This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Let's talk about a tool called MiniChat. Now for those who don't know, MiniChat is a chat bot platform that allows users to automate messaging and create interactive experiences on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and some other chat apps. So if you actually use Instagram and you've ever seen, you've probably seen all these influencers and creators who are like, "Hey, comment with this word," or "Say yes," or "Give me a thumbs up," or again, it's often keyword-based. It's like, you know, "I've got a diet plan, comment plan, and I'll send you my diet plan." So they're using a service called MiniChat. That's the platform that kind of enables this.
So we're gonna talk about it here today, and I should say welcome to Side Hustle School. All of our listeners from all over the world, thank you for being here. We're all about helping people find practical tools, ideas to make more money, to grow their own business, to diversify their income apart from their employer, even if you love your job, even if you have no plans to quit your job, it's still good to make something for yourself for all kinds of reasons. So let's hear today from a listener who's wondering about this tool, MiniChat, and there's no sponsor affiliation just to be clear, but we're gonna talk about the pros and cons and why this might be a good idea for you, or maybe it's not. So if you've heard about this, or if you're like, "Oh yeah, I've used Instagram and seen people doing this," or "I've seen businesses using Facebook Messenger," well, you might learn a little bit more about the behind the scenes here and how this could be helpful for some listeners.
So let's talk about it. How are influencers and creators using MiniChat to grow their business? Detailed question and my answer coming up in just 30 seconds. Here is the actual sponsor message. [Music]
Hey, Chris.
I've been hearing a lot of buzz about MiniChat and how it's becoming a go-to tool for influencers and content creators to engage with their audiences and monetize their platforms. I'm curious to learn more about how influencers are using MiniChat to grow their businesses and what kind of results they're seeing. Can you share some examples or case studies of successful MiniChat campaigns run by influencers? What are the key strategies and best practices for using chatbots to drive engagement and sales? [Music]
All right, MiniChat.
This is a service that I actually started using myself. As I said, no sponsor affiliation. I signed up as a paying customer. I thought it's interesting just 'cause I've seen so many people on Instagram and other platforms using it, lots of content creators and influencers. And part of it comes down to how Facebook or Meta, whatever you call them these days, how they design their algorithm.
And one thing the algorithm really favors is engagement. So if people are commenting a lot, then Instagram is like, "Oh, let's show this post to more people." So for a couple of years now, people are using this service in different ways to generate comments from their followers by saying, "Hey, comment with this phrase or whatever." That encourages people to comment. You can use this for contests. And the service basically handles the backend of sending them messages, sending them links, allowing you to build up an email list with it. So there's a lot of good things with it.
Couple of case studies here. Jenna is a fitness influencer. She's got a big following on Instagram and she used mini chat to run a 30-day fitness challenge. She basically set up a flow where followers could sign up for her challenge via Instagram direct message. And then they received daily workout routines, motivational messages, nutritional tips, all directly through their messenger inbox.
So her email list actually grew by 30% and she saw a 25% increase in sales of her fitness products. So that was pretty cool. Next case study, Sarah, a beauty blogger, used mini chat for her latest product launch. She did a pre-launch teaser. She did exclusive discounts.
She did interactive content to kind of run in a live Q&A session. And this product did really well. Also selling out within hours, I think it was $40,000 for the launch. She attributed a big portion of her sales to the mini chat campaign. So I always say, when I talk about tools or platforms or new tricks and such, make sure you have time.
If you don't have time, then don't worry about it. Don't give into the FOMO. There's all kinds of other things you can do to grow your business. But if you're like, I want to grow my business using Instagram, I need to get better engagement, then this can be a helpful service. I think it's like 20 bucks a month or something.
So check it out. There's probably a free trial or at least you can watch how it works and see if it might be a good fit for you or not. And if you use it, just ensure your messages include clear and compelling calls to action like buy now, join the challenge, get your discount, make it really simple, start small, experiment, and refine your strategy as always. So that's how it works. It's minichat, M-A-N-Y-C-H-A-T.com.
No affiliation. And our website, of course, sidehustleschool.com. New episode every day. Notes page for every episode. And so much more is coming up.
Thank you for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
