WhatsApp Channels can help you reach and engage your audience
I’m really excited by the potential of WhatsApp Channels, which are slowly being introduced here in the UK.
Messaging apps, like WhatsApp and DMs on Twitter, Insta and Facebook, is where conversations are increasingly taking place, rather than publicly on news feeds.
How do WhatsApp Channels work?
Unlike Threads or other Twitter competitors, it uses an app already used by millions and millions of us, young and old: WhatsApp (which is owned by Meta.)
It’s the UK’s second most popular online communication platform among internet users aged 16+, according to Ofcom, just behind YouTube (Ofcom, Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes report 2023.)
There’s more details about the nation’s use of WhatsApp in Ofcom’s Online Nation report.
You may need to update your app to get the Channels tab – it will appear on the far left of your app, under Updates (where you could update your status, if you ever bothered to.) I think this is better that having organisations flood your chats with friends, families and co-workers.
What’s good about it, unlike Broadcasts or previous functions, is that your name, number and (depending on your privacy setting) your profile photo can only be seen by the admin – fellow users can’t see when you join or interact with a channel and your number is protected.
For organisations, there appears to be no cap on the number of followers, unlike WhatsApp for Business (the biggest channel, WhatsApp, has 11 million followers.)
Who’s on WhatsApp Channels already?
Channels allow people to follow your brand or business (seemingly all verified to prevent fraud and confusion) and get vital information, news, or just be entertained.
A range of TV programmes, Gen Z celebrities, sports teams and news organisations are on there already: from This Morning and Good Morning Britain to Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo, top Premier League clubs (Man City being the most popular with 5m followers), the Indian cricket team and Mark Zuckerberg.
In terms of UK news organisations, there is BBC News (the biggest UK-based news publisher, with 200,000 followers), The News Agents, LADbible, JOE, Daily Mail and LBC.
But I think this has huge potential for both the public and private sector, particularly for customer service, from a UK Government account posting important policy announcements or updates on the RAAC crumbling concrete crisis in schools, or practical help with benefits, to a utility company updating customers on outages or new deals.
What works on WhatsApp Channels?
It’s far too early to say – I think it’s best to try a range of different content, not just post links, which some are doing. Judging crudely by the reaction emojis left behind on messages, they tend to perform the worst.
Think about what you or your audience likes getting on WhatsApp – why are you going to take time to tap on a link to a site and take you away from the platform you’re on?
It’s screenshots, images, videos that are natively posted and embedded – they don’t need to be highly produced, just easy to read within a few seconds (I think what I send to mates and colleagues.)
Adding more details into a post can really help – take this Daily Mail one, which explains the story, which has among the highest reactions (though it could be due to the death of someone who was on TV – followers can’t see the breakdown of the different emojis used)
LADbible are trying memes (as below shows, some are more successful than others…) I’m not sure recycling old memes is quite right; those that tap into ongoing conversations about news, topics and events that are happening right now would be more successful.
Admins can also send stickers, and polls. I haven’t seen anyone use followers’ comments (screenshotted or otherwise) as a way of turning this broadcast channel into more of a 2-way conversation or function.
All publishers are trying to find the formats that work and the frequency of posting. I think less is likely to be more – no-one likes the group chat that is spammed by someone posting too often, or even worse, with your notifications going crazy (hopefully many publishers have learned their lessons from push notifications. I say ‘hopefully’…)
Think about discovery of the WhatsApp Channels outside of the platform too. It was hard to find details of organisations via Google (there are a lot of worrying-looking imitation WhatsApp accounts of BBC News there) and I saw that LADbible had promoted theirs via an Insta post (though you had to go back to their bio to get the link – a joined-up Meta operation where you could add a call to action button to View Channel would be great.)
How can you evaluate success on WhatsApp Channels?
On the face of it, it is just emoji reactions, though I hope and expect WhatsApp have an analytics dashboard for admins on audiences, engagements, views and forwards and timings.
What you ideally want is followers to engage with the message and forward it onto a group or other contacts. When they do, they see the original message plus a big View Channel call to action button.

According to the same Ofcom report, 13% of users get their news from WhatsApp. I expect this to increase as more and more people use this service.
What else is useful to know?
Chats on Channels expire after 30 days and they are not encrypted either, so they could be seen by authorities (though WhatsApp do have the ability to do so, in certain circumstances.)
It doesn’t take long to find which channels you’d be interested in following as there aren’t too many – but this could be an issue as it expands. They are exploring the possibility of promoted Channels too.
I think what’s missing at the moment is the sense of discovery and engagement – it can’t replace Twitter or Instagram with that at the moment, but it’s early days. It does provide an impetus for customer service organisations to leave Twitter, compounded by the inability for people to DM them without them paying for the service.
I’m sure the rollout of this service is limited to a few top organisations and businesses at the moment, but will become more available as the months progress.
However, with all these things, there is an important balance between going where your audience is and your owned platforms. We’ve seen from recent changes on Twitter how it can be dangerous to invest too much in one area.
If you’d like to chat about how I could help you explore this exciting opportunity, get in touch!
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