Growing a Following with Chatbots

Grow with Angie and April: A Podcast for Teacherpreneurs

We recently asked our Mastermind group what they wanted to know about using chatbots. The questions that came in were all over the board from basic to really complex. So, we did our best to address them during episode 25. If you aren't already in our group, we invite you to join us at www.growwithusmastermind.com. Let's start at the very beginning. A chatbot is basically when you have the computer program, or bot, set up to interact with your customers and followers. The bot is programmed to give certain responses based on what the person it's interacting with says. You will see this on a lot of websites when the chat box pops up. But, you'll also see it when you go on a Facebook page for a major company and the Messenger box pops up right away. A chatbot will interact with you to answer your questions the best that it can. And, you can eventually make it to a real person, but many times the bot has the answers that you're looking for. For example, you can program it to say things like "How may I help you?" or "What are you interested in today?". Using a bot like this is really complex, so Angie and I aren't currently using ours like that. Instead, we are going to share how you can use it similar to an email list. The chatbot we recommend Angie and I both use Manychat as our bot option. We don't have an affiliate link to this and we don't benefit from passing the name along to you, but we do highly recommend it. The basic unpaid version allows you to set up chat using Facebook Messenger. But, it also has an area where people can opt-in to your chat list. This allows you to automatically communicate with the followers that have joined. Essentially, we're using it get people to opt in just like we would an email list. This is really beneficial because we've noticed they have much higher open rates than what our emails are getting. But, we also offer them through the chatbot the chance to sign up for our email list. It's super easy to do, but you do have to have the paid version in order to do that. It's a nice option because it allows you to keep communicating with them regardless of how Facebook changes its rules in the future. But, even if you don't want to go with the paid version you can still benefit from using the bot. Manychat Features From what I can tell, Manychat is one of the most widely used bots. There are a lot of features to it. I watched a lot of YouTube videos when I first signed up for it to learn how to use it. This helped me be able to show Angie how to do it. Once I showed her the first time it was really easy for her to do on her own the next time. So, as I mentioned earlier, the paid version is completely worth it because it allows you to build your email list. But, feel free to start with the free version. Manychat connects with your business Facebook page. Then, any messages you send from Manychat will come from your business page. Any subscribers you get are going to be subscribed through the same page. Audience tab The Audience tab allows you to see everyone that has subscribed to your list. Make sure you pay attention to the "Live Chat" section. I missed this when I was first getting started. The live chat is used when someone replies to an automated message or bot and you don't have an automated message set up as a response. This allows you to pick up the conversation. It works similar to your email inbox. Growth tools Pretty much everything email services like Convertkit (affiliate link) do, Manychat can do too. You can segment your Manychat subscribers, tag them, add them, and create automations. Growth tools are essential