Follow these steps to make a Facebook Messenger bot:
Step 1: Determine the Theme and Purpose of Your Facebook Bot
Like with any project, we want to keep the end in mind.
What is the purpose of your Chabot?
What do people usually ask when they message your Facebook page?
Is there an opportunity to use your bot to better educate your market and sell your products?
You first have to decide the purpose of your bot. This should be based off of who you serve and what you sell.
For example, Poncho is a weather app, so naturally their bot is going to gather user information so that it can message you daily about the weather in your area:
Step 2: Create Your Free ManyChat Account
Head over to ManyChat and create a free account. To do this, you’ll need to have a Facebook page and grant us permission to access your account.
Step 3: Link Your Facebook Business PageStep 4: Create Your Welcome Message
Your welcome message is the first thing that people who interact with you on Facebook messenger will see.
You can edit your welcome message under the “Automation” tab in the left hand menu inside of ManyChat:
The opportunities are endless for your welcome message. ManyChat has the ability to add buttons, as you can see above, lists, images, videos, audio, and much more:
The key to your welcome message is to give users options.
The folks at Digital Marketer use their welcome message to greet users, set the expectation that they’ll get back to people as soon as possible, while also directing traffic to their blog and podcast for people who are interested in learning more.
Your welcome message should act as a greeting for new users, but also as a menu for what to do next. This goes back to the purpose of your bot… if you’re a recipe site; include a button to your recipe directory. If you sell insurance, ask people if they would like a quote.
Notice that above, Digital Marketer ended the welcome message with “Looking for our free report to End the War between Sales & Marketing? Type “guide” here in our chat and we’ll get you a copy!”
They’re leveraging the keyword feature to trigger messages when prospects type certain keywords.
Step 5: Using Keywords to Automate Your Bot Replies
The keywords feature inside of ManyChat allows you to automate responses based off of certain keywords that users type.
Remember the WebMD example from earlier?
When I typed “headache” the bot knew to return information about how to treat a headache.
When a user types “guide” into Digital Marketer’s bot, they deliver a PDF version of the guide within Messenger.
The possibilities are endless with keywords, and this is where building your bot gets fun. You’ll find the keywords button on the left-hand side in ManyChat:
Click “new rule” in the top right-hand corner and then type in the keyword. From here, you have a ton of options:
You can…
create a new reply
add a tag
remove a tag
trigger a zap
subscriber the user to a new sequence of messages
unsubscribe from a sequence
open a conversation
notify an admin
set subscriber custom field
clear subscriber customer field
subscribe them to the bot
Unsubscribe them from the bot…and much, much more.
For example, when someone types “guide” into Digital Marketer’s bot… it triggers a new reply that delivers the PDF:
Step 6: Add Message Button to Your Page
To add your Message button, simply:
Go to Facebook and click Add a Button
In the popup, choose Contact You and Send Message
Select Messenger when asked where the button should send people
My name is Sanjeev Agrawal. I am a Director and Co-founder of Dreamsoft4u, IT Consulting Company. I am having a keen interest in the latest trends and technologies that are emerging in different domains. Being an entrepreneur in the field of the IT sector, it becomes my responsibility to aid my audience with the knowledge of the latest trends in the market.
