You have just launched your bot on Messenger. Congratulations and welcome to the world of bots! Now how do you go about telling the world about it? We will help you figure it out.
Links & Codes
The direct link to a bot is of the form m.me/{username} where username is the username of the Facebook Page. If your Facebook page does not have a username set, you can set it from the Page Info section or use the Facebook Page Id instead of the username.
Messenger Codes are unique codes which can be scanned from the Messenger app to start a conversation with the bot. An example Messenger code would look like this-
Note: Links and Codes can be used to message a Facebook Page irrespective of whether the Page is a bot or not.
FACEBOOK PLUGINS
Facebook provides two plugins to which can be used on websites to direct website users to the bots.
- “Send to Messenger” Plugin: This plugin will trigger an event on the bot and it can start interacting with the user directly. One advantage of this plugin is that context information can be set on the website which can be linked to bot. This can be used for personalization, customization or just tracking/linking users across the website and the bot. This is how a Send to Messenger plugin looks:
- “Message Us” Plugin: This is a simpler version of a plugin which redirects the user to either the messenger app on phone or the messenger web app. Bot only gets notified when the user actually sends a message and no context information can be passed here. This is how one looks:
BOT STORES
As of now Facebook does not have a Bot Store and the only way of discovery is via search. But there have been a number of independent bot stores which have come up to act as a public listing of bots across platforms for better discovery of bots. Some of the notable ones are –
Botlist (The most popular one)
SHARE THE STORY
Another great way of getting your bot known is sharing its story. What was the motivation for the bot, what are the unique facets, what’s the story behind it, etc. You can write your story on your own blog or submit to some popular chatbots focussed blogs like Chatbots Magazine. This can get good traffic to your bot specially amongst the Bot community. Also popular general tech blogs and websites would also be helpful.
Also, not only on launch update your experience from time to time. Share how people are using the bot, what were their expectations, relevant feedback, learnings and improvements planned. This would keep users interested in the bot. Poncho, the weather bot does a great job at this. Read their learnings here —
Two weeks after we launched Poncho at F8
Poncho on Facebook Messenger: Three Months In
OTHERS
When we talk about new products, the discussion cannot be complete without Product Hunt. Here are some great bots listed on Product Hunt — https://www.producthunt.com/search/posts?q=bot
These are some pointers for bot promotion we thought would be helpful. Do let us know what all ways you have tried out and which methods have given great results.
