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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
How To Use ManyChat Instagram Automation: Send DMs & Boost Engagement - 851
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Direct Message Automation is the best tool for your Instagram Period. I considered saying that DM Automation is the best tool for sales, or the best tool for growth, or the best tool for engagement. But honestly, it is the best tool for all of those things. If you could have only one tool to help you grow your brand or business on Instagram, it would be Direct message automation from ManyChat. Now, I want to say from the very beginning of today's episode that this is a sponsored episode. But wait, wait, wait. Before you click away, I would be telling you this even if it wasn't sponsored. And I can say that for a fact, because I've been talking about DM Automation for the last five years, long before they began sponsoring me to talk about it. Now, I know I've said this phrase DM automation a few times and you might already be a little bit confused, but don't worry, because by the end of this episode, you're going to understand exactly what DM automation is. You're going to understand why I made that bold claim at the beginning of this episode, saying that DM automation is the number one most important, most effective, best tool for your Instagram. I will also be answering all of the questions that are likely swimming through your head right now, and I will even show you how to set up your very first DM automation, because it is shockingly simple and will only take you a few seconds. DM Automation goes by many names. Chatbot Automation Comment to DM Automation Direct Message Automation. There are a lot of different terms that can be used to describe this, but basically I'm sure you've interacted with it before. If you've ever followed me on Instagram, then you've likely seen this. Basically, DM automation is that thing where someone like myself will say, comment the word blank and I will send you blank. So then you, as the viewer, are being told to comment. Let's say the word guide, and then in exchange for commenting the word guide, I will send you the guide via via direct message. Even if you had no idea what DM automation was before clicking on today's episode, I bet that you have interacted with some form of DM automation in some way. Maybe you have sent a specific keyword to someone's Instagram account and you've received a discount code in exchange for sending that keyword to them via direct message. That was DM Automation. Five years ago, when I first started talking about this DM automation thing, I used to have to do so much explaining as to what it is but now it's become way more widely used. So even if you haven't set it up for yourself yet, I bet you interacted with it in some way. Now, how could I make such a bold claim, like I made at the beginning of this episode about diem automation and its effectiveness? Well, number one, the stats. Of course these aren't guaranteed and results may vary. But let me start by telling you my own stats. When using DM automation compared to when not using DM automation. When I am using direct message automation from ManyChat, my posts receive 77% more views. Those 77% more views are the direct result of a 251% increase in engagement, on average. And best of all, more views and engagement directly leads to more sales. On average, I see anywhere from a 4 times all the way up to a 20 times increase in sales when I'm using direct message automation versus when I'm using the old school forms of promoting a link or selling something on Instagram. Like I said, results may vary and this is not a guarantee. But according to numerous Insta Club Hub studies and external third party studies, when using DM automation, you consistently get more engagement, which leads to more views. And both of those things lead to more sales. Now, I know what you're thinking. This sounds too good to be be true. Is this even real? Is this even allowed on Instagram? I had those exact same thoughts myself five years ago when I heard about this tool. I was super apprehensive. I was like, there's no way this is legal. There's no way this actually works. There's no way this is all that it's cracked up to be. So I got on a call with the actual CEO of manychat. This was back five years ago. Now they have over a million users and they have hundreds of employees and they have this massive company. But five years ago, when they were just starting out, I was able to actually talk to the CEO, Mike Yan, the CEO of ManyChat, and I asked him all the questions that I know you're thinking right now that I'm about to answer for you. Because I think it's important to be skeptical, especially when things sound too good to be true. I think it's important to fully vet every single tool that we're using on social media and for our business, because if our Instagram gets shut down, if our business gets taken away, that's our whole livelihood. And so I did my due diligence. I've been using this tool for the last five years and I bet I could answer pretty much any question you have regarding this tool. So I'm going to try to answer some of those most frequently asked questions right now. First and foremost, is this, this tool even allowed on Instagram? Yes, it is. And actually it's a step farther than just allowed. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of the most popular third party tools, and when I say third party tools, I mean most scheduling apps or any sort of software that you use that connects to your Instagram, almost all of those are allowed on Instagram because they have official permission to access Instagram's API. But very few are actually partnered with Instagram. That is an even higher tiered status. That doesn't mean that this app, this third party software, is just accessing Instagram through an unlocked door, so to speak. This means that the door is wide open, that there is a red velvet rope on each side and there is someone with white gloves standing at the door ready to greet this company and let them in and show them how everything works on the inside. That is the level of status that ManyChat has with Instagram. ManyChat is an official Instagram partner. That means that every single week, Instagram staff meets with manychat staff to make sure that everything is working properly, to make sure that the partnership is going well, and just to make sure that there is no miscommunication or anything dropped along the way. So yes, DM Automation is available through multiple third party tools, but there is only one third party tool that is an official partner of Meta and that is ManyChat. But of course, ManyChat could just be saying that they could just slap some lingo on their sales page and call it a day while lying to us. So I asked Adam Mozeri about this directly. Earlier in 2025, I got to interview the head of Instagram and I asked him about Direct Message Automation himself and he confirmed that yes, DM automation is allowed through approved partners. Yes, there are APIs, there are tools that are supported and allowed. Question number two, Is it complicated? Do you have to know how to code? Do you have to know how to build a website? Do you have to know how to build fancy techy automations? No, I am not that guy. I suck at that kind of stuff. I have multiple people on our Insta Club Hub staff whose full time job is automations and tech because I suck at that stuff. If you have the ability to post a reel, like if you have the skillset necessary to post a reel on Instagram, you have enough technical capabilities to create an automation within manychat. And at the end of today's episode, I'll show you how to do that. Question number three Is it super expensive? Well, of course this is a relative question, but I would say no when I consider the return on investment, when I consider how many more sales I'm making, how many more views I'm getting, and how much more engagement my posts are receiving from using this tool, the cost is negligible. It's almost nothing when I think about those things. But even with those things aside, I believe the base rate is about $15 per month, so it's pretty affordable. And on top of that down in the description below this episode, I will make sure to include a link that will give you 30 days of pro access. You can use all of the premium features for free, so you get an entire month to test it out, try it out, See it for your and see if you actually see the benefits and results that many others see as well. Question number four Is it spammy or inauthentic? It absolutely can be, but only if you use it incorrectly. Not to get too lost into the weeds of how to use this tool. We're going to talk about that in just a little bit. But basically, if you were to try to automate 100% of everything, then it would likely become spammy and overwhelming. Like if you were like trying to imagine every possible word that someone could comment, or every possible word that someone could DM you and then come up with like a response that was pre formulated for that, that would be overwhelming. Instead, with ManyChat you have the ability to only automate certain keywords so that 99.9% of messages that you receive are not automated. They're left as a normal message for you to respond to. But then you can set up a specific keyword and if you wanted, you could even make it a super random word that like no one's ever going to say. You could make it pickle or hot dog or cucumber or I don't know why those are all related in some way and I'm thinking of all those words right now. But that's besides the point. You can make it any random word and then have the automation trigger just for that specific word. So unless someone just randomly sends you the word pickle, it's not going to trigger the automation. So it's not spammy, it's not inauthentic and you are telling people that they are going to get an automated response. You can say comment the Word guide and I will automatically send you my free guide to rock climbing. So they know it's an automated response. It's not like you're trying to trick them into thinking that it's you sending out 40,000 messages a day automatically and instantly. And you're being very honest and upfront that it is automation. I think that DM automation can also become spammy when you build these like super long, complex automated flows, which I don't want to scare you away right now or anything, but you can build like a 17 step automation where someone has to do this and jump through this hoop and then type this word and then tap this button and it kind of becomes tiring for your customer when they really just wanted to download one of your freebies. So again, not to get too lost in the weeds of best practices, but I usually keep my automations short and sweet and that helps them avoid being too spammy. Question number five is, is this just for businesses? No, it's for anyone who ever uses a link. I could actually argue that even if you don't use links, even if, like you don't have a YouTube channel or a blog, or you don't have anywhere that you want to send someone off of Instagram, which sidebar, you should, because if the only place that you're interacting with people, if the only way that you have to connect with your audience is on Instagram, that's really scary. That puts you in a very vulnerable position. You need at least an email list or a Patreon or somewhere off of Instagram where you can connect with your followers. But I digress. Even if you don't have any such thing, I could still make the argument that you would benefit from using ManyChat because there are some really cool advanced features that you can use for engagement and that you can use to just interact with and serve your audience better. But if you are anyone who distributes links, if you have ever said the phrase, click the link in my bio, if you have ever put a link in your story. I don't care if you're a blogger. I don't care if you are an Amazon affiliate and you post products that you find on Amazon that you love. I don't care if you are a YouTuber who's trying to get people to go from Instagram to your YouTube or a podcaster who wants people to go from your Instagram stories to your podcast. If you ever want any of your followers on Instagram to go from Instagram to somewhere else, some other link, some other app, some other website you would benefit from DM automation. This directly leads into my next most common question, which is, is this only just for big accounts? Because here's what you're likely thinking, Brock, this sounds really but couldn't I do this without the automation? Like, couldn't I just say come the word guide for my free rock climbing guide? And then if I get three comments, I just DM those three people. You might be thinking, Brock, I just don't get the volume of messages or comments to really make this necessary. I would say a few things in response to that. Number one, why are you playing it small? Why are you thinking that this is how you're going to be forever? Like, why would you not set up the tool now? So that when you have success, when your video goes viral, when you start getting a bunch of engagement and comments and messages, you're already set up rather than having to play catch up. So number one, stop playing it small. Number two, according to our internal studies at the Insta Club Hub, the smaller your account is or the fewer followers you have, the bigger of an impact that DM automation from ManyChat provides. And an easy way to think about the reason for that is someone like myself who has a large following and is getting lots of engagement. I already have lots of engagement. But if you're someone who has a relatively small following, you might not be getting as many comments. You might not be getting as much engagement from post to post. And so through using DM Automation, you squeak out those extra few comments that you otherwise wouldn't get. And for you, 3 comments might make a huge difference for your engagement. That might be double the amount of comments that you normally get. Whereas for someone like me, getting a few extra comments might not make that big of a difference. And then the third argument that I'll make against you, if you're someone who's like, I don't need DM automation, I have a small account that doesn't get very much engagement. Is that do you really want to be spending hours staring at your phone waiting for someone to comment? Like, finally, someone commented the word guide, okay, now I'm going to send them the guide. Do you really want to be staring at your phone that whole day? Or if you're like, well Brock, I wouldn't stare at my phone, I would just send them the guide whenever I check my phone later in the day. Like I post in the morning and then I check in the evening and if someone commented guide during the day, well then I'll send them the guide. Do you really think that's going to be very effective? Do you really think if you're messaging someone eight hours after they were originally interested, they even remember that they commented? Probably not. I mean, let's be real. The average social media user sees 10,000 posts per day. And so if they commented on your post in the morning and you replied to them four hours later by sending them the link that they were inquiring about, they've moved on, they're not as interested. If anything, they're going to have to like, re figure out what the post was about and then hopefully they're becoming re interested and they still want to buy. But I don't know about you, how often are you making purchases that are impulse decisions, that are emotional decisions, that are like, ooh, that looks good, I'm going to buy it now, I'm not going to think about it and come back to it later. Think about how many times you've been at the mall and you've seen something on the clothing rack and maybe it was a little bit too expensive, or maybe you just didn't quite want to buy it just yet and you told the person at the retail store, oh, I'll come back for this later, I'm going to do a lap around the mall, I'll come back for this. You usually don't come back, right? It's because you have to strike when the iron is hot. And that is one of the benefits of DM automation. Them, it's instant replies within 3 seconds of the person commenting the word guide. They have a direct message sent to them from you with the free guide. So they don't have to wait around, they don't have to second guess. They are in that mindset, that mode, ready to make a purchase, ready to sign up for your email list and they're able to actually take action. Now, I think that just about covers all of the FAQs. But if there's any question that I didn't answer that you have in your head, go ahead and put it in the comments down below this episode and I will respond to you so that you, you know, have all the information that you need before making a decision to sign up for something like manychat. But probably the most important question that we haven't talked at all about is how is this so effective? Like, why does this work? And in order to understand why DM automation is so effective, I think it's important to first understand why the old school ways of promoting a link is so ineffective. There are two ways that you can currently share a link or put a link on your Instagram. Those two ways are the link in your bio, that's the URL on your profile page, or putting a link sticker on your Instagram stories. Those are really the only two ways that you can put a link somewhere that anyone can click on that any single person can find, discover and click on. Let's talk about the issues with both of those. And let's begin by talking about the link in your bio. What I'm about to Describe is how 95% of people sell or promote things on Instagram. They make their promotional posts, they make their advertisement, they talk about their offer, they talk about their YouTube channel, whatever, and then they say those famous three words, link in bio. Click the link in my bio. There is nothing inherently wrong with that phrase. There is a rumor that Instagram downranks your content and shows your content to less people. When you say that phrase, that's not true. I don't care if you say that phrase or if you say any variation of it. The problem is, is what you're asking your audience to do. Stick with me for just a second. Let's say I make an amazing ad. I am selling this red telephone right here, and I'm telling you all about it. I'm telling you how great it is. And then I'm telling you at the end, click the link in my bio if you want to purchase this. What have I just done? I have essentially just told anyone who is interested in that phone to not engage with the post. And I've told them that because I told them to do something else. I told you to go click the link in my bio. I'm basically saying, don't like, don't comment, don't save, don't spend any more time watching this post, abandon this post, go away from this post and go click the link in my bio. Of course, there's always going to be some people who are uninterested, right? They're not interested in a red telephone. They wanted a yellow telephone, and so they're just going to keep scrolling. That's always going to be the case. There's always going to be uninterested buyers. But now the interested buyers are not engaging. That means that the uninterested people are not engaging, the interested people are not engaging, and either way, no one's engaging. My posts have no comments, no likes, and no views. Of course they have some. There's a few views, there's a few likes, there's a few comments but very little engagement because I'm telling people not to engage. And this is why the posts where you're selling something always do the worst. It's not because there's something wrong with you. It's not because there's something wrong with your red telephone or whatever it is that you're promoting. There's simply a disconnect in your strategy. You're using an outdated and ineffective strategy. As I hope you understand by now, there is no problem with having a link in your bio. Instagram does not punish you for having a link in your bio. I have a link in my bio. Instagram will not punish you for saying click the link in my bio. Instagram will only punish you by downranking your video, by showing your video to less people if you say click the link in my bio and then people don't engage because you said that. So the issue is not in the phrase. The issue is not in having a link in the bio. The issue is in telling your followers to go click that link because then they're not going to engage with your post. Similarly, when you put a link on your Instagram stories, you are likely going to be getting little to no engagement with said story. If you put a link sticker on your stories, it's very unlikely that people are going to respond to that story. They're going to DM you based off that story. It's very unlikely that you have any other stickers on that story for them to interact with. It's very unlikely that they're going to share or like that story. And so because that story again has no engagement, that story just has people clicking on the link. Well, then it's not going to get very many views. And again, that's why your promotional or salesy stories don't perform very well. It's not because there's something wrong with you. It's not because there's something wrong with your product. It's because there's something wrong with your strategy. So what's the alternative? Instead of putting the link sticker on your stories or saying click the link in my bio on your feed post, just use DM automation instead. Basically use the following call to action comment blank and I will send you blank. That's what I put on any of my feed posts where I'm using DM automation. Comment the word guide and I'll send you my free guide for rock climbing. On your stories, you would just switch the word comment with reply. Because on stories you reply to the story or you message from the story, you don't comment. It's a little bit of a technical thing there. It's just a slight difference in language. But on your stories, you would say, reply to this story with the word guide and I will send you my free rock climbing guide. Or you could even simplify that sentence and just say, reply with the word guide and I will send you my free rock climbing guide. In fact, DM automation is the third step and the most important step in my strategy to getting your most viewed Instagram story. If you want to get more views on your Instagram story than you ever have in the history of your Instagram stories, use the strategy that I'm about to describe. And some of you who have been longtime listeners of the show know this strategy. This is the STD strategy. And yes, I know, haha, that's funny. It is named the STD strategy because you will not forget the STD strategy. The S in the STD strategy stands for single. So let all of your existing stories expire, let them run out. Or you could delete them and then post a single one clip on your Instagram story. This single clip should not be a talking head video. The best case scenario is that this is just a still image, either just one singular solid color or a photograph, but not a video. Again, single clip. Also implied when I say single clip is we're not posting anything after it. So we're not posting a second or third story. We're just posting one story for an entire 24 hour period. That's the S. The T in the STD strategy stands for text heavy. Text heavy. Meaning that there's quite a bit of text on this story. Again, it's not a video story. It is a photo or just a solid color background with let's say four, at least four sentences and at most 12 sentences. So yeah, even multiple paragraphs of text on that story, that's the S. And the T is text heavy. The D stands for diem automation, of course, what we're talking about today. And you can't have an STD without the D. That's what I'm famous for saying. That's one of my catchphrases. In fact, one of our build you'd tribe listeners actually sent me this little sign that I usually have hanging on my wall back there that says you can't have an STD without the D. You can't have your most viewed Instagram story without DM automation. And that is because the number one best kind of engagement, the kind of Engagement that most directly correlates to an increase in views on your Instagram stories is direct messages. Now, normally you're only going to get a lot of DMs if you post something real freaky on your Instagram stories or you post some thirst trap on your Instagram stories. But you're a business owner, so the only reliable way that you're gonna get a lot of DMs without doing something wild on your Instagram stories is to post a single story with a lot of text that ends with a DM call to action. With a call to action that says something along the lines of reply blank, and I will send you blank. With all that being said, I promised you I would show you how to set up your first automation. So I'm going to pull open my laptop right now, like literally three clicks. How easy it is to set up DM automation when you're using ManyChat. All right, so here we are. On ManyChat's desktop site, they also have a mobile app that is actually very easy to use as well. I prefer to use the desktop site. And all you have to do to set up your first automation is to go to this button over here that says Automations, and then click on the big blue button in the upper right that says New Automations. From there, ManyChat will provide you with a bunch of different templates. You can see auto DM links from comments. And I know that's what we're talking about today. So you could do that, generate leads with stories, respond to all your DMs. You could use one of these, but I, for the sake of this, start one from scratch. So we're just going to press that button in the upper right that says Start from Scratch. And then you can see it automatically creates this automation. That is two steps. You can see over here, step one, and then there's even a pretty little arrow that leads to step number two. And as you can see, step number one over here on the left is a trigger. So it says when a trigger is an event that starts your automation, click to add a trigger. Okay, I'm going to click new trigger, and then I have these five options. So let's see, do I want the DM to send when they comment on a post or a reel reply to a story, send a message, click on an Instagram ad which is only available with the Pro membership, or even comments on one of my Instagram lives. Well, for this one, I'm gonna choose send a message. Yes, they are technically replying to my story. But there's always gonna be those few people who DM you separately, even though they're technically replying to your story. So I just do send a message. Okay. Then over here on the left, you see, it pops up. The user sends a message. Select a way to trigger the automation. Do you want it to be specific words, detect specific words in a message, or recognize intention of a message? This is a pretty cool feature that manychat has where it's using AI to detect the intention of the message. But for our sake, where we're asking people to say a specific keyword, let's set it up that way. Detect specific words in the message. Okay, I selected that. Now it says if message contains. And then there's a keyword. Well, we actually can change if it's just the message contains. We can change it to if the message is, which means that the entire message is and only is the keyword. Message contains the keyword. If you were using a more common word, like let's say I use the word insta, I wouldn't want to do message contains the word insta because it's very likely that people are messaging me the word insta in other contexts. So I would only use message contains if you were using a very rare and obscure keyword like pickles. But for our case, let's do message begins with. That's often the one that I like to use for DMs. So if message begins with now we can just type in the keyword and again, you can come up with whatever keyword you want. As it says right here, keywords are not case sensitive. So I don't have to worry about doing like guide with a capital G. And in fact, if I do type that in, it reminds me that keywords are case sensitive. So what I will likely do is just do guide. I'll do guide in quotes, because some people will put it in quotes and then maybe I will include some sort of typo like I'll do good or I'll do guide with no E in case people make a typo. Then down at the bottom, I just press the button that says create Cool. Now my trigger has been created. If I click on this main page, here is the automation and there's an arrow. So when the user sends a message and the message begins with the word guide, guiding quotes good or geed, Then arrow, send an Instagram message. Now I just tap on this and I can have it say whatever I want. I can type whatever message I want here. I can Add a button. The button can lead to another Instagram message. It can be an AI step, it can open up a website, it can perform an action, it can even check certain conditions, like if the person has previously messaged you, there can be delays. So there's a lot of advanced stuff. But for our sake, we want to send people a free guide, right? So I'm going to click on Open Website and I can just put the link to my guide right here. Let's say this was the URL for my guide. I can change the button titles so that it doesn't just say new button number one. I'll change it to click here and then I can press done. And it's ready to go. Now, of course, I will probably want to put some sort of text in the actual chat. Here it says please add text or just remove the entire block. So I will say here's that free guide you requested. Bingo. And then once I press this Set Live button, it will go live, meaning that it's ready to go, it is activated, and anyone who sends me the word guide after I press the Set Live button, will automatically receive this response and we're done. It is really that simple. And for me, on my Manychat account, 95% of my automations are that simple. It's one person saying one keyword or one comment and then me sending them one message in reply with whatever it is that they're looking for. Now, like I mentioned earlier, you can get a little bit more advanced. I've done things like run entire polls through ManyChat so that people can vote in polls within the DMs rather than having to vote in a poll. On my Instagram stories, I've done things like collect help wanted ads. I've collected email addresses for webinars. I've even added tickets to people's mobile wallets directly from my DM automation. Some of these things are really advanced and in fact, I've even had to hire DM automation experts to help build some of these real advanced, intricate things. But my point is, while that is possible with DM automation, it's not necessary. If you follow the steps that I just showed you, you will be ahead of 95% of business owners on Instagram because most people are still slow to adopt this new feature called DM Automation. But before I let you go, I have two challenges for you. Challenge number one is to subscribe. Because I was looking at my analytics the other day and I'm not gonna lie, I was a little angry cause I looked and over 80%. I think it's like 83% of our weekly listeners are not subscribed. So I don't know what that means. Maybe that means I'm doing a bad job of asking. Maybe this little segment where I ask you to subscribe, like I need to do it better or more refined or something. I don't know. But the majority of our listeners, the vast majority, almost all of our weekly viewers are not subscribed. So if you enjoyed today's episode, if you want to learn more about building a brand online, if you want to learn more about the latest trends and hacks and strategies for social media, for Instagram and for online marketing, consider hitting that subscribe button. Because every single Thursday I put out a new episode just like this. And my second challenge for you is to get signed up for ManyChat, set up your first automation and post an STD story. Again. I can't legally or ethically guarantee that it will be your most viewed story ever, but I can almost do that. Like 99% guarantee. 99% promise you that if you follow the STD strategy, if you use DM automation appropriately, you will have your most viewed Instagram story ever. If you want a little bit more help on how to create an STD story, I did an entire episode about that just a few months back. So check that out if you need a little bit more of a detailed tutorial on creating your first ever STD story. But if nothing else, thank you so much for listening today. I appreciate you. Thank you so much to ManyChat for sponsoring today's episode. They are such an amazing tool. I would be singing their praises even if they weren't sponsoring me. But thank you ManyChat for sponsoring today's episode and I'll see you next week. Foreign.
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Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week we'll tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system. How to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're gonna bring on top notch scientists and world class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility and practicality. 10% have here is self help for smart people. Come join the party.