Hot on the heels of being named 2018 Commercial Radio Station of the Year at the Liberty Radio Awards, Algoa FM has become the first commercial radio station in South Africa to actively introduce a new app to engage with its audience.
“We’ve been bench-testing Telegram for the past 3 or 4 months and are convinced that it’s the most robust engagement solution available, which is why we chose to go LIVE on Tuesday afternoon”, says Algoa FM’s operations director, Alfie Jay. “Our long-standing Tech partner, COLONYLive, has fully integrated Telegram onto their platform and it uses the same number as our WhatsApp channel: 0617 940 940.”
“Whilst WhatsApp is a great messaging application where users can send text messages, voice notes, video and images to other WhatsApp users; WhatsApp has never published or had an open API, thus it cannot simply be linked to 3rd party applications such as COLONYLive. WhatsApp also doesn’t allow for the storage of messages from users and as a result, we can’t build insights from analytics to help us better understand our audience”, says Jay.
Now, when listeners send messages to the radio station, their messages appear “instantly” onto the platform; as opposed to the few-minutes-delay previously experienced with WhatsApp.
COLONYLive’s Marco Broccardo says: “We are delighted that Algoa FM has taken a determined decision to move to Telegram, a messaging app with a focus on speed and fully encrypted security, it’s super-fast and simple. With Telegram, you can send messages, voice notes, photos, videos and files of any kind, eg: doc, zip, mp3, etc … It is a cloud-based messenger system with seamless sync. As a result, you can access your messages from several devices at once, including tablets and computers, and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and files of up to 1,5 GB each.”
Telegram is free and available to any and all users: Android, Apple iPhone/iPad, Windows Phone as well as a Web version, Mac, PC and even Linux.
“We are aware that some of our colleagues in the industry are still considering a roll-out to Telegram, but we wanted to set the pace. The feedback from our audience has been overwhelmingly positive with comments like: ‘thanks for introducing this new messaging platform; wow - wonderful app; I love this app – thanks Algoa and I’m so impressed with the number of people I already know who are using it – wow!’, says Jay.
Processing more than 15 billion messages per day from more than 250 million users worldwide, Telegram is growing exponentially and Algoa FM’s audience is already experiencing the benefits.
