Everybody knows about WhatsApp groups chats. We’re willing to bet that everybody is a member of at least one WhatsApp group. Broadcast, however, is much more mysterious and less well-known than the ubiquitous group chat. It is funny really because both offer ways for WhatsApp users to message more than one user at a time and both are useful in their own right and in certain situations. Let’s have a good look then at the main differences between WhatsApp groups and WhatsApp broadcast.
WhatsApp groups vs WhatsApp broadcast
WhatsApp groups allow you to set up multi-directional chat rooms with your friends and family. Once people have been added to the group, they can send a group message and all other members of the group will receive it. They’ll also receive every message sent to the group by other group members.
There are a number of WhatsApp group features like user tagging and Reply privately that allow you to aim messages at certain members of the group, but as long as you send a message to a WhatsApp group every member of the group will get to read it. Reply privately actually sends a message to the individual user you’re replying to, opening up in their chat with a quoted reply taken from the group.
WhatsApp broadcast also allows you to send messages to lots of people at once, just in a different way to WhatsApp groups. You create a broadcast list in much the same way to create a group, too. You open WhatsApp and then click the more settings icon in the top-right. Once you’ve done that, you select all the members you want to add to the list and a chat window will pop up just like it does with a group chat. That’s where the similarities stop.
When you send a message to a broadcast list, it will appear to everybody who receives it as a normal chat would. They’ll receive a message from you, and it’ll appear in your normal chat window underneath the last messages that you sent to each other. When a user replies to a message you’ve broadcast, you’ll see the reply in much the same way, in your regular chat window beneath your broadcast.
The other big difference between WhatsApp groups and WhatsApp broadcast is that you can only broadcast messages to contacts who have your phone number saved in their phone book. If they don’t have your number saved, they won’t receive any broadcasts from you. Also, unlike with a group chat, you can’t create a broadcast list from WhatsApp Web.
When to use WhatsApp groups and when to use WhatsApp broadcast
WhatsApp group chats are great ways to keep groups of friends and coworkers talking to each other, even if they’re separated by great distances. They’re also good for arranging social events and managing complex tasks across teams.
WhatsApp broadcast, however, is more about one-way communication. The admin who creates the broadcast list is the only person who can talk to everybody on it at once. This makes WhatsApp broadcast lists excellent tools for sending out important messages and alerts, like a birthday invitation or a prompt to ensure your tax information is up to date on your employee records.
The key factor with WhatsApp broadcasts is the private nature of responses. Once the original information has been sent out, all subsequent communication remains between the admin and the individual user. This also means that everybody’s inbox remains clutter free and safe from everybody else’s annoying messages.
