Conversation starters, also known as ice breakers, are a key feature in Instagram that makes it easier for businesses to engage with new users.
In Manychat, we call them conversation starters, and they play a crucial role in guiding users to interact with your account before an initial conversation has taken place. By offering pre-set questions or prompts, conversation starters help remove the barrier of "what should I say?" and encourage users to engage with your business.
In this article, we'll explore how conversation starters work, why they’re essential for customer interaction, and how you can set them up in Manychat to optimize your Instagram strategy.
How to set up conversation starters
In your Manychat account, navigate to Settings > Instagram > Conversation starters:
In this section, click the + Add question button to configure your conversation starters:
When clicking, a new block will appear where you can enter the title of your conversation starter and select the corresponding automation to trigger or create a brand new one:
After setting up all your conversation starters and selecting the corresponding automations, you can preview their appearance on the right side:
If you are satisfied with the setup, activate the toggle in the upper right corner to enable them, and then click Publish, as illustrated in the screenshot below:
Here's how conversation starters will appear for your followers:
You can also configure conversation starters for Instagram by navigating to Automations > Basic.
Known limitations
Due to Meta's current limitations, if a user doesn’t have an ongoing conversation with your account, the Instagram ref URL trigger will only work if conversation starters are set up for your Instagram account. For users who have already interacted with your Instagram account in DMs and have an ongoing conversation, the ref URL trigger will work as expected.
Conversation starters will appear on the user's side only when there is no active conversation between the user and your Instagram business account.