Ever wondered how to make your own chatbot? Chances are that you’ve probably encountered one in a customer service interaction without even realizing. But it’s not just big brands that have the capacity and resources to build their own bots.

We’re going to use a ManyChat walkthrough to show you how to leverage your Facebook account to reach more users. Facebook Messenger chatbots allow you to create autoresponder sequences and qualify more leads.

All you need is a Facebook account and page. And when you’re playing around with new concepts and experimenting, we’d recommend creating a new account to test out your chatbot.

Let’s get started.

Your ManyChat Account

There’s lots of software to help you design chatbots, but we think that ManyChat is one of the best tools on the market. It’s free too, so it can really help you to get to grips with chatbot tech.

ManyChat will take you through a few introductory steps and you’ll then be...

Once you’ve built your own chatbot, your next task is driving traffic.

Retention isn’t great for chatbots – customers often use them once and then leave messenger bots.

So, securing subscribers is the first challenge and holding onto users is the second. But there’s lots of scope for creativity and innovation within chatbot tech. It’s still relatively new and people are growing increasingly familiar and comfortable with using bots.

Stan Chudnovsky of Facebook, said at Web Summit that "more and more of the conversations between people and businesses will migrate to messaging platforms", so drawing people towards your chatbot is a way of futureproofing your brand.

How can you generate more subscribers?

1. Add to Directories

Depending on which platform you’ve used to build your chatbot – you can add your creation to chatbot directories and catalogs, which will act as a reference point when people are searching for applicable bots.

For example,...