Grow Your Business with ManyChat: Your Free Assistant for Marketing and Sales | S2 Ep28

Okay , jonathan Howard has left the building . What will we do ? Well , hi everyone , I'm Mimi Langley . It's Coffee .

Social , the podcast all about social media and business . And now here are your hosts , jonathan Howard and Mimi Langley . Hi , everyone . Where is my co-host Jonathan Howard ?

Are you hiding behind your coffee wine glass ? I'm hiding behind my coffee . Hello . Mimi Langley .

Hello Cheers . Wait , wait . You cannot sip until we Cheers . Am I demanding ?

You are . Yeah , I am . As long as you recognize it . You just slurped in my ear , you almost made me choke on my coffee .

You just slurped in my ear . You hate when people do that . You just slurped in my ear anyway it's so funny as long as you recognize it , everything's fine , you can be demanding . As long as you recognize it , everything's fine , you can be demanding .

As long as you recognize it . You know how Mel Robbins has a let them theory . Mine's going to be like as long as you recognize it , as long as you , what did we just say ? As long as you recognize it .

Theory we're going to sell millions , Jonathan . I'll give you 2% , as long as you recognize your . I'll give you two percent of sales uh , no , that's not how it works , since you randomly decided that you would get 40 percent of my sales oh my gosh you guys , how it works anyway it's actually not fun fact , and then we'll jump into it , because I know this is a micro episode , but , like I was listening to somebody who did , they did a book collaboration , anyways , they got 1% of sales .

They had a you know , a big publisher . You know , and you think a big publisher . You think , wow , I'm going to make a ton of money . But think about it , though 1% of sales is not bad if you're selling a large sum .

Right , it's not bad if you're selling a large sum . Also , it's not 1% of profit , which would be a very , very small amount . So it's 1% of sales , which is top line sales , which isn't bad . Okay .

So if someone offers me 1% , I should be like , yes , let's go . No , you should not . You should shop around and see what the other offers are , because 1% is probably not the best you could do . Thank you , Jonathan .

You'll also be my lawyer and my oh my gosh . Okay , so we have . We're on a micro episode . Kick you guys .

So you're going to see these shorter episodes . Come at you . Let's not say that . Let's not say that yet , because we said others were micro episodes and they were 20 minutes long .

This is going to be short . Okay , where's the optimism ? Jonathan Howard , I'll be optimistic when I see it , let's jump into it . Let's talk about many , chat , many chat .

That's the elephant in the room . Many chat , okay , people hear about it . Maybe you're not even using it yet . Maybe you have no idea what it is .

Maybe you're like kind of what the hell is the elephant . I'm looking for an elephant . I was looking for it on your shirt because you're always wearing animals Nope , just flowers today . But you probably have seen people use ManyChat .

Even if you don't know what ManyChat is , you probably have seen it being used . Okay , so we're going to go over kind of the benefits , like why it could help you and your business on Instagram . Does it work on any other platform or is it just Instagram ? Facebook as well ?

It does work on Facebook ? Yeah , absolutely . And you know , let's stick with Instagram and Facebook because Zito explained they kind of they cross over . So it's useful in that sense .

And also , I just want to disclose upfront I am a ManyChat affiliate . The link that will be in the show notes will be an affiliate link . We have four points okay about maybe why you should sign yourself up for ManyChat . First of all , is ManyChat free ?

I think there's a paid version , but there's free and paid , yes , and the free does pretty much all you need it to do . So free is has a lot of different things in it . Yeah . Okay and we'll put the link .

You know , obviously Jonathan's affiliate link . We'll put that below . Manychat is not a part of . Instagram or Facebook .

It's a separate , it's a third party that offers this service . So we have points . So the first one is increases engagement , but real quick , jonathan , just so people can paint the picture in their head . Can you just paint me a scenario of ManyChat being used in a post ?

Just so people can kind of give the idea Absolutely so , say I'm selling my signature membership in a post , what I would do is I would create the post and at the end of the post I would say comment signature to learn more . Something very simple like that , and in some cases I wouldn't even say signature . I might make you know sign or make a you know the hand signing something , emoji and whatever you choose as the trigger . So if you use the little signature , the hand signing thing , when somebody puts that into your comments it'll send them a link and it'll auto respond to them comments .

It'll send them a link and it'll auto-respond to them . Yeah , it goes right into their DMs on Instagram . So it's easy , breezy . They don't have to go try to find a link .

All they have to do is write the word , the number , whatever you want as the trigger . I've even seen podcasters do this , like oh , if you want to go listen to this , I talk about this in episode 520 , comment 520 , and you'll get the link . Yeah , it's pretty cool . I've been telling Mimi that we need to get one for the podcast .

We need to set up ManyChat for the podcast . We haven't gotten there yet . I'm still hung up on OnlyFans . We're not there anymore .

But we're not there anymore . Okay , so let's talk about ManyChat . What am I expected to see ? So the first thing that we have here is it increases engagement with your viewers they're going to want to comment whatever it is that you have there .

So say , I have a free sheet on how to tell stories and it goes into , you know , a full storytelling , whatever , and people are wanting that because they need help sharing telling stories on social media . They're going to comment whatever it is and that's going to get them the information . And then you're going to have another . They're going to comment , which is increased engagement .

You're going to respond to them increased engagement and maybe you start a discussion over it , which is again increased engagement , once they are in your comments . That's a great opportunity to expand your you know , your reach on with these people . So , and it takes it to the DMs , which is always a great place to be with people because , then you can really kind of go into detail if you want to take it a step further . Follow up with them , things like that .

Yeah , the link or the item that they're getting , whatever it is , will be sent that you're giving away to people and they have to comment something . You can set it up so that they have to follow you before they receive the item that you're selling . Oh , so it's almost like a bleed magnet in a certain way . Yeah , it can increase your followers and it does help you bring your because you get those email addresses , so it does help you bring those people over to your email list .

You can connect it to whatever your platform is there . The other thing too , just to close off , increases engagement . You also said that you could automate responses in the in the comment section . So it's not just them commenting the word signature and then automatically you don't say anything back to them , you just DM them .

You actually can say something back to them in the comment section . Yes , and you can vary it . You can offer like five different options for it . So you can say check your DMs .

You can say sent it to you . You can say whatever it is that you want to say , or sorry , you don't get it whatever which I also tend to try to include a question in those responses or let me know something so that it actually continues the engagement . So it's a great way to just keep it going . I like that Number two .

Another benefit is it helps facilitate transactions . It will help you potentially make money , Money . Money . Yeah , it's a free tool .

It's a free tool that can help you make money , either directly by selling a product or service or whatever you have directly to somebody on the internet , or indirectly by increasing the number of people you have on your email list that you can then sell to . So it really is a great tool to help just build your list or even just sell , and you can sell things . I've sold a workshop directly using ManyChat and linking it into Zoom , and you know they had to buy something . Then they got the Zoom registration and they were good to go .

It's nice because it's a piece of automation , you know , and that's a beautiful thing because you don't have to be everywhere 24 seven . You can't be everywhere 24 seven . So it is money while you sleep Exactly . And that actually puts us into the third point is it's better communication .

You're not missing anybody , like if somebody wants something from you and they comment , simply comment a word . They're going to hear from you , they're not going to be ignored . Yeah , it's , it will automatically respond to people and sometimes , even when you don't want it to respond to people , it'll send people things anyway , um they ? say your trigger word .

Yeah , Um , you gotta be careful with your trigger words . But yeah , it's instant and that's great , because people want instant gratification If they have to wait 10 minutes for something to come through because you're manually doing it . Guess what ? They forgot about it nine and a half minutes ago .

And isn't that wild . I mean , it's top of mind for you obviously but not for them . Not for them , unless they really , really , really want it . Yeah .

If it's a huge problem that they're facing , they need to solve it right now , which is always good to have something that you can do . But yeah , it's going to be , and there's also going to be , 12 other people that can help them solve that problem . So you know it's so funny One . I mean , if you're , you know cause we talk to entrepreneurs in general , so maybe you are somebody who is like an influencer and you and you make commission off of Amazon and all that .

So maybe you do . There's a one girl I see all the time . She does outfit of the days , every single day and she just says comment 157 . And then she gets the , sends the link directly to her amazon store with all the outfits that she showed .

I mean I'm like this is brilliant . This girl is not . It's just so easy the way she has it set up yep she never has to think about it again yeah , she has to set up an automation , but even then she probably has the structure for the automation already set . So she needs to duplicate an automation and put in the new things and she's good to go .

So easy . I mean , that's what it looks like anyways . Does any ? does the trigger word expire ever ?

Nope , not as long as you have your mini chat . Yeah , sometimes it's a problem because you're not offering things anymore and it might still be general . Try not to use general words that you use in your content all the time . I'm learning that quickly .

Yeah , and I like that . You just mentioned that , though , like you might not be offering , you know that group coaching program . So either change the response like get on the wait list or just remember to take it off your many chat . Last thing we have is what did I write here ?

In my opinion , as someone who uses many chats from the user perspective , like the viewer perspective , it's easy for me . I don't have to go try to find the link that you're talking about , or I don't have to go to 10 previous posts to find the thing you were talking about . Like literally , if you just tell me comment a word , it's going to give me what I need . So you're making it easier .

Right , it does make it easier and that ease of use is really what makes it so powerful , because you can say , and you can set it like , if I wanted , I could say I want the signature emoji to be on all of my posts , so anytime anybody puts that signature emoji they'll get information about my signature membership and I can do that on all my posts . So , going forward , if they put that out on any post they'll get that . They don't have to go into and people do this wrong all the time .

But if you've got a page page , a link page that has 15 links and nobody knows which one to click , nobody's going to click anything . Nope , they're going to get lost , they're going to get pissed off , they're going to leave . They may never come back . If they get the link in their dm , they get the link in their dm and they're happy about it and they can click on it .

Potentially , there's no guessing . Yeah , you take the guess , work out exactly and we're . You're not making this up , jonathan , because there's many times where I'm like , okay , I'll , you know , go to the link in my profile . So I go over there and you're right , like I'm completely lost .

I'm like , okay , and if I really want it then I'll dm them , but then who knows if they'll respond . Yeah I don't deal with them . If I really want it and I can't find it and they don't have many chat automation or any automation , I just leave . I get real pissed off about that You're like .

I'm done , I'm done . Last bonus a benefit which I really like . It's not just your Instagram posts . You could actually do this in your story .

So if you're more of a story creator , yes , that's a thing , I'm making it a thing . Jonathan , because I love creating Instagram stories . If you're more of a story creator , you could still be using this automation system . This is true .

You do have the ability to set it for your stories . Anytime anybody comments on a story or likes a story , it will automatically send a response to them . There's a lot of great features in it . There's a ton of great features we're not even talking about today .

So absolutely , grab the free you know the free version . If you really like it , get the pro version , and there's a lot so much you can do with it . So I love that and maybe , if you guys are interested in learning more about ManyChat , maybe we can bring on like a ManyChat guru , like somebody who is just like my sales sword because of ManyChat or my lead sword because because of many chat . So let us know and we could try to hunt someone down .

You guys , jonathan , you want to go ahead and do your thing , I will do my thing and I will say if you haven't already given us a review or rated us on your favorite podcast platform , please do so . We would love to see five stars , because Mimi loves her stars . Five of them . I can't say five of them , but five of them .

So give her a rating review , whatever you want to do . anywhere you listen to your podcast and you can also find us where Mimi we are on Instagram and we are on YouTube , especially if you want to watch the podcast . Some of our viewers love listening and watching , so we have like double views from them , which we appreciate . But we're on YouTube , so we'll put all of our links below for you guys .

And then we have our own individual Instagrams . You know , jonathan , he's always talking about signature style and storytelling , and showing up as you are , and I'm talking about TBD to be determined . That's right . She has no idea .

But I'm still here . Okay , wait , I want to sing . I'm still standing , but I know we got to go . We got to go , but do we have a question ?

Well , the question would be do you feel like many chat takes away from having like that realism between you and your people ? Like , do you know what I'm saying ? It's a robot , yes , well , basically a robot . So it's like if you only rely on that , you're not really talking to your people necessarily .

I don't know , does that make sense ? I ? Guess it's only one step so . Yeah , it's only one step .

It's only one thing thing you are going to be talking to your audience in different places , but it does , in that situation , take a little bit of the humanism away . So yes I agree , I agree all . Ai does that . However right you gotta weigh the cost and the right , and that's not the only way you're talking to them you know , this is just kind of one way I'm I'm all for many chats , so shout out to many chat .

Thank you , guys so much for listening . I'm an affiliate . Thank you so much for listening and watching you guys . Make sure you check out the rest of Coffee Social .

We have a huge library of episodes for you all about social media and business , and we'll see you later . Bye everyone , everyone , bye Jonathan Howard , bye Mimi . Langley .