📹 How To Get Started With Social Inbox
In This Article
- Video Walkthrough
- What Is Social Inbox?
- How To Get Started & Add Profiles To Social Inbox
- Viewing Messages
- Responding To Messages
- How To Use Snippets To Save Common Replies
- How To Manage Your Connected Profiles
- Common Questions
Video Walkthrough
What Is Social Inbox?
Social Inbox is a feature that allows you to view and respond to direct messages on Facebook Pages and Twitter Profiles.
How To Get Started & Add Profiles To Social Inbox
2. You'll then see a screen of all Twitter Profiles and Facebook Pages that are available to connect to Inbox (you won't see Instagram Profiles, Facebook Groups, or LinkedIn Profiles as these aren't yet an option to connect)
Note: If you don't see your Twitter Profile or Facebook Page here, then you'll first need to add it to SmarterQueue! If the Profile is already connected, you may need to refresh the connection or edit your Facebook Business Integration settings.
3. Click the plus sign next to the Profile you'd like to connect to add it to Inbox
4. As you add Profiles, you'll see the list of available and connected Profiles update. Once you've added all the Profiles you'd like, click 'Done'
5. You'll then see a list of all of your most recent messages organized by Profile 🎉
Note: If you aren't seeing some of your older Twitter direct messages, please note that Twitter doesn't let us fetch messages that were over 30 days old when you connected your Profile.
Viewing Messages
After you've connected your Profiles to Inbox, you can then view and reply to messages all from within SmarterQueue! Inbox automatically checks for new messages, so you'll always have the latest!
1. Switch between Profiles using the drop-down menu on the left pane. You can choose to view messages for 'All Profiles' or narrow your view to a single Profile
2. Conversations with new messages are shown at the top in bold and marked with a green dot
Note: Inbox automatically checks for new messages, so there's no need to refresh your browser.
When you have new messages, you'll also notice a red badge icon number on the Inbox tab at the top of your SmarterQueue navigation menu.
You might be seeing message notifications inside the Social Inbox even after you have responded to them natively. Due to a limitation in the Facebook and Twitter APIs, we won't be able to see if you have already read these messages. So in order to get rid of the notifications, ensure you click on every single thread with a dot at the end as shown in Step 2 Image 1. You might need to scroll down to the bottom and paginate to the next page in order to see all of your unread messages inside SmarterQueue.
Once you have done the above, the red notification dot at the top will disappear. 💪🏻
3. To view a message, click on the message card. You can see which conversation you're viewing by the blue bar on the left-hand side as well as the blue background in the left pane.
6. From the right pane, you can see more detailed information about each conversation. Messages received are shown on the left while messages sent are shown on the right.
Here we can see more clearly that our connected Profile @SmartCoLtd is sending a reply to @SmartFabrics_
💡 For Twitter messages, click the username of who you're responding to and view their profile in a new tab! This is handy to check more details about who has contacted you before replying. Please note this isn't available for Facebook users.
Responding To Messages
To respond to your messages follow this simple guide. We also recommend saving a bookmark for Social Inbox on your smartphone so you can quickly and easily respond to messages on the fly from your mobile phone!
1. To respond to a message, select the conversation then type your response in the reply area. You can add line breaks by hitting enter - rest assured this won't send your message 😊
💡 Use the emoji keyboard to easily add emojis to your reply!
2. When you're done composing your message, click 'Submit'
3. When responding to Facebook messages, keep in mind that Facebook currently only allows you to send a reply within 24 hours of receiving a message from a customer. This is to prevent companies from sending repeated marketing messages without permission.
We recommend aiming to reply to customers as soon as possible to provide a better customer experience. As a bonus, if you regularly reply within 15 minutes, you'll also earn Facebook's "very responsive" badge on your Page 💪
4. When responding to Twitter messages, keep in mind that restrictions on the side of Twitter's API cause a 10-minute delay for third-party tools.
This means that when checking messages, it may take 10 minutes before a new Twitter DM appears in your Social Inbox. That said, your reply will appear immediately in the recipient's Twitter DM inbox. ✨
How To Use Snippets To Save Common Replies
When responding to direct messages using Inbox, speed up your workflow by saving your most common replies as Snippets!
All of your existing saved Snippets are also available, so you can create prepared responses for your most common questions, saving you from typing the same replies over and over!
1. To access and create Snippets, click the clipboard icon inside of the reply area of a conversation
2. In the pop-up that appears, you can then access and add any of your existing Snippets or create a new Snippet
3. Create new Snippets for all of your most frequently asked questions and replies so you don't have to type them out over and over!
4. Once you've created a Snippet, you'll see it appear in your library of saved replies and can quickly add it to your responses 😊
How To Manage Your Connected Profiles
2. You can then click the 'x' next to any Profile to remove it, or the '+' next to any available Profile to add it
Note: If you remove a Profile, you'll see a pop-up confirmation like the one below confirming that you'll no longer be able to send or receive messages within SmarterQueue. Your existing messages will still be stored for 30 days. Though you may remove a Profile from Inbox, it will still be connected to SmarterQueue for publishing and analytics.
3. You may need to re-connect your Profiles if ever they become disconnected. If this happens you may see the following error on a particular conversation thread:
Or this note on a conversation thread:
Or this 'Profile Disconnected' error inside of the Manage Social Profiles page:
Or this indication that your Profile is disconnected from the Profile selector:
4. To re-connect your Profile, click the green arrows button on the 'Manage Social Profiles' page then follow the prompts in the pop-ups that appear for the particular Profile. For more information on what this looks like for Facebook, check out this helpful article on re-authorizing your Business Integrations.
Common Questions
How can I send an image, GIF, or video in my response?
At the moment, while you can view and receive media, you can only send text replies. If you'd also like the ability to send media, get in touch and let us know your feedback!