1138 – Direct Contact In Social Media: Tom talks Many Chat

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion discusses ManyChat, a chatbot automation platform he has used since 2017. Originally built for Facebook Messenger, it now supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, and SMS.
His primary focus is using Instagram Stories to automate lead generation. For example, a Story might say, "Reply 'CROWD' to learn about my crowdfunding book." When someone replies with the keyword, ManyChat automatically sends a message with links to a sales page, opt-in page, or download.
ManyChat can also guide users through conversation flows, asking questions like whether they are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user, then directing each person to the most appropriate product or content.
Tom notes that direct sales through Instagram DMs work best for products under about $100. For higher-priced products, he recommends sending prospects to educational content or an email list first to build trust before making a larger offer.
He emphasizes that ManyChat is inexpensive, includes ready-made templates, and allows businesses to automate customer interactions while following each platform's messaging rules, such as Meta's 24-hour messaging window.
Key takeaway: ManyChat is a mature, low-cost marketing automation tool that helps businesses capture leads, qualify prospects, and deliver personalized follow-up across multiple social and messaging platforms with minimal manual effort.

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Episode 1138 – Many Chat
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey, it's Tom here with episode 1138 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about a chat bot that I've been using, I think for about nine years, and it's no flash in the pan, that's for sure. And show you all the cool things you can do with it. In fact, I don't even know all the cool things you can do with it. But I'll tell you what I'm going to do with it. And I have been doing with it. Okay. And hope you did this. Episode 1137 that was ChatGPT ads. This is a perfect time to get on the ground floor where the ads are going to be the cheapest and the less competition to get ads on ChatGPT. So that's episode 1137. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com/then the episode number. ChatGPT ads was 1137. All right, pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is there and grab it. But I'm halfway done editing version 4.0, which is going to add a ton of stuff to version 3.0. So go ahead and do that at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program, greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. Okay, one other thing you still should if you haven't watched the AI hacks simplified, it's still blowing people away with the cool things you can do with no tech experience. So we'll have a link in the show notes to that free YouTube masterclass that I have on AI hacks simplified.
[00:02:05] Okay, let's talk about chatbots. So I've been using Manychat way, way back in 2017. And in those days, it was primarily a way to automate Facebook Messenger messages back and forth with people. If they did a certain thing, they would get a message. And, and it would limit how many messages you could send in a 24 hour period and just all kinds of stuff like that, but it automated it for you so that you didn't violate any terms of service of Facebook. So like I said, there's no flash in the pan. This has been around a long time, very mature software and very inexpensive for all the stuff it'll do. And I don't even I can't even articulate all the stuff it can do. But I'll tell you what the latest thing is that I'm going to be doing with it. Now. In those days it was pretty much Facebook, but now this can be used on Instagram. That's where I'm going to use it next. Tiktok. Whatsapp still on Facebook. You can, uh, email, get opt ins, text messages and telegram. So those are the current ones. But like I said back in the day, it was just Facebook. And, you know, I kind of forgot about it for years because it just worked. It just was working behind the scenes. And now I got some time to switch over, especially since I'm doing this new automation book to get up to speed on the latest stuff.
[00:03:40] So here's what I'm going to be doing next with it. Not the only thing you can do for sure, but it's manychat.com is where you can take a look at if you want to, and you can start for free. It has a free version. And and even I think the one I'm on is only $17 a month or $15 a month if you pay a year at a time or something. So very inexpensive for the power that this has given you. So the next thing that you'll see from me is on Instagram Stories. Currently, when I put a story up on Facebook, I just have it automatically connected to Instagram Stories. Okay. So I don't have to think about it too much, but on Instagram Stories, it's a different a little bit different atmosphere and that people are usually used to DMing on Instagram direct messaging. Okay. Not so much on Facebook stories. Yeah, they can send you a message or give you a like or something, but it's just not as common as the culture on Instagram. So here's what you'll see from me in the near future on Instagram Stories, I will have a message on the screen that says something like reply with a certain keyword. Let's say I'm promoting my crowdfunding book, so I might say reply crowd and you'll get details on my crowdfunding book. And so all you have to do is hit reply, type a simple word. You don't want to make things that are hard to spell and type the word crowd.
[00:05:23] And that kicks off manychat. That will send you a hey, how are you doing? Uh, here's a click this link and you'll get details on the crowdfunding book, and I can send it to an opt in page. So that'll get emails, or I can send them directly to the checkout page to go ahead and buy it. You know, things like that. I can choose what I want to do after they hit reply, and within that 24 hour period, I can hit him up on several things. After 24 hours, I can't contact them anymore. That's face, you know, that's kind of rules of the game. But if they contact me back, that starts the clock going again. See? So those are the kinds of things you can do with this. And I don't claim to be an expert on it, but it's a relatively simple builder that you use that says, okay, if somebody does this, you know, puts the word crowd in, have do this, give them a link to your download page or give them a link to your, your shopping cart, or give them a link to an opt in page, which then they're going to get the download. So you get to choose and see what works best with your audience. Now this method of selling directly from a Facebook or excuse me, an Instagram story usually works best for what? Most of the people that do this all the time say for products under 100 bucks.
[00:07:00] Now, what you can do is let's say you have a couple products on the same topic under 100 bucks. So you could, uh, as soon as somebody says crowd, they reply crowd. It could send them to a thing that says, hey, are you, do you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate or advanced? And if they choose beginner, they go down a different path, maybe to your cheapest product, an introductory product, say if they choose intermediate, maybe you have a higher price, maybe a $50 product or so. And if they choose advanced, maybe you have $1,000 product, but that doesn't just doesn't seem to work so well until they get to know you better. So maybe you got $100 product, or maybe you just send them to a blog posting that really convinces them you know what you're doing, and then get them on an email list and keep in touch with them and then sell them your $1,000 course or whatever you got, see? So, so you have a lot of choices here on what the things will do. Um, and like I said, it's not very expensive to have this kind of power. And you can do similar types of things on TikTok and WhatsApp and of course, Facebook. And I told you about email where, how you get them to get on your email list, or you can get them to send if you have a text service, you can send them a text. If you're on the the thing called telegram, you know, so it'll work with all those things.
[00:08:38] However, it's good to know the culture on each one. Like I'm not on WhatsApp. I'd have to, to, uh, really look into that quite a bit to see what the culture is and what I could do or sell there. And telegram I'm not on, but email and I'm all over text. I'm, I haven't done text marketing for years and years. It had a bad experience with that. But I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that, uh, I'm currently not doing it, but this Instagram story thing is an easy way to get started and get the, uh, up to speed on a more modern chat function. And while I'm at it, I'll review the one that I haven't looked at for years and make sure that, uh, I'm sure it needs some updating. But anyway, that's Manychat go over and check it out. And like I said, search YouTube or Google for manychat tutorials. Some, some are very techy, but there's some that are, uh, even Manychat itself has these what they call flows like if a person does this, uh, send them here. If it does that, send them this other place and then you just pick and choose. In other words, you're plugging your info into somebody that's already invented this whole flow for you. So they have a lot of standard ones there. Like for instance, uh, um, the, if they reply to your Instagram story, it's going to do this and then it's going to do that and it's going to do this other thing, and then it's going to do all these other things.
[00:10:10] And then you can either delete some of them or just fill in your information. So you don't have to figure this all out from scratch. So so anyway, that's manychat. And also, like I said, check out that AI hack simplified video I have over on YouTube. It's just blowing people away with what they can do with AI that just nobody ever taught you. You know, there's some simple stuff. It's not technical at all. So there'll be a link in the show notes to that and also check out my mentor program. If you want one on one help from me and my entire staff. And also, if you're in it in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school, which you can gift to somebody or use for extra training yourself. So, um, it's certified, it's like the only one in the country certified to operate on this specific topic dedicated to internet and digital marketing. So check it out. SCHEV is the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, but you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning. So check it out. And we have massive, uh, scholarships for first responders and law enforcement nurses and a couple other groups. I can't remember. So, um, so there you go. I will catch you on the next episode. Have a great weekend.