Increasing Social-Media Engagement Is Crucial But You Don't Need a Larger Team to Do It Chatbots are an efficient and cost-effective way to make a name for your organization on social media.
By Murray Newlands Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There are many technological trends affecting businesses today that have proved to be extremely effective, such as chatbot marketing to increase engagement. In addition, the development of social media and widespread use of mobile devices have completely changed the business landscape for large and small companies.
Social media engagement has become one of the biggest indicators of a company's local presence and overall popularity. Facebook, Instagram and other popular social media platforms provide companies with a direct communication line with their consumers and vice versa. To top it off, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual assistants now let companies provide help to consumers around the clock without having to hire more team members.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, conversational chatbots have taken social media interactions to a whole new level. These dedicated pieces of software can now hold dialogues with humans, answer questions, provide information and help fulfill numerous tasks without any assistance.
Increasing social media engagement can help a company build a good reputation and even increase sales. But, using an AI-powered virtual assistance to drive more engagement is not always easy. I've created an article focusing on how chatbots can help you engage with your audience in a more efficient manner.
Related: The Next Addition to Your Marketing Department Should Be a Chatbot
About AI-powered assistants.
Chatbots and artificial intelligence have become more popular and accessible, thanks to recent technological developments. Since they were introduced to Facebook Messenger last year, bots have become an essential assistant for many consumers and businesses.
AI-powered virtual assistants are accessible through social media platforms, and they're available around the clock. They can provide help and answer consumer questions instantly without having to depend on one of your team members for support. AI chatbots can display personality, and although you should tread carefully, this can help build a deeper connection with users.
Creating a chatbot has always been regarded as a highly specialized skill, yet building a virtual assistant is simple. With ChattyPeople, you can create a bot in a matter of minutes without any coding knowledge. And, because it's free to build your bot, you can create as many versions as you want before launching a live edition.
One of the best parts about bots is that they can proactively reach out to your customers once they've interacted with them. After users first interact with your bot, you can send them messages directly to their inbox, which they can either read, reply to, or ignore without disrupting their daily routine.
Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding
How chatbots can increase engagement.
Once you've chosen your chatbot-building solution and have created your virtual assistant, you can start driving engagement. Engaging with your audience boils down to attracting their attention by providing something useful or amusing. Most of the time, you'll want to aim for functionality, as it helps build credibility and set you up as an industry leader.
In order to create a chatbot that engages with consumers, you have to:
Know your audience.
Instead of trying to simply guess what will grab your audience's attention, you should focus your efforts on learning about their interests and goals. By learning about your audience, you'll be able to create marketing and sales campaigns that truly speak to them instead of trying to force products on them.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Sell your bot as an assistant.
Despite the fact that virtual assistant is a synonym of the chatbot, marketing your bot as an assistant will encourage consumers to interact with it. Keep in mind you should never try to trick your audience into thinking they're speaking to a human. On the contrary, make it clear that they're receiving assistance from a chatbot and keep the process simple to avoid overwhelming users.
Pay attention to the metrics.
It's true that numbers aren't everything, but your metrics should give you a good overall picture of how your bot's performing. Pay attention to longer conversations or dialogues that triggered confusion and tweak your bot to prevent these errors from happening again.
Treat each interaction as an experience.
Consumers don't want to be victims to hard sales anymore; this form of marketing no longer works. Instead, they want to immerse themselves in the experience of your brand. Remember that this varies depending on the industry, but seasoning your virtual helper with a bit of personality can help create the experience that consumers so desperately want.
Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips
Collect as much information as possible.
The more information you collect from consumers, the more likely you are to engage with them. Your chatbot should be able to gather information from social media profiles, browsing habits, purchase patterns, and the conversations in order to present them to you. You can then create engagement campaigns that are more likely to connect with consumers and earn their undivided attention.
Related: Pretty Soon, Chatbots Will Be Able to Understand How You're Feeling
Start by creating a simple chatbot.
Your chatbot can have thousands of features, so it's easy to get carried away and build a clunky virtual assistant. Instead of cramming your bot, you can start off by creating a simple version that only has really basic features. Remember that chatbots implement machine learning, so you should always give your chatbot a bit of time to learn new concepts and gradually introduce new features.
Present features logically.
Once your bot is developed enough to support complex tasks, you need to think about presentation. Your bot can overwhelm your customer if it presents all its features at once. Instead, you have to come up with an organized and logical way to present relevant features. One thing you should always remember is to include a way to backtrack, in case consumers hit an option by mistake and want to return to the previous menu.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots Platforms and the Future of Work
Include strategic CTAs
There's no denying the power of a good call-to-action, so make sure you include strategic CTAs during your bot's dialogue. These can encourage users to take additional actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, liking a page, or even placing an order.
Finally…
Increasing social engagement is an efficient and cost-effective way to make a name for your organization at a local, regional, and global scale. Follow the tips outlined above to engage with your audience more efficiently and become a credible thought provoker within your industry.
