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Telegram

Reelwire posts each video to a Telegram channel or group through your own bot: a Telegram account for software, which you make in a minute with Telegram's @BotFather and add to the channel as an administrator. Nothing needs approving at Telegram, and the bot posts under your channel's name.

What you need​

  • A bot token, from @BotFather.
  • A channel or group where the bot is an administrator allowed to post messages, and its @name or numeric id.

Set it up​

  1. Make the bot. In Telegram, open a chat with @BotFather and send /newbot. Give it a name (what people see) and a username ending in bot. BotFather answers with the token, which looks like 123456789:AAE.... Keep it to yourself: whoever holds it can post as the bot.
  2. Let it post in your channel. Open the channel, then its settings, Administrators, Add administrator, and find the bot by its username. Leave Post messages on (and Delete messages, so a delete request can take a post down). For a group, add the bot as a member or an administrator.
  3. Find the channel's address. A public channel is its @name, the part after t.me/ in its link, such as @companynews. A private channel or a group has a numeric id instead, which for a channel starts with -100. To read it, post anything in the channel after the bot was added, open https://api.telegram.org/bot<your token>/getUpdates in a browser, and copy the "id" of the "chat".
  4. Enter both in Reelwire. In Channels, open the channel's Settings, choose Telegram as the Platform and the Aspect ratio, and under Platform connector paste the Bot token and the Channel or group. Switch Platform connector on under When a post is due.
  5. Save. Reelwire asks Telegram who the bot is, whether it can see the channel and whether it may post there, and refuses to save if not, saying what is missing. Once saved, the section reads "Connected: @yourbot in Company News".

What a post looks like​

  • The video, played in the chat, with the text as its caption: the post's own words, the brand's line and the hashtags, fitted to Telegram's 1,024 characters.
  • The brand's link as a button under the video where the brand gave the link a label, and in the text where it did not.
  • With Silent post on under the channel's Posting, subscribers get no notification.
  • A public channel's post links to t.me/<name>/<number>, which Posts shows as the post's link. A private channel's link opens for its members only.

A bot may send a video of up to 50 MB, far more than a Reelwire clip takes.

Changes and take-downs​

Send update request changes the caption of the message the bot posted. Send delete request deletes it. Telegram lets a bot delete its own messages in a channel where it may delete messages; in a group, only for 48 hours. Where Telegram refuses, the post says so: delete it by hand in Telegram, then Mark as deleted.

When something is wrong​

The post saysWhat to do
The bot token is wrong or was revokedSend /mybots to @BotFather, choose the bot, then API Token, and save the token it shows.
Telegram cannot find that channel or groupCheck the @name or id, and that the bot is in it.
The bot may not post thereMake it an administrator of the channel with Post messages on.
The group became a supergroupIts id changed. Read it again as in step 3; it now starts with -100.

To stop it, switch the connector off on the channel. To end it for good, remove the bot from the channel, and send /revoke to @BotFather to invalidate the token.