Auto-DM from comments
Reply automatically when someone comments a keyword on your Facebook or Instagram posts, send them your link by direct message, and see who opens it.
Open Social in the main sidebar, then Automations. An automation watches the comments on one Facebook Page or Instagram account. When someone comments with one of your keywords, Smileline replies to the comment publicly, sends the person your link by direct message, and counts who opens it.
Patient follow-ups and booking messages are a different kind of automation, set up under Settings → Automations — see Automations.
How it works
Someone comments on your post with one of your keywords, for example "link".
Smileline replies under the comment with one of your public replies, and sends the person a private reply: the opening message, with a button.
The person taps the button.
Smileline sends the link message: your message with a button that opens your link.
Meta lets a business send only one private reply to a comment, and nothing more until the person answers. Tapping the button is their answer, which is why the link waits for the tap. The replies usually go out within a minute of the comment, and the link within a minute of the tap.
You can turn the public reply off, and you can leave out the opening message so that the first DM already carries the link. On Instagram the first DM always carries the link for now — see Instagram sends the link straight away.
Before you start
- The Facebook Page or Instagram account must be on Social → Accounts. Pages connected to the Inbox appear there automatically — see Social accounts.
- Its comments must be connected to the Inbox (Facebook comments or Instagram comments) with Meta's messaging permission, which private replies need — see Settings → Channels.
- If you use the opening message, the account's direct messages must be connected too: Messenger DMs for a Facebook Page, Instagram DMs for Instagram. The tap arrives there, and the link message is sent from there.
Go live checks all of this and tells you what's missing.
Set up an automation
Click New automation, give it a name your team will recognise, and choose the Facebook Page or Instagram account.
When someone comments on: choose Any post to answer comments on every post, including ones you publish later, or A specific post and pick one of the account's posts, newest first.
And the comment has: choose Specific words and add your keywords, or Any words to answer every comment — read Any words first.
Reply publicly: write up to 10 replies. Each matched comment gets one of them at random, so the replies under your post don't all read the same. Turn it off to reply by DM only.
Opening message: write the message and its button's label, for example "Tap below and we'll send you the link" with the button "Send me the link".
Then send the link: write the message, the button's label and the link. The link must start with https://.
Only once per person is on unless you turn it off: someone who comments again gets the replies only the first time.
Check the preview of the DMs, click Save, then click Go live and confirm.
A new automation is a draft until it goes live, and a draft can be saved half-finished. Going live needs every part the automation uses to be filled in.
| Field | Limit |
|---|---|
| Name | 120 characters |
| Keywords | 20, each up to 50 characters |
| Public replies | 10, each up to 1,000 characters |
| Opening message and link message text | 640 characters each |
| Link message text on Instagram | 934 bytes, so that the link still fits in Instagram's 1,000 — see Instagram sends the link straight away |
| Button labels | 20 characters |
| Link | 2,000 characters, https:// only |
The link is sent as a short Smileline link that forwards to yours, which is how clicks are counted.
How keywords match
A comment matches when it contains any one of the automation's keywords:
- Whole words only. "link" matches "Link please!" but not "blink" or "links" — add "links" as a keyword of its own to catch both.
- Phrases match when their words appear together and in the same order: "price list" matches "Is there a price list?" but not "list price".
- Capitals, accents and punctuation are ignored. "info" matches "INFO!!", and "información" matches "informacion". Keywords are saved the way they're compared, in lower case without accents: "Información" shows as "informacion" once you click Save.
- Emoji keywords match wherever the emoji appears, even with no space around it: 🦷 matches "yes🦷🦷".
- A comment with no text, such as a photo or a GIF on its own, matches only Any words.
Any words
Any words answers every new top-level comment the automation covers, whatever it says. The editor warns you when you choose it.
With Any words, questions that need a person, complaints, spam and friends tagging each other all get a public reply and a DM. Use it only on a specific post made for it, such as "Comment below and we'll send you our guide", and keep the public replies general: everyone can read them.
Which comments are answered
- Top-level comments only. Replies inside a comment's thread, including replies to your own replies, aren't answered.
- Only comments made after the automation goes live. Comments already on the post are never answered, whatever they say.
- Your own Page's or account's comments are never answered, and editing a comment later to add a keyword doesn't count.
- With Only once per person, each person is answered once per automation. If their earlier comment was skipped, expired or failed (see Activity), a later comment is answered.
- A comment is answered by one automation at most. When several live automations on the account match it, one set to a specific post wins over one set to any post, then keywords win over Any words, then the automation that went live most recently wins.
- A comment deleted before its turn is skipped.
Reconnecting the Page or Instagram account keeps its automations running, and no comment is answered twice. Removing the account from Social → Accounts is different: it stops the account's live automations, as Stop does, and connecting the account again doesn't restart them. Open each one and click Go live.
Meta's rules
- One private reply per comment, within 7 days of the comment. The automation and the Inbox's Private reply share it. If your team has already replied privately to a comment from the Inbox, the automation skips that comment; once the automation has sent its DM, a private reply to the same comment from the Inbox fails.
- Nothing more until the person answers. That's why the link waits for the tap.
Instagram sends the link straight away
On Instagram, the first DM is currently the link message itself, with no button to tap first. Meta documents only plain-text private replies on Instagram, so Smileline sends the link directly until it has confirmed that Instagram accepts a button there. The opening message doesn't apply to Instagram accounts, and the editor says so instead of showing it. Clicks are still counted.
The link goes in the message's text, and Instagram takes 1,000 bytes of text in all. The link message's own text can use up to 934 of them, leaving room for the link. Emoji and accented letters count for more than one byte. Under the text, the editor counts the bytes it uses, and an automation whose text is longer can't go live.
On Facebook, if Meta refuses the button in a private reply, Smileline sends the link in that private reply instead, so the person still gets one message with the link. The comment's activity row notes it.
Busy posts: the reply queue
Smileline answers up to 700 comments an hour on each account, spaced evenly at about one every five seconds. When more people comment at once, their replies queue and go out in order; nothing is dropped. The pace is per account, shared by all of its automations.
- Instagram allows 750 private replies an hour per account; the other 50 are left for your team's own private replies.
- Facebook uses the same pace, so a post that takes off never holds up your team's messages in the Inbox.
A queued reply never times out on Smileline's side. Only Meta's 7 days can expire it, which at 700 an hour takes more than about 117,000 matching comments on one account in a week.
Edit, stop or delete
- Editing a live automation: click Save and the automation is checked again as when it went live. The changes apply to comments that arrive afterwards; comments already matched are answered with the wording they were matched with.
- Stop ends the automation. New comments aren't answered, and replies still waiting in the queue, even ones about to go out, are skipped. Anyone who already has the opening message can still tap its button and gets the link. Stop keeps any changes you haven't saved yet in the editor.
- Go live again to resume. Only comments made after that are answered: the ones made while it was stopped aren't, and neither are the replies Stop skipped.
- Delete draft is for drafts only. Stop an automation that has been live instead: it keeps its activity and results.
Results
| Result | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Runs | Comments the automation picked up, including ones later skipped, expired or failed. |
| Sends | First DMs Meta accepted: sent, delivered or read. |
| Clicks | People who opened the link. Each DM's link counts once however often it's opened, and Meta's link previews don't count. |
| CTR | Clicks divided by sends. |
Results are totals since the automation was created. The list of automations shows each one's runs and CTR.
Activity
Below the editor, the activity lists one row per comment the automation picked up, newest first: who commented, what they wrote, how far it got and the replies sent. Open conversation opens the comment's thread in the Inbox.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Waiting | Waiting for its turn in the reply queue. |
| Waiting for a tap | The opening message went out; waiting for the person to tap its button. |
| Tapped | The person tapped; the link message is on its way. |
| Link sent | The link went out. |
| Skipped | Not answered, with the reason — for example, the automation was stopped, the comment was deleted, or it already had a private reply. |
| Expired | Meta's 7 days ran out before the private reply could go. |
| Failed | Smileline couldn't create the replies after 10 attempts. Click Retry to queue it again. |
A reply Meta didn't accept shows Not delivered in its Inbox thread. Retry it there like any other message — see Retry a failed message. A reply that Stop cancelled says so instead, and can't be retried.
In the Inbox
Everything an automation sends appears in the Inbox with an Auto-DM label, which opens the automation for everyone who can open Social. The public reply and the first DM are in the person's comments thread; their tap and the link message are in their Messenger or Instagram DM thread. A tap on an automation's button doesn't notify your team or mark the conversation unread. If the person writes back, the conversation carries on as a normal DM thread.
Who can do what
- Everyone who can open Social — owners, managers, front desk and analysts — can see the automations and their results.
- Owners and managers create, edit, start, stop and delete automations and retry failed runs. That's the Connect social accounts & configure automations permission in Who can do what.
- The activity shows people's comments, so it also needs View the inbox: owners, managers and front desk see it; analysts don't.
Social insights
See followers, views and engagement for every connected account, and the numbers of every post on it, including posts published directly on the platform.
Outbound campaigns
Message a filtered patient segment once by SMS, email or WhatsApp, or everyone who messaged your Facebook Page or Instagram account in the last 24 hours, with consent checks, scheduling and delivery results.