How to setup a Facebook Comment-To-Messenger bot for lead generation
Auto reply to Facebook post comments inside Messenger
Facebook’s ‘Comment-to-Messenger’ feature offers a convenient and personal way to connect your business with prospective customers. With this feature, Page admins can reply to public comments with a private message. This allows you to immediately support any customer requests and efficiently collect more leads.
Replying to every comment manually can be a time consuming task. When your business responds to a comment using a private message, a note appears saying, ‘Page responded privately.’ This response shows to other page visitors that you are responsive to any request.
Using WhatsHelp, you can set up these auto-reply comments to any posts on your Facebook Page with a private message. When you set up the Bot with your message (explained below), you can even share important information or ask for specific user data to generate a lead.
Bots can be configured in various different ‘flows’ allowing for personalized responses for every Facebook post you make. The bots are simple to set up and can be put into action in just a few steps.
Before You Start
We recommend you brainstorming some ideas for posts and how the bot should respond whenever a user leaves a comment. Having a ready and pre-defined workflow makes it easier and faster to setup the bot.
Here are some important points to follow while drafting your posts and the post messages:
- The post should have a clear Call to Action message which inspire users to leave a comment.
- The post message should clearly describe that the user will get a private message via Messenger after leaving a comment.
- The post message needs to mention a Keyword which a user should use in their reply in order to start the bot.
Create a WhatsHelp ‘Comment-to-Messenger’ bot
Pre-Steps
To create a bot, your Facebook account should be connected with the Facebook Page agreeing to all required permissions. When integrated with WhatsHelp, these permissions allow the program to manage your page’s comments and messages so that automate replies can be made.
Step 1: Basic settings
Login to your WhatsHelp account and select the bots option found in the left menu. Click the Create Bot button and start the set up.
In the fields, ‘Bot Title’ and ‘Bot referral’, enter the required details. You can find some best practices and information about creating titles and referrals here.
Connect the bot to the Facebook Page where the post comments will be automated with Messenger replies.
Select the bot conversation and data export choices as per your requirements. If you want to know more and how these settings work, you can read about that in these guidelines.
Select Bot Type as ‘Comment-to-Messenger’ bot.
Facebook Post ID. In this field, you need to include the ID number of the Facebook post you want to create automated comment replies. To find the ID for the Post on your Page, you will need to click on the timestamp of the Post. It will take you to the post and you will be able to find the Post ID in the URL.
It could also be in this format
Step 2: Message and Keyword Settings
This is one of the most decisive and important parts of the bot configuration.
Message Text. This is the field where you will draft the welcome message that people will receive in their Messenger inbox after they comment on the post. You need to create a message which will prompt them to enter a keyword so they can become a subscriber.
The message mentioned in this field should be a strategic Call-To-Action with a short instructional format. It should grab the attention of the user and entice them to perform the action you require.
The reply will have the original post embedded in it. We recommend putting a piece of information like — “Ignore the link below. Clicking on it will redirect to the post you commented on, just type download and get your copy now!”
Make sure the user understands the significance and implication of the Keyword in the drafted Message Text.
Keyword. The Keyword is supposed to be a specific text which user messages and then gets subscribed to the bot.
The example mentioned above, ‘download’ is the keyword. You also can use a number like “5000”. After the user sends the keyword, the bot will start communicating with the user.
Important Note: The bot works with only first level comments and replies only once to a comment.
Step 3: Compose the messages
After the user replies with the suggested keyword, the conversational flow is triggered.
In this section, you draft a conversation the bot will have with that user. The ‘User Input’ block is used to gather some data, like a phone number or an email address. The replies will be saved in the user profile attributes.
In our previous tutorial, we have described how to set up an effective conversational flow. To learn more, click here.
STEP 4: Ready to set Live
You are on the last step to configure your Comments-To-Messenger bot. Here you will just review and confirm the bot settings and give it a go with Set live button.
Test the bot
Go to the Facebook post for which the bot is created to automate the comment replies.
Note: If you are logged in as a Page Admin, switch your account before commenting on the post.
Comment anything on the post. After waiting for a second, you will get a notification in Messenger with the configured Text Message.
Validate the text and reply with the set Keyword. The bot will respond using the composed questions in the user input blocks. Reply to those questions to ensure the conversation you constructed is working properly.
Go to your WhatsHelp dashboard. It will show the live conversation. The gathered user data should be stored in the user profile. If the conversation needs to be taken over by human interaction, you can just use WhatsHelp conversation tab.
If you ever need to change the configuration of your bot, you can go to your WhatsHelp dashboard to edit the bot. Click Save and Close.
We hope this quick guide helps you to set up a Comment-to-Messenger bot for generating more leads. If this guide helps, how about sharing it with others? In case you come across any issue while setting up the bot, please write us at hello@whatshelp.com
