Create good chat service content

Neelke Stadler Updated by Neelke Stadler

Creating delightful content for a chat service is, in many ways, similar to creating useful, engaging web content. But there are also significant differences. 

When it comes to writing for any digital medium, whether it be a website, newsletter or social-media platform, seasoned web writers will tell you the following:

  • Your writing should be quite informal and conversational, as the internet is made for two-way communication. This also means you should aim to stimulate conversation.
  • Because it’s harder to read on a screen than on paper, every word should count. Make sentences short, punchy and use active instead of passive voice. Remove any unnecessary words.
  • Make your content easy to scan. Use sub-headings, bold text, short paragraphs and bullet points where it makes sense.
  • Add multimedia elements such as videos and audio clips to bring your content to life. 
  • Show rather than tell. Always ask yourself: Will an infographic, photo or illustration tell the story or relate the facts better than text?
  • Share information that users find either very useful or highly entertaining. Your aim should always be to turn them into repeat users.

All the above points also apply to the content you’ll be creating for your chat service. But there are a few other considerations.

Give your chat service a personality

When users start using your chat service, many of them won’t be chatting directly to the coaches on your team. They’ll simply consume the content you’ve created for them. For this reason, it’s essential to make your preloaded messages as human as possible. The user must feel like they’re chatting to a real person and not merely a bot. Get it right, and your users will return, increase the time they spend using the service, and participate in conversations that could have a really positive impact on them.

A few tips:

  • Don’t copy your existing content verbatim. Transform your content into a conversation, keeping in mind that your chatbot is representing your organisation as a human.
  • Think about the tone of your conversations. Do you want to sound casual, serious, friendly or caring? Develop a personality for your chatbot and write your content accordingly.
  • Don’t forget that your conversations should lead to certain behaviours. Make sure your chatbot’s personality doesn’t distract your user from reaching the critical goals you’ve set for them.

Plan your content in advance

Planning your re-engagement strategies and messages ahead of time is crucial, as you’ll aim to respond to your users as quickly as possible. Remember, if you don’t respond to a user within 24 hours, you’ll have to send a paid-for, pre-approved message template.

Consider the following:

  • Your users will make mistakes in typing their messages. Prepare follow-up questions and error messages in advance so that you can help your users get to the information they require.
  • Plan to add additional content and update existing content as your chat service grows. Your users will ask questions you don’t expect and demand more content if you do a good job. 

Consider the structure of your content

The flow of your content requires careful consideration. The last thing you want to do is leave your user confused and unsure of how to get to the information they need. If they find it too hard to use your service, they might give up and never return.

A few tips:

  • Craft a welcome message that tells your users what the chat service is for.
  • Start each piece of content with the key sentence or message as your users might not read the entire message.
  • Keep your preloaded messages short. If they contain more than 450 characters, users tend to lose interest. 
  • Keep your messages conversational, but still professional and grammatically correct.
  • Split up topics into segments. Instead of sending one long message, divide the piece of content into paragraphs that can be sent at different times.
  • If you need to explain something at length, break the info up into easy-to-understand steps.

Tips for writing FAQs

Setting up several frequently asked questions (FAQs) in advance will make your coaches’ job easy. Here’s how to craft them:

  • Keep your answers as short as possible.
  • Answer the questions in full. Don’t only link to documents or websites.
  • Don’t use jargon. Translate your content into everyday, non-intimidating language that your users will understand.
  • Use images and videos to explain complex ideas, but include some explanatory text too.
  • If the answer to a question is “yes” or “no”, start with this answer and then explain why this is the case.

Multimedia restrictions

Multimedia can be added to your preloaded content, but WhatsApp restricts the size of these files. Take note of the following:

  • Images must be under 5MB. 
  • Documents must be under 100 MB.
  • Videos and audio clips must be under 16MB.

We hope you found this information useful! Enjoy creating the content for your chat service. Get it right, and you’ll create a valuable service that could change lives.

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