, comments and stories bring people in, DM replies turn a subscriber into a customer. In Braidix you can chain these steps in Autopilot: warm up accounts, turn on commenting in niche channels, collect an audience every Wednesday and start masslooking — all on a schedule.