What can you do with messenger bots? The real question is what can't you do! Messenger bots may still be in their infancy, but they are taking on the world of business by storm – and not in a bad way!
People still sometimes cringe when they think of words like “bot” or “automation” in social media — and chatbots are no exception. Human beings have a love-hate relationship with artificially intelligent technology. We love it when it makes our lives easier, and at the same time fear the negative consequences of relying on it.
Well, we can all relax.
The vast majority of social media automation tools are not going to launch the war against human orchestrated by Skynet. In fact, they do exactly what you tell them to do — nothing more and nothing less.
The real key is to have a strategy for how you're going to use them before you go crazy and start implementing all the things.
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What Can You do with Messenger Bots?
So, what can you do with messenger bots? Here are 10 creative ways you can use messenger bots in your business.
- To set reminders for Live events. Are you planning to go Live on your page, in a group, or anywhere else? Let people sign up to receive a special reminder for that. We all know that Facebook notifications aren't always 100% reliable – so this can be a great way to add a backup method of notifying your audience when you're ready to go Live.
- Set reminders for special events. Even if you aren't going live, are you planning another type of event? Perhaps a special Q&A on your page, or a party in your group. Whatever the event is, allow your audience to sign up for a reminder to give them the best chance of attending.
- Followup after an event. Use the messenger bot to followup with your audience after your Live or special event ends. Perhaps you asked them a question and want to see their answers. Or maybe you want to see if they have any new questions. Send them a free eBook for attending your event. The possibilities are endless!
- Deliver personalized content. Your audience can sign up to receive notifications whenever you post a new blog post, a new podcast episode, or even a new type of blog post. Letting them sign up for the type of content they are interested in is already a perk – delivering it to their messenger is a great way to ensure they receive it and comes with a higher engagement level.
- Engage with your readers who received your content. After sending new blog posts or articles to your readers, how about some followup to those who clicked the links and checked out your posts? It's the perfect chance for you to spark a real conversation and get your audience talking to you about your content.
- Answer common customer service issues or questions. Do you seem to always be answering the same questions? Let a bot take care of that for you! Setting up the keywords and response sequences for your most-asked questions is easy. And the best part is once they're done, you don't need to go in and change them very often! Just make sure that people know they are talking to your bot at first. No one likes feeling tricked into thinking they were talking to a human when they weren't (plus, it's against Facebook's rules to trick people into thinking your bot is actually a human). And make sure that if someone want to switch from the bot to a human for customer service, they can request the human easily.
- Streamline your customer purchases. Imagine being set up so that someone could message you a question and your chatbot could not only answer the question, but also make recommendations and even sell your products or services for you?
- Followup after customer purchases. And it goes without saying, if people are buying your products or services through your messenger bot, you could also use that messenger bot to send shipment information as well as followup messages.
- Share educational content. Whether you want to send small updates, such as when you're sending hostess coaching tips to a friend for a direct sales business, or an entire ecourse, setting up the workflow and content to be delivered via messenger is no more complicated than sending it via email or even creating courses on platforms like Thinkific.
- Set up specialized services. At SassyCon, we use our messenger bot to send updates about the conference, getting our attendees back in their seats and ready for the next speaker. You can also use your messenger bot to send ebooks, specials, and printables to your audience that they wouldn't be able to get any place else.
And there you have it — 10 simple and creative ways you can use messenger bots to help your business. Which option are you likely to try first?
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