We talk about an innovative digital marketing tool called Minichat and how it can be leveraged to enhance podcast engagement and boost conversions.

Tonnisha’s expertise and firsthand experiences with Minichat provide listeners with an in-depth understanding of its functionalities and applications, especially within the realm of social media.

What is Minichat?

Tonnisha explains how she stumbled upon Minichat while observing automated direct message interactions on Instagram. Minichat is described as a cloud-based chatbot platform that helps manage customer interactions across multiple channels, primarily within the metaverse—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

After noticing automated responses on large Instagram accounts, she investigated whether Sprout Social, with whom she is an agency partner, offered a similar solution. When they didn’t, her research led her to Minichat. Intrigued by its potential, she began experimenting with it to understand how it automates engagement and interactions on social media platforms.

Tonnisha provides a thorough explanation of how Minichat operates. The platform automates responses to comments, messages, and inquiries from Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. This is particularly useful for driving engagement and boosting conversions. She gives an example of how podcasters can use Minichat to automatically send a DM with a link to the latest episode when someone comments a specific keyword on their post.

By connecting social media profiles (such as Instagram), users can take advantage of Minichat’s AI-assisted setup and pre-made workflows and automations. These features make the platform accessible even to those who aren’t highly tech-savvy. Workflows can be customized for different episodes or campaigns, making it a versatile tool for ongoing engagement.

Tonnisha compares the free and paid versions of Minichat, noting that while the free version is effective, the paid version offers more convenience, particularly in managing multiple workflows. The free version requires manual updates for every new post, while the paid version allows for a more seamless and automated experience.

Tonnisha suggests various ways podcasters can use Minichat to grow their audience and engagement. For instance, asking followers to comment specific keywords can drive subscribers to the podcast, add them to mailing lists, or increase YouTube views. Minichat enables the setup of different links and workflows, providing a robust tool for multifaceted engagement strategies.

Brett and Tonnisha discuss using the free version of Minichat as a tool to perform A/B testing of different keywords and engagement strategies. This includes experimenting with posting schedules and seeing how different days affect engagement. They emphasize the potential for gaining valuable insights into follower behavior without necessarily committing to the paid version initially.

While Minichat automates initial interactions, Brett and Tonnisha stress the importance of continuing human engagement. Tonnisha shares that she still manually likes comments to show a personal touch.

Tonnisha notes that Minichat can serve as a modern-day social media community manager, automating responses and interactions. However, users should remain vigilant to ensure the automation aligns with the content and context of follower comments.

Key Moments

00:00 Instagram DMs via bots, not manual effort.

06:52 Paid version enhances efficiency; costs around $15/month.

08:03 Free version requires manual workflow updates; paid doesn't.

11:29 Test posting days to optimize podcast engagement.

16:16 Curious about future of bots in social media.

17:19 Engage daily on social media, balancing AI.

21:38 Networking leads to future opportunities and connections.

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Each week, one of The Circle of Experts talks about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, website design, and implementation of all of these to help you make the best podcast possible.

Have a question or an idea for one of our episodes? Send us an email at podcasts@circle270media.com.

The Circle of Experts are:

Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs

Tonnisha English-Amamoo of TJE Communications

Don The Idea Guy

Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy, from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/vince-mcgill/lemon-slice

License code: 2NRNUIV5VG7FU3K5

Copyright 2024 Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy™

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Welcome to the Circle Sessions featuring the Circle of Experts. Each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about some critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, and website design to help you implement all of these together. Well, the Circle of Experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs, Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. Well, this week, Tonnisha is here from the Circle of Experts. Tonnisha is on a mission to help small businesses level the playing field through digital marketing solutions. Tonnisha, thanks for joining me again today.

Yes. Thanks for having me.

You brought up a so it it, a lot of time usually, your topics, I'm I'm at least a little bit familiar with. Not a lot, but enough, but this one is completely new to me. Yeah. Minichat. So Yes. So talk about how you found this and and and and kinda give an explanation because I'm sure 90% of our listeners are gonna be the same way going, yeah. What is Minichat? This is interesting.

Yeah. So if you are on Instagram, you probably have seen people make posts and they're like, comment, you know, this word and I'll send you a DM. And so I kept seeing that over and over. And so I was thinking like, okay, Either somebody has some sort of, like, automated things set up or you have, like, an intern or somebody going through and actually responding to all these comments and sending all these people DMs, which the second one sounded like that would take a lot of time, especially because I kept seeing it on accounts where they were, like, had pretty big followings. And so one day, I commented on somebody's post that said that just to see, like, what's gonna happen. And as soon as I commented, I immediately got a DM, and I immediately got a response back to my comments. I'm like, okay. This is some sort of, like, bot or something that they have implemented.

And so I am an agency partner with Sprout Social. So I reached out to them first to see if it was something that they offered and they didn't. And so doing some research, I came across a platform called Minichat, which I am not affiliated with in any way, shape, or form. I just found it. And so I'm like, okay. Let me get in here and see what it is. So, Minichat is described as a cloud based chatbot platform that helps manage customer interactions across multiple channels. But from what I found, it's pretty much just the metaverse.

And it's essentially a way to automate responses to comments, messages, and any inquiries from, like, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram.

K.

And so the goal is to boost conversions essentially. So when you use Minichat, you don't have to necessarily depend on saying, click the link in my bio and hope that they actually do it. Right. It's a way for you to kinda set up that automation. So for example, let's say for your podcast, if you make a post and it's, talking about your recent episode and you say comment podcast, and I'll DM you the link to the latest episode. So somebody will comment podcast on the back end. Many chat will DM them a message that you already put together within many chat. And then you can also have a setup to where they get a DM of the link, and maybe it says, thanks for subscribing.

Here's the link. And then you'll respond to their comment, and it'll say, you know, thanks. Check your DM. And all of this is automated. And so, essentially, that is taking out the manpower or woman power of you, doing that leg work to actually send them something. It's gonna be completely a 100% automated. And so I have tried it for myself. It does work pretty seamlessly, and it's a great way to help boost engagement, which I know we talked about a while back, with wanting to get get people engaged.

And so when you're asking them to comment a particular word, you can make it any word. Like, you could say, comment Brett, comment my podcast guy, comment tacos, for talking about Yasmin or tequila.

Yeah. Right.

And it'll automatically send them something. And so I found that, that seems to be the tool that most people are using right now. From what I've been able to tell thus far, it's pretty much only Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. It's pretty much the primary area of how it works. I'm not seeing anything yet for LinkedIn or other places, but I think it's a great place to start if you're looking to not only grow, engagement by getting people to comment, but also maybe even streamlining people to actually subscribe to the podcast that you have or join the mailing list.

Well, if you can get 5 more followers from just a post, you know, because that's that's been the struggle. So social media, and I've always likened it. I've told my clients this to give the give the give give social media the respect that's due, which is about Yeah. 5 seconds. You know, I mean, it's it's you know what I mean? It it's it's Yeah. Social media in my eyes, and I've heard someone else, give this example, and I like it. It's that it's a billboard on the highway. That's Yeah.

It it's, you know, don't scroll scroll doom, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. So we have to when you do have their attention, when they stop Mhmm. You wanna have capture some participation, some engagement, and this could easily do it as well. That that makes sense to to do something with that. So when you set up the mini chat, was it, you set it up, to get into or was it the API, whatever, you know, that that connects to your, Facebook and Instagram account. Is that how you set it up? Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So on the back end, you'll connect your whichever profile you wanna use. So I connected my Instagram. Alright. And then from there, they do have an AI assist. If you're not, like, super tech savvy, where if you tell them what you want it to do, it can help you set up. They also have some premade workflows and automations.

Yeah. And so if your goal is, you know, web site visits or subscribers, you can select that, and it'll kinda populate everything, and you'll just fill in the information, essentially. And once you have a workflow set up, if you like it and maybe this is for a particular episode or campaign, you can duplicate it for others, and kinda just keep it going. So I've used the free version and the paid version. I do think the paid version is better. I believe it's maybe, like, $15 a month or something like that. And so the the big difference is just the time.

Yeah.

And so in the free version, you will have to, so let's say we're talking about our podcast Yeah. In general. So you make a post and you're saying, like, subscribe. If you make a second post, let's say, the next day, and you're also asking for subscribers, on the free version, you will either have to go into Minichat and change which social media posts that this workflow is associated with.

Okay.

Or you will have to create a second workflow. Now in the free version, you just create the workflow and you associate that to every single post that you've ever made in the past, present, or future. And so that way, I'm just thinking from, like, if you're somebody that schedules your content like me, you might schedule something and then have to also set a reminder to go and make sure the workflow is updated Yeah. Which you may not wanna do. I mean, we already talk about the struggles of scheduling content, so we don't wanna have that extra step. So if you're if you're willing to pay for it, you just set it and let it do its thing, and you don't have to worry about going in and changing anything. It's already flowing out. Yeah.

I do think that, either one is great. I mean, the the paid version, of course, will save you time, but it doesn't mean that you can't still get the same results Mhmm. In the free version. If you just wanna try it out, you'll just have to make sure you go in there and make sure your workflows are automated and match up with whatever post that you're making for the day. And I've been able to do that on the go with with an app. So I have tested it on clients, and I didn't wanna necessarily pay for it for clients. You know, maybe that's something I'll add into my, you know, services going forward. I just kinda wanted to test it out.

And so on the free version, I have been able to very seamlessly when I know a client post is coming, I've set a reminder to myself to just go in. And when the post populates, I change, you know, where the workflow is going, and then that's it. I mean, it's only a couple clicks.

Yeah.

It's just remembering to do it, that that I know that sometimes we can when we get busy, we might forget to do that.

Yeah.

But I definitely think it's worth a shot. I think a few ways that you could use it for your podcast is, to 1, be able to grow subscribers, to the podcast in general. You can also help to grow your engagement on social media if you're asking people to comment particular words. You can send people your mailing list link as well as as, like, hey. Comment email, and we'll add it to our email list. Mhmm. And if you have a YouTube channel, for your podcast, it's also a great way to grow views there. And so within a automation, you can have, I think, about 2 links.

So you can say let's say for for our podcast, for example, you can have a link to say, if you prefer to watch the podcast, click here. If you wanna listen, click here. So kinda killing 2 birds with with one stone there and and also getting engagement, with people commenting. So

Yeah. I could see the free version. We'll start there

Mhmm.

As a really good way of AB testing words, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah.

Or or or, in regards to the engagement testing engagement. So maybe the first one you say, you know, is, follow or something like that, and you send them a link to the podcast, but maybe it's more the next one would be email and email newsletter or something like that. You may get more engagement with the email newsletter for sign ups. So it's that okay. But, yeah, depending on what your post is, you know, I I guess Yeah.

We can get

down to it. But I could see, some opportunities for, just doing the free version. But, again, changing the flow every time against that one specific episode of kinda testing some things out. And and and even testing days of when when you post about, okay, when's the, let's say, you use the same word, but you're posting differently, which again, your example would have to be the flow would have to stay the same even though you're even though you're using the same word or maybe a variable of follow or subscribe, but you're using the same podcast. So you wanna test it going, okay, I wanna know if okay. I release my episodes on Monday. Should I post on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday and use those, you know, those 3 days and see what kind of response you get? I I would say one time is not enough. You do it over a series of weeks to know Yeah.

As it goes. But I could see some testing going on, not necessarily testing Minichat, but testing how your followers on Facebook are reacting engagement piece to it.

Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that I've seen people kinda have fun with it that way too. I don't know if there's a a cap on how many keywords or phrases you can use, but you can set up multiple words to one workflow. And so, you know, let's say, you just kinda gave me an idea if I'm making a post and it's just about, like, content marketing Yeah. And then I might ask a question that's like, you know, if you're seeing this post, comment what day of the week it is, the the time that you saw it. Oh. And so you can you can put in the keywords literally Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever.

And then people are just commenting. That's not necessarily related to the post directly. And then you can still say, like, thanks for engaging with my content. Like, here's a freebie or Yeah. You know, something like that. So so you can have have a lot of fun with it. Yeah. And it doesn't just have to be one word.

It can be, you know, phrases. K. You kinda set it up like tags, really.

Okay.

And so if you kinda have, like, multiple tags, that you want for that, and those will be the words, and and that's just the front end. On the back end, it's like, I haven't even got that deep into it yet. Maybe we'll talk about it.

Yeah. Yeah.

But on the back end, you can set up different workflows very similar to what you could do with, like, email automation. But now we're talking about social media automation and workflows, which with the person that I engage with, before, I could kinda tell that I was a part of a workflow. Mhmm. Because after my comment, I got, like, the freebie.

Right.

And then from there, you know, maybe, like, a couple days later, I got something else. And then when they had another event come up, I got something else, and I wasn't commenting on anything at this point. Now I'm in their workflow. Yeah. So thinking about your podcast, once people come through, if they did comment, subscribe, you can be sending them DMs when you drop a new episode now because now they're a part of the automation. And the only way that they kinda unsubscribe, I think they have to, like, reply, like, unsubscribe or something, and it automatically will remove them. But for the most part, they're in it.

Okay. So so in the so it's so when Minichat sends that reply, there is a to stop kinda feel to it. Or Yeah. Comment? Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it.

Okay.

Yeah.

That makes sense. Gotcha. So, so let's take it one step further. So as a social media professional, once that mini chat does the initial comment back, so you in your comment, you say subscribe to my podcast or something like that. It automatically sends a link to how to do it. Would you suggest more engagement after that even with that person that Minichat engaged with, but should you go in maybe a day or 2 after and kinda go even more engagement with that listener or that that that person that received it?

Yeah. So I have many chats, send them a DM and a have an auto response to their comment.

Okay.

But I will actually manually go and make sure I like their comment

Gotcha.

As well.

Okay.

So, yeah, I definitely suggest having some sort of interaction. Mhmm. I'm also curious to see because it's interesting that many chats specifically as of right now, at least, is pretty much only within the metaverse.

Mhmm.

And so I'm wondering as well if, in the future, one, will this be an option for other social media platforms? Yeah. I'm wondering if, people that use it will be rewarded or punished by the algorithm for using it because you're not the one engaging. So I'm I'm also curious about that too. This is very new territory that we're stepping into, so I'm curious to see, how how that works. So I don't wanna be a 100% dependent on, you know, this bot kinda doing stuff. I I kinda wanna keep it if not, like, 6040, at least, like, 5050, of engagement. But I am seeing a lot of big brands use it, and it seems to be working well for them. So I I definitely think it's worth a shot, but I do recommend having some engagement on your own.

So if that means carving out 5 minutes a day to just make sure you're going in I'm I'm on social media on my personal accounts all the time, and I have to remember to go into my business account and also scroll and like things and comment and engage. So if you can do that, maybe, like, 5, 10 minutes a day, just make sure you are actually engaging or someone on your team is actually engaging to kinda even the load between whatever we're doing with AI and then what we're doing as real humans. I think that that for now would be the best way to approach it because who knows? You know, we we never know how to please the algorithm. So we just try to, you know, not go all in too hard on new things, but kinda just tiptoe our way and kinda see what works and what doesn't work.

Yeah. And and and, you know, like I said earlier, this is a fun way just to if even if nothing else, you get 4 or 5 more followers to a podcast or a blog, or you get more newsletter subscribers, 4 or 5, that it's try the freebie. What the heck? Yeah. And and and play with it and see that, it's just a different engagement. And like you said, go back and at least like, you know, have some type of human touch to it. Yeah. That we, you know, we are, strapped for time. It it just is.

And and it's that if one little thing can help us increase some engagement, then it starts to build, which is really, really nice. Yeah. Boy, that's Right. That sounds like a fun tool. Yeah. It it it's Yeah. That it's that it's, not replacing anyone necessarily. It's just that kind of making, save a little bit of time.

Save a little bit of time.

Yeah. I mean, it it's almost like, you know, having a social media community manager, which, you know, I don't know if that kinda role still exists, but I know when when jobs and social media first started, that was, like, one you always could find was somebody to to to manage the community, which essentially was responding to comments, liking comments, things like that. Now you have this automated thing. Now you may have to be careful if people are writing out completes. I have seen this happen where people are writing out complete sentences, and then you're in it. They're not necessarily asking to subscribe to the podcast, and then you cut reply, and it's like, great. Thanks. Like, I just gave you the link, but maybe they're just asking a question where that could kinda be like, okay.

That's kinda weird because you can clearly tell that, there is an option to exclude words as well. So you may just have to play around and kinda find that sweet spot of what works. For the most part, I've seen it work very like, it makes sense if somebody comments and they get a certain type of response. But every now and again, a comment might not make sense to their response, and then you'll see the person, you know, manually come in and, you know, have that conversation.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Well, and again, like you said, it's that you you can't set it and forget it. It it's it's just a nice little tool to use in the back end. That's fun.

No. Yeah. Well, we'll let's we will do a follow-up episode once you kinda get more into especially the paid version because, obviously, it's a bit more robust to see what's going on. But so if if a listener wants to get a hold of you and and and, talk a little bit more about your experiences as this post, you know, this episode goes out, but you're gonna have more and more experiences with it. How can they get a hold of you? Just kind of, you know, pick your brain about how how are you doing this? This is so cool.

Yeah. Yeah. You can go to my website, tjecommunications.com. I do offer free business consultations, 15 minute consults. So go ahead and schedule yours, and we can talk about Mini Chat or answer any questions that you might have.

Yeah. And you can contact me, if you wanna take a look at your podcast as an analysis of it, you know, just to kinda see, hey, this isn't working, this isn't working. I wanna grow this, I wanna do this. You can go to mypodcastguy.com and schedule a time. We do freebies as well too. So, you know, it's it's, I think the better consultants, the better managers, the better companies, you know, they they they allow that, you know, just contact me. You know, let's talk. That's what I think.

Because one thing can lead to another, and it doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna be, you know, doing business, but it's that one thing leads to another. And I know Tonnisha and Yasmine and Don do the same thing with Circle of Experts. It's that, you know, kinda paying it forward as well as, okay, if we have a conversation with you and, you know, we're not doing business with you, that's fine, but you you now know us and you can refer us to someone that might need our help down the road. And and that's worth the half hour, 45 minutes, honestly. And then we'd love talking our business. You know, we just do, you know, that sort of thing. Come on. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it as podcast.

So Right. So anyway, thanks for bringing the mini, you know, the mini chat up. This is amazing. Wow. This is very, very cool. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah. No problem.