Yall know that 90% of the resources we make come from mistakes us in the team make or scenarios that we at the team find ourselves in. And yall, I found myself in one hell of a pickle with telegram channel takedowns. and I am going to share step by step what I am doing to get myself out of it.
To make a long story short, the morning after valentines I woke up to my partner shaking me and letting me know why my day was about to go to shit. When they logged in to check on my channel they were welcomed with something that looked a hell of a lot like the below shit show letting me know it was effectively taken down:
My First Steps
Acknowledging the loss
Valentines night I had 84 subscribers, around 4000 pieces of media previously posted and 100 pieces scheduled for posting. All of that was now just wasted work, or at least for about 20 minutes it felt that way. But, as it is my main content platform, I understood I had a lot of work to do and I had to do it very fast.
Submitting an appeal
I think the best way to describe telegram support would be to simply say they left for milk a few years ago and still haven’t came back. So, I knew this appeal would go nowhere. I still wanted to put one in for the just-in-case of it all. I found the notification from support alerting me to the violation and letting me know why they looked at me in the first place. Looks like someone reported the channel and the moderation system took her down. I followed the steps to submit the appeal. Y’all it should be clear that I am writing this 12 days later with no response. But, as I said previously, pretty much expected that one.
Downloading the content
If there was one thing I was going to do it was save my three years worth of content. Hell or high water. So, luckily, from the account that owned that channel, the content was still there and still visible. So, I accepted my fate, turned off content restrictions, and started downloading the content, one by one.
That sucked and would have taken for ever. Luckily my partner had a much better solution using the Telegram desktop app. Once I logged in to my channel owner’s account I was able to follow the below steps to export the entire damn channel in about five clicks!
This section of this resource is available on the Creators Spicy Tea
Results
The results are a beautifully organized by file type output of two copies of each piece of media, the thumbnail, and the original upload. The quality is the same as I uploaded it and is ready to all be reused.
Setting Up for Success
Looking at the silver lining
I could absolutely take this hit and mope about it. Or I could plan. I was now looking at this as an opportunity. I got the skeleton of the new channel set up, a new logo drawn, the appearance looking how I wanted and was ready to relaunch.
To get an in depth reminder on setting up telegram channels, check out this roadmap.
Before bringing clients to the new channel
Before I started bringing in my subscribers from the old channel to the new one I knew there were some things I wanted to have set up and ready to go. This included a bunch of informational pinned messages including:
- The telegram subscribers discounted digital tip menu
- My physical tip menu and the link to my drawer
- A message outlining how and where someone can leave me a review
- A graphic and the links of where I can be found across the web
- All of my payment methods and wishlists hyperlinked
I also made sure to schedule out my content for a month. Before bringing anyone onto the new channel I also uploaded two weeks worth of content and preloaded that. This way folks joining wouldn’t be coming onto an empty channel with no content.
Client migration
Before reaching out to the first subscriber from my old channel I cross referenced the list of subscribers on that channel with my client books. I made sure the display and usernames were up to date and I made note of whose subscription had lapsed. Then started reaching out to no more than 10 clients daily. I kept the amount of subscribers daily at a lower number just to help prevent my account from being seen as spam and being further actioned. I was also sure to put up stories on telegram letting everyone know what was going on and what they could do to get onto the new channel. This was incredibly helpful as it made sure those genuinely interested were taking the first steps for me.
Everyone who already had an active subscription I quickly transferred over to the new channel using individual invite links that were labeled with their username. Once someone joined the new channel I scheduled out a message for the day before their subscription was up. This way a notification will go to them, without me remembering, in enough time for them to re-up. As everyone is re-joining I am tracking their subscription and info in my client and order tracker 2.0 in the off platform subscriber tab.
Content strategy
I am absolutely looking at this as an opportunity because of the content of it all. I now have 4000 pieces of media that are ready, edited and watermarked. All of that is just ready to be reused. And since it is all posted nowhere else, it all is ‘new content’. Given this pot-o-gold I now have I have re-strategized my content plans.
Getting organized
I organized the entire channel export in dropbox with all of that content by category and am slowly pulling content from each category to post.
Posting strategy
- First, the framework I already have in place
- I post 3 times daily, one short clip at the end of the day, and two photos before that throughout
- I have one designated day of the week that is themed: Shibari Saturday
- Game plan to go through all that content
- Photos:
- Each day will have one new photo scheduled, and one photo from the export
- If for some reason I don’t have any new content, I will rely on the export
- I will try and pull from a new category each post so that the same category of content isn’t being posted over and over again. This should keep the scrolling feed engaging and keep the entire audience interested.
- Clips:
- I still will post only one clip daily at the end of the day.
- If I have new clips, which I have less available and less often, I will schedule them every other day.
- Most clips, unless I have new ones, will come from the export.
- Photos:
Final Thoughts
Telegram is an amazing option for a content host, but it is not infallible. Don’t get me wrong, the original channel was 3 years old and I loved her. It was heartbreaking to see all of that ripped away so callously and overnight. However, I am walking into this new adventure more organized, better structured, and with content out the ass ready to go. I’m not happy this has happened, but I am damn excited for the potential.
Have a Question or Comment? Join the Conversation!