#anyone who knows them is welcome to send in an image via asks or dms! always welcome! i will use increasingly more absurd images if not tho

[weirdest-blorbo-throwdown]

ROUND ONE: Sgt. Norm Allan from Dialtown Vs The Administrators from ADAMANDI

(i am so sorry to whoever submitted the administrators i Could Not find an image. here's a guy crying in a chair instead)

[sweetpinkstylist]

Hello hello! I suppose I have made my active presence known so I should probably discuss the elephant in the room that you may or may not be aware of as I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days. I hope to not be too controversial about it. ^^;

For those of you who don’t know, a post was made on the Love Nikki Facebook that, put simply, has asked fans not to rip the game’s content. Of course, I absolutely respect their motivations for that, that they do not want their content to be stolen and sold and/or put into other games without their consent, and I do not want to be the person giving access to the assets to unscrupulous people.

However, I enjoy making my own fan content with the assets, which I get absolutely no money from, and I would never want to out of principle, so I would likely continue to rip things for my own art projects (I know I haven’t been posting many lately, but I promise they do exist, I just don’t finish many lol). I’ve thought about just quietly keeping any rips I make to myself, but I know other people also like to make art using rips and also do not make or want to make any money from them, and I want to help these people if they aren’t able to rip assets for any reason because, you know, I want to help other fans have fun making their own art.

And, perhaps more pertinently, if someone really wants to put stolen assets in their own game, what’s going to stop them from figuring out how to rip the assets themselves and continuing with only a small bump in the road? I rip things from LN with only four programs, including an image converter and an image editing program. If someone as dumb as me can do it, I’m sure the people with enough technological know-how to make a game of their own can figure it out. How can I sit back knowing literally anyone with the know-how can steal and make money off of LN assets while fans just wanting to make pictures for personal use are unable to?

So...... Now what?

Well, first of all, I will still be making rips, and I will still be posting them in the same Google Drive folder. You are still free to download anything from the folders Backgrounds, Character Sprites, Other Images, and Suits and Items folders and use them to create free fan content.

However, there will be some changes to this tumblr of mine here. I won’t be posting raw rips, and any posts I make announcing rip updates (such as when rips from a new chapter are up) will be toned down to just text posts and will not be tagged to the fandom. I’ll be honest, this is mostly to avoid drawing attention to myself for my, uh....uncondoned activities. ^^;

Secondly, though, I’m going to be more cautious about giving rips for more specific things like items, to decrease the chances I’m just handing over an item that someone will slip into a for-profit game or as a part of an commission or something. Anonymous asks in general are perfectly welcome, of course, but I won’t be replying to anonymous asks for specific rips. I’m a bit nervous about this (by that I mean my anxiety is screaming atm but I’m pushing through lol), but I’m going to have to ask for....well, a bit of vetting if you’d like specific items for something. I want this to be as easy as possible for people who may be anxious about asking for something (believe me, I understand XD), but I’m going to have to ask for a couple things: 1) you can contact me via ask or DM, but keep anonymous off (if you send an ask, I promise I’ll reply privately), 2) I'll be suspicious of tumblrs that are suspiciously empty, so if you’ve been active on tumblr for any time at any point, you’re fine, I just don’t want to give things to people who have just made a blank account for the sake of getting past the anon requirement, if your tumblr is void of content with all default theme and avatar and such, I’ll just have a couple extra questions, and 3) most importantly, please tell me what you’d like to do with the image you want, and, if possible, just show me something of a similar type you’ve done (doesn’t have to be specifically LN, just any not-for-profit art you’ve made using other assets) just so I have some evidence you’re not just saying you’re going to make something you’re not. If you haven’t made things like that before but you want to start with LN and want to ask me for a specific asset for your first project, you’re free to show me, say, a screenshot of what you’ve done so I can still get a bit of evidence that you are telling the truth. Same basic rules apply if you want to ask for something for a friend who isn’t on tumblr, that’s perfectly fine, just, again, let me know what they’d like it for and show me some evidence.

Phew, I hope that’s not too intimidating. ^^; This isn’t a huge problem or anything, but I just want to sort of quietly keep sharing rips for fans while restricting the possibility of someone using me to make a profit off LN assets.

Also, if you’d like to start ripping from LN yourself, I can do my best to help, but I won’t be posting instructions publicly (also, I can’t remember all the steps to set everything up in the first place ^^; ), so just shoot me a DM (you can send me a non-anon ask if you really want, but it’ll be much, much easier to talk it through in a DM, so if you send an ask, I’ll send you a DM lol) and I can do my best to help you out. You can also hmu for my Discord since I actually have it on my phone and rarely pop onto tumblr nowadays. That goes for anything, really lol, if you want to chat to me about anything for any reason on Discord, you can ask for it. I’ve thought about making a LN-centric server where I can announce rip updates/just talk about LN with friends and y’all, but that hasn’t come to fruition because I’m indecisive. Feel free to let me know if anyone would be interested in that because I’ll probably be too nervous to go through with it forever if no one would want that. ^^;

Last note: I’ll be deleting some existing things from my Items folder in the next little while. This is a rather arbitrary decision, but you can ask again for anything I’ve deleted. What I’m going to delete vs keep is also going to be somewhat arbitrary, but....y’know, I’m going to do it.

I’m open to criticism or questions for clarification on this btw. Just don’t be mean XD I am soft. This is probably going to end up being an ongoing work-in-progress because I want to respect the dev’s wishes, but I also want to continue to make fan content and help other fans do the same since the “no rips” rule won’t stop unscrupulous people in the first place. New suits will be incoming to the drive folder in the next few days or so (Miku suits are already there as I ripped them from the jpn server a while ago).

Anyway, I’ve talked enough here. ^^; Hope y’all are enjoying your winter holiday(s) of choice!

[neomatch]

Neomatch is live!

Neomatch is a “dating site” made for the purpose of pairing the neotag’s lonely neopet OCs together with the intention of finding them friends, and maybe a little something more :)

Like all fun things, NeoMatch has some guidelines we would like you to read before submitting apps to help clear up any confusion or concerns! Please click to read more about this project and learn how you can be part of it.

Guidelines

Neomatch is intended to be a fun, community building activity and resource for people in the neopets fandom who would like to incorporate other’s neopet OCs into their stories/character development and need somewhere to start. We want to keep this site as drama free as possible and ask everyone to abide by the following rules:

Neomatch is purely for fun and not meant to be taken too seriously, so please refrain from starting conflict if your neopet does not find a partner or is turned down by the partner you wanted for them. This site is for making friends, not enemies! 

We ask everyone to respect the boundaries of the other individuals associated with this site. That means that if someone isn’t looking for romance for their pet, don’t ask! If they don’t want to RP or have ship art drawn of their pet then please be sure to respect that. What this also means is, regardless of the pet’s sexuality, if the user has stated they are only looking for a specific gender of partner for their pet, please abide to that as well. (I.E. someone’s OC is bisexual but only interested in girls, don’t pursue them with your male OC! Neopets can have preferences, too)

The minimum OC age to use this service is 16, and RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN UNDERAGE OCS AND ADULT OCS ARE NOT ALLOWED!!!! We have created tags with the purpose to seperate the adults from the teens, but while searching through other tags on our blog PLEASE keep an eye out for which OCs are “neominors” and “neoadults” respectively. The only exception to this is the “2 year age gap” rule which basically means that if your OC is 16, the oldest OC they can date is 18. If your pet is 17, the oldest OC they can date is 19. Please be mindful of this rule regardless of what your opinion is of age gaps irl. Anyone found to be purposely breaking this rule will be removed and blocked from Neomatch and will not be allowed to participate in events related to it.

Contact us ASAP if you receive any form of harassment from someone related to using this service. This includes disrespecting pre-established boundaries (unsolicited RP/ship art), pressuring or giulting someone into having your OCs date/be friends, and anything related to shipping minors/adult OCs together (that breaks the 2 year age gap rule). Anyone who is found to be breaking the rules will either be given a warning or be blocked and banned from using the service (depending on the severity of the situation). 

Now that is over with, let’s get to the fun part!

1. Making your Application

Below are examples of the templates available to you at this time, the first one is the Neomatch Application which is required to fill out in order to use this service.

Here’s a beautifully illustrated and completed version of the template made by Zji:

Here is where you can download the template yourself! The folder includes a Visual Guide, a blank PNG, and a blank PSD.

The second template is the Neomatch Profile which is completely optional!

Here’s Zji’s version of the profile:

Here is where you can download the blank version of the profile, as well as the visual guide +PSD! This template is easiest to fill out in Photoshop, but if you don’t have Photoshop you can add text to the blank profile in another art program like Paint. If you want to add emojis to your profile but don’t have them on your computer, I would type up the bio on tumblr mobile, save as a draft, screenshot it, then paste into the profile :)

Here is a brief rundown of what is OK and not ok to do when filling out the templates:

Feel free to

change the color of the background, text boxes, and font as you wish (as long as you can still read it)

add multiple pictures into picture box

use a different font to fill out the form

Please refrain from

Changing the color of the header/footer (This is fine on the Profile, but we want to keep the grey top and bottom on the Application)

Removing or editing the Neomatch logo

Leaving info boxes blank (except for the “Other” box) 

Filling out the form illegibly (if you really want to write in the info yourself just make sure other people can read it)

Using images you don’t have permission to use as the profile picture

If you have any problems filling out the form or have questions for us related to it, please send us an ask or DM and we will help you ASAP.

Here is where you can see some more of Zji’s apps/profiles if you want to see more examples.

2. Submitting your application

If you go to the Submit page you will see we have a few more rules and stuff to follow just to help keep stuff organized. I will briefly address them here as well as some other things 

We prefer at this time if you don’t post your applications to tumblr on your main blog/other blogs. You are absolutely welcome to reblog submissions from us, but we would like to keep everything in one place and don’t want to clutter people’s feed’s with the same picture over and over again.

You can submit as many apps as you want, but if we receive a lot of submissions at once we may put them into a queue to try to space out the posts.

It’s very important to use that you tag your submission correctly to save us a little bit of time when uploading them, we can’t tag them for you because we aren’t at liberty to assume what your OC is looking for

If your application or something related to your submission is incorrect we will send you a message and explain how you can fix it

If you have any questions or are confused about the submission process please shoot us an ask and we will try our best to help you

It is also required to fill out the following form in the description of your submission to be accepted:

Contact: (your blog[s] here) Is it OK to draw your OC interacting with other OCs platonically?: (yes/no/ask first) Is it OK for Neomatch to send you “Matches’ via DM with similar characters your OC may be compatible with, or would you like to look by yourself?: (yes or no) [BE SURE TO HAVE YOUR DMS OPEN IF YOU SAY YES OR ELSE YOU WONT GET MATCHES FROM US] If you marked “No” above, is it still okay for us to match your OC with other’s OCs? (you won’t get a DM from us but someone might DM you): (yes/no) Other important info: (maybe include a bit of your character’s backstory & if you are looking for characters to add to your story, etc? or anything else at all you would like to include)

3. Receiving Neomatches

We intend on providing a little matchmaker service to those who opt into it, what it consists of is the admins of this blog helping you find friends/romance for your OC by taking mutual interests, location, age, and so on into consideration and pairing your OC with someone else’s based off of that. These “Neomatches” will be DMed to you privately (SO KEEP YOUR DMs OPEN) and it’s completely up to you on whether or not you’d like to pursue it or not. The message will consist of something like “_____ has a new match!” and we’ll DM you the profile of the other OC. If you find this service annoying or are not interested in using it you can let us know and we will stop sending them to you :)

I think that basically covers the jist of it, so keep an eye out for future updates and announcements! Feel free to send us an ask here if you have any questions or concerns related to using this service! We hope you all have as much fun with this as we will!

[praguehqs-blog]

Hello lovelies,

below the cut we have new and revised rules and also some matters Admin Anna and I would like to address moving forward.

Management has been much more active, we’ve been keeping a tight ship regarding activity and being up to date on our main page. Thank you to everyone who has actively been involved with improving our wanted list and keeping things cozy on the dash. What we are addressing is of great importance and will ensure our group experience is the best for current and especially new members.

A simple change:

Our OOC Chat room will move from Discord to Tumblr, we will send out links to each account soon!

Quick reminder that the OOC Chat room is not a platform for IC plotting which puts members on the spot/in an uncomfortable position/spotlights only your needs. Keep things OOC and DM members if you want to plot. I promise you will have better feedback/response this way.

PRO TIP: If you are the one asking for plot, be the better person and OFFER to write the starter for your partner as thanks for participating in your request. This is proper etiquette. Do not make them work after doing you a favor. Butter them up.

New and revised rules:

STARTERS: Each member is required to reply to every new starter that enters the tag with at least one muse. This is non negotiable.

If your account is inactive for 3 days you will be put on our warning list and given 24 hours to regain activity (queues and musing posts/images do not count)

After the fourth day of inactivity, you will be unfollowed

**If your account ends up on our warning list TWICE you will immediately be added to the unfollow and may lose the luxury of reapplication

PLEASE NOTE: this may be a multimuse roleplay, but the mods do notice ALL character activity. do your best to be equally active on all of your characters or reconsider managing more than two or three. if you cannot do this yourself, as admins, we will have to inquire via dm and help make decisions.

If you need a hiatus? Let us know. Provide a return date (Month+Day). We can only help if you communicate with us. If you do not return 24 hours after the date provided you will naturally go through the warning and potential drop process. Need an extension? Tell us. Preferably before we have to add you to any warning. Be responsible.

**Important matters to note**

BUBBLE ROLEPLAY: This didn’t use to be an issue, but some things have grown... lazy. We appreciate an active dash, but writers are doing their characters and other members a disservice by limiting their threads and development to a chosen few. Bubble roleplay will not be tolerated. Shape up. You know who you are.

PLOTTING: We feel that a number of members have limited their writing to “pre-plotted” threads. This is not alright and once more, you are limiting your writing, character development, and member reach by doing so. You should be an active participant in the starter tag. Obviously. Do not be afraid of improvising and just seeing how things go. This leads us back to the starter topic:

STARTERS: The starter tag should be checked every day. This is simply good practice and we are troubled by the lack of attention the most important tag of the rp has received. Refer to the revised rule above on our new expectation for the starter tag.

In the end, all that needs to be said: please do not be a **selfish player**. Treat others, members current and new, how you would want to be treated. Period. End of story. Do not be selfish. Do not ignore starters. Send asks when we have ask meme and honesty days. Bring your full game when replying to any member. **(would you want your starter to be ignored? would you want to be left with an empty inbox? would you want to be given an indifferent reply? DON’T THINK SO)** Always remember: You get back what you put in.

Only apply for another character if you plan to be active on all muses. We all do test drives sometime so if a character doesn’t work out, give them the boot. If you are too busy, give them the boot and reapply when you have more time.

PRO TIP: You may need to read over this page twice, maybe three times, we really. REALLY. Want to see all areas improve/return to their former status. We love all of you and know that our members can carry the torch and treat others how they would want to be treated: Welcomed to a new roleplay that offers constant chatter and an openness for everyone to feel included.

Please like this post if you have thoroughly read and understood. If you have any questions, please DM or ask us via the main. It can go without saying that the mods are taking these issues very seriously and will take action if adjustments aren’t made accordingly. Thank you.

We are fun, inclusive and talented folks. Do not let anyone doubt that. We each play a role. Please do your part. This roleplay is yours, help it grow and keep it great!

- Admin Blue and Admin Anna

EDIT/PRO TIP: If you do not feel comfortable replying to a certain starter, DM the player who posted it and create something custom with them. We still would like you to prioritize starters but this is an option for few exceptions.

[exilesofembermark]

Game Dev Update | Time to Test.

Shall we play?

We’re about to embark on our first closed test of the Exiles combat system, starring... you! That’s right, we’re firing up Test Flight, and if you signed up for closed testing (or on the site, “Beta”), then you will have a chance to be among the first guinea pigs for Exiles. The first batch of players will be small-- probably around 50-- then we’ll gradually open it up to more as we see how stable we are and start eradicating bugs.

We’ll be inviting people from our dedicated Exiles Discord community as well as some from the lists first. Then we’ll expand to some of the rest of the list randomly in batches. We won’t get to everyone in this little test. That said, if you haven’t signed up anywhere, go here and get on the list!

WHAT WE’RE TESTING

This is not a Beta. It’s a closed pre-alpha test of the Combat System and Arena Tiers (plus some power curve balance). 

It’s important to note that we won’t be testing the whole game. We’re just testing combat and the new Arena Tiers mechanics to get them feeling right and get feedback. 

The rest of the game is in various states of development and isn’t intended for testing-- BUT-- feel free to plunge the depths of FPO (for placement only) and buggy unfinish, but beware-- things won’t be as they seem and most of it will only sort of work. This is particularly true of PVE-- when you hit the World Map and start to click around, there will be some Quests-- there will be some fights, there will be what seems to be progression. But don’t get too excited about it, and don’t report bugs-- we decided to leave that stuff open so that you can at least take a look at where we’re going. As you know, we’ve been open about the state of things, so when you click anything other than your Character and Arena, you take your functionality lives into your own hands. 

Here’s the link to the test welcome forum post. 

So... what are Arena Tiers?

ARENA TIERS

The Arena Tier system is new to Exiles and the focal point of this test. When players participate in an Arena battle they are eligible to earn Renown. Renown represents a player’s skill. Players can gain or lose Renown either by winning or losing battles. Earning Renown unlocks new Arena Tiers which reward the player with new abilities to use, more powerful equipment, increased drop rates, a new environment to fight in, and eventually new monsters to fight in another system we’ll cover later called Monster Dive.  

In this build you are able to:

Gain Renown (30) from your victories and lose Renown (-26) should you suffer a defeat.

Increasing your Renown will progress you to higher Arena Tiers:

Arena Tier - Training Grounds - 1st try

Arena 1 - Wildewoods - 60+

Arena 2 - Askala - 150+

Arena 3 - Vanisir - 300+

Arena 4 - Siege - 600+

Arena 5 - Bog - 1,000+

Arena 6 - Cave - 1,400+

Arena 7 - Ruins - 1,800+

Arena 8 - Addrighar - 2,200+

Champions Arena - 2,600+

View your current Renown total. Indicated by the number to the right of the flag icon in the Arena Lobby:

Poor “MageGod” has zilch for Renown, but will be gaining it quickly.

Click an Ability slot, then “Equip” to replace your Abilities with others.

As you go up in Arena Tiers, new Abilities become available.

REFERENCE RESOURCES FOR COMBAT

The tutorial system at this point is pretty bare bones, and the wiki (many thanks to SecretOwl and the gang for starting one) is early, so we’ve put together a few one-sheeter reference guides for combat. I’ll post them both as images here, but grab the PDFs here if you want to have clear readable copies.The first is a legend for Battle. It outlines the various parts of the UI and some of the feedback that will pop in as you battle:

A key concept in the above is that of Generate/Consume. We’re experimenting with ways to get that across (currently it’s via circle or upside-down triangle, respectively). Will be interested in opinions on this...

The second is more of a definition list for rules. The various Abilities in the game will display and execute a number of effects that you’ll want to keep track of, so until the game itself teaches these concepts, here’s a handy reference guide:

WHAT ELSE TO CHECK OUT

As I mentioned, the only sanctioned areas of the game are Character and Arena. You enter the rest at your own risk. However, if I was going to recommend a stroll through anything else to see where we’re headed, it would be the following:

The Map - we’ve shared lots about this feature, and it is the gateway to PVE. The current state of PVE is that you can do some things, but there will be lots of bugs and you’ll get stuck. And it won’t make perfect sense narratively, so go easy. But the map is cool and its functionality is something we want to dive into. 

The Forge - it doesn’t work, so don’t click around too much. Don’t try to salvage yet -- this is a known issue and we are deploying a fix on it as we speak. You’ll be able to see the intent, but not to do what you will definitely want to do... yet. 

House (it says “Guild” in the nav) - this is a mockup, so you can choose a House and fool around with the concepts, but it’s not actually live. 

CHAT!

Yes, good Exiles, there is chat in the app, so bang on that feature if you’re in the closed test. It is basic functionality at this point (don’t expect DMs or history), and the Discord Channel is probably still the best bet for player-to-player comms, but click that little icon in the bottom left of the home screen and voila!

FIND FRIENDS & RIVALS TO FIGHT

If you’re in the test and not in the Discord Channel, let’s change that. If you are in the channel, then you’re all good for communicating with potential opponents (and you’ll need this type of communication to find people ready to fight, given the small-audience nature of this test). 

If you don’t find a live opponent when you hit “Battle” in the Arena hub, you’ll still find player characters to fight, but AI will be your foe. If you’re wanting to direct-challenge someone, you’ll want to use the Search function (the magnifying glass), and you’ll be able to find specific names or find foes by Arena Tier or Class. 

Anyone online will show up on the results list as green, while offline people will show up as red. You can still click the reds to “Spar” them (fight the player character as an AI). 

MOAR VFX

This update has focused on the test that we’re starting up, but, as always, we have a few visuals to share, some new some updated for the modern exile...

First, it’s the Mage class with a hot seat that this Ember Elf is not going to appreciate (and I cut out his reaction so you can see it yourself in the test if you venture into the very early PVE experiences...)

ROGUE VFX

Hey, Dwarf Brute, GET SOME...

WARRIOR VFX

And a Quake Stomp wouldn’t be very quaky without some earthquake VFX busting this Ember Beast down to size. 

NOW.. DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER…

The test is on-- check the forums and Discord for bugs and feedback, and if you’re not in yet (but want to be), send TheWizard a PM in the forums, and we’ll see what we can do (no promises).

And if you haven’t already, follow along with Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

CONNECT WITH OTHER EXILES

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly crew with plenty of daily/weekly/sometimes-planned shenanigans.

[mariemary1]

Need a Chatbot Marketing Strategy? Start Here: Beginner’s Guide to Messenger Bots

When you think of chatbot marketing, what comes to mind?

Opinions run the gamut from fear — “What’ll it be like to entrust my customer service to a computer?” — to humor — “Here comes the robot apocalypse!” But reality is that there are marketing teams and support teams and sales teams making serious progress with their chatbot strategies.

We want to help you be one of those brands with a rockin’ chatbot strategy.

In this post, we’ll go deep into the world of messenger bots to give you the details on how to develop a best-in-class chatbot strategy. We’ll answer your questions about best practices for a nearly-human chatbot experience as well as how to get the most value out of chatbots on Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more.

Here we go!

First things first …

What is a chatbot?

A bot is simply a computer program that automates certain tasks.

In the case of a chatbot, the task being automated is a 1:1 conversation with a person.

These bots can use sophisticated technology like artificial intelligence and natural-language processing. Or they can be as simple as a series of IF-THEN statements. Alexa is a type of chatbot. So is the Domino’s Pizza app.

Today’s chatbots reply with text, yes, and also with audio, video, images, GIFs, you name it. Even the mediums for chatbots have grown exponentially — you’ve likely experienced bots in chat apps like Messenger and WhatsApp as well as on many, many websites with the little button in the corner asking if you need any help.

We’ll be focusing specifically on chatbots on social media channels in this post.

How to build your own messenger chatbot

The good news: You don’t have to have a lick of engineering skills.

There are a host of services that allow you to build your own chatbot, no engineering background required. A lot of these tools are as easy to set up as figuring out what you want your IF-THEN sequence to be:

OnSequel

Chatfuel

Botsify

Mobile Monkey

FlowXO

Facebook Messenger’s official page offers to build your own bot directly through the platform’s landing page. This method though, may be a little bit more complicated than others.

10 Tips for Your Chatbot Marketing Strategy

We ended up researching a number of different world-class chatbot experiences to learn from. Here is a list of 10 lessons for anyone about to get into chatbot marketing — like us.

1. Research your most frequently asked questions, by asking your team

One of the first things to consider with your bot is the content that it’ll contain.

Let’s take one of our favorite chatbot use cases as an example: a customer service bot. If the aim of the bot is to help customers and deliver speedy responses, then we suggest looking at the most frequently asked questions of your brand to see what content makes sense to start with.

To find these FAQs, there are a couple great places to look:

Your customer service team. They likely will have a heap of questions off the top of their head that they hear from customers all day.

Your social media support team, your community team, or your social media manager. Whoever does the engagement on your social profiles should have a good handle of common questions that come in through @mentions and DMs.

Your sales and marketing teams will have a pulse on what types of questions they see as customers progress through the funnel. This could look like common Sales questions that reps face, or it could be questions that your content marketers are seeking to answer.

And of course you could source questions from outside of your immediate team, too. The search suggestions at the bottom of relevant Google pages are a good place to start, as are crowdsourced communities like Quora and Reddit.

If you choose to build a bot for sales, lead gen, or any other service, we highly encourage you to research common questions and customer journeys so your bot is fully prepared to be as useful as possible.

2. Build your bot its very own conversation tree

Chatbots work best when given a concrete set of questions to answer. Without a certain level of specificity and pre-planning, then it becomes infinitely harder for a chatbot to deliver a believable experience — much less the right answer.

This is why a conversation tree works so well.

Picture a gigantic flowchart or a mindmap. Beginning with the initial hello from the bot and its very first ask of the user, you branch off from there, building the conversation flows for every different direction the conversation may turn.

We’re big fans of tools like Lucidcharts and Whimsical for creating easy-to-read flowcharts that would suit this type of project perfectly.

Mind map from Whimsical

3. Avoid fully open-ended conversations

Open-ended conversations can lead to confusion for your bot and a poor experience for the user. If you don’t have the luxury of highly-advanced language processing, then an open-ended question like “how can we help you today” could go any number of directions.

One of our favorite chatbots is the one at Hello Fresh in Facebook Messenger. Among the bot’s first messages to the user is an offering of a menu of choices: “Here are some common questions I can answer” Options include things like:

How does it work?

What does it cost?

Are you gluten-free?

Are you vegan?

Give me a discount!

The user can choose any of these statements by tapping on them in the Messenger interface. Then the bot will respond with an automated reply.

This takes the guesswork out of the bot’s replies since it knows exactly what to say to exactly which message it receives.

4. Let people know that a human is just a step away

One of the most interesting stats we’ve seen about chatbots is that people aren’t nearly as turned off by them as you’d think. 69% of consumers prefer communicating with chatbots versus in-app support. People love speedy answers to their problems.

That being said, that leaves 31% of consumers who might prefer the old-fashioned way — email or social support.

This can be baked into your bot experience, too.

Simply let people know as part of the bot’s welcome messages that the user is invited to get in touch with a human at anytime.

5. Give your bot a voice … and a warm welcome message

Just like you do with the way you write as your brand on social media, you’ll want to think about the voice and tone of your chatbot as well. Perhaps this is simply a natural extension of your brand’s voice and tone.

Other companies choose to lean into the “bot-ness” by making the voice a bit more obviously robotic.

Whatever you choose is entirely up to you. Just stay consistent with it throughout your conversation tree.

And one of the most important places to nail this voice and tone is in the opening message from your bot. We mentioned in the previous tip to be sure you let users know they can get in touch with a human at anytime. That’s a great nugget to place into your bot’s welcome message.

Also look to include things like:

A catchy hello.

Expectation-setting. Letting people know they’re talking with a bot.

And a solid first question with plenty of options to capture as many possible user journeys as you can.

6. Track the effectiveness of your bot with special UTMs and discount codes

One of the biggest questions you probably will have with your chatbot is … is this thing working?

And “working” can mean a lot of different things. If you’re using chatbots to minimize your customer support volume, then that’s an easy metric to check. If you’re wanting to measure the effectiveness of education, marketing, or sales, then it can be invaluable to track the bot’s success with measurable links and codes.

Hello Fresh does this with their bot — including the word “bot” right in their coupon codes (for example: FRESHBOT25).

Similarly, you can do this with your UTM codes for the content you link from your bot. Give it a UTM source of chatbot and you can measure the clicks and traffic that come from the bot, as well as track the UTM all the way through your customer journey.

You may even end up measuring ROI from the bot, which would be incredible!

7. Replace your email newsletters with chatbot newsletters

We’ve talked a lot about how great a chatbot can be for incoming requests. But how about outbound? There is a lot of room to experiment here. And one of the prime places is using your bot as a content delivery system.

For instance, on Facebook Messenger, any time someone talks to you through Messenger, they are added to your contact list. You can set up a chat bot to ask these folks to opt in to hear regular updates and announcements from you, then — voila! — you’ve just built a subscriber list on your messenger bot.

Tools like Mobile Monkey can then make it easy to send out new blog posts or quick information to this group. Some estimates say that chatbot newsletters generate a 70-80% engagement rate.

8. Send simple surveys to your contacts

With the high engagement rate with bots, you also have a good chance of getting your message noticed for surveys. It can be notoriously hard when surveying folks via email or on a website or app to get a high volume of responses. It’s a bit easier with bots.

Similar to the email newsletter tip above, with surveys, you first ask people to opt in to hear from you, then you can message them occasionally with a short and simple survey.

Many of the tools we mentioned earlier include the option for two button-based responses, which are perfectly suited for the mobile-first experiences of social media bots.

9. Enrich your bot with data and personalization

Check out this list of powerful chatbot superpowers:

Universal Studios tells you the wait time for rides

Marriott can tell you room availability

CheapFlights tells you the best options for your dates and your price range

Domino’s lets you order pizza!

These are all possible because of the Big Data that these brands pipe into their bots. If you’re not quite at this scale yet, no worries. You can dip your toe in the water by anticipating the most common questions of your customers and doing your best to fill in your bot with details. Simple things like hours of operations, daily deals, etc. can make for a delightful experience.

And if you do have a customer base who clamors for data-rich answers, then use the examples above to inspire your chatbot dreams.

There’s also the matter of personalization. And for this one, we’ll leave it up to your best judgment. Many tools allow you to personalize the chat experience with variables like first names or locations. This tows the line between helpful and offputting, when coming from a bot. Use discretion.

10. Make sure to promote your chatbot so people know you have one

This one might seem obvious, but it’s perhaps one of the most important tips we’ve covered so far. Your bot will only be successful if people find it and use it. So get the word out!

This can happen organically as people visit your Facebook page and are routed to you on Messenger. Or you can be proactive about it.

A couple of our favorite ways of promotion are:

Mentioning your bot in a list of all your customer support channels

Adding a call-to-action on your blog or website to get in touch with you

Advertising on social for people to opt-in to your bot experience. This can be great for the Messenger newsletters we talked about.

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

Bonnie on Twitter

Dave on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

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About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

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