Why Brands Are Building WhatsApp Channels
WhatsApp is where a large share of Indian audiences already spend their day, for family groups, work, payments and shopping. WhatsApp Channels, one-way broadcast feeds that people choose to follow, gave brands a way to appear there without messaging anyone directly. Many have built one. Fewer have worked out what it is for.
Opening a channel is easy. Giving people a reason not to mute it is the work.
What WhatsApp Channels offer brands
Presence in the app people open most often, without the intrusion of a direct message. Followers opt in, which means the audience is small but chosen, and updates sit beside the rest of a person's day rather than in a crowded public feed.
For a brand with frequent news, such as a retailer with daily offers or a publisher, that is a useful place to be.
A channel competes with family groups for attention. That is a high bar for a brand update.
Where brands struggle
Content. Many channels repost what already went on Instagram, which gives a follower no reason to be there. Others post too often and get muted, or too rarely and get forgotten.
The channels that work tend to offer something specific: early access, a genuinely useful regular update, or a format that suits the app, such as short updates and simple polls.
What to decide before opening one
What a follower gets here that they cannot get elsewhere, and who will produce it every week. A channel is a commitment, and an abandoned one looks worse than none.
It is also worth deciding how success will be judged, because follower counts on a channel say little about whether anyone reads it.
Tone matters too. A channel sits inside a deeply personal app, and updates written in the voice of a press office feel more out of place there than they would on a public feed.
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