Yo, what's up? It's yoroomie, and in this video,
I'm going to talk to you about how I built a chatbot in hours.
This is over the weekend.
Launched it and generated thousands of messages via this chatbot.
If you're interested in building your own chatbot, this video is for you.
Let me talk to you a little bit more about why I built this chatbot.
I've been someone that has been reading a lot about chatbots,
in literally--even on Chatbots Magazine.
I've seen BotList's Seth. He's the founder of BotList. He's incredible.
I've seen all of his posts on, you know--I follow him on Facebook and on Twitter and everywhere.
And I see all these chatbots that have been launched on product time.
It was definitely something that I needed to learn more about,
and for me the easiest way to learn something is by immersing myself in that
and by building a side project and doing it.
And my goal was not only learn about chatbots,
but learn about the chatbot ecosystem and the tools that were out there.
I found myself looking on an actual--on a browser window.
and I was looking at some artwork from an artist that I like--
Alec Monopoly.
So you might have seen some of his work.
It's kind of like the monopoly man graffiti street art.
But I'm pretty much obsessed a lot of his work and some other artworks,
so I was like, "Why don't I build a chat bot
for people to discover artists' artwork and purchase all through messenger?"
So I kind of come up with this, like, initial idea,
and just out of, like, the fact that I like artwork
and that would be a cool way to get involved and combine my interest
through this project of a chatbot.
First off, it's like, all right, like, let's just start to Google
and, you know, and look on Product Hunt
and see if there's any kind of art chat bot that's out there.
Well, as I just said Art Chatbot, that's exactly how I came upon the name.
So I immediately went to GoDaddy, and I typed in www.artchatbot.com
and to my surprise, man, it was available.
So I click purchase on that. $9.99. I had the domain name.
Just like with StudioTime, I used a Squarespace logo generator,
which is like a visual kind of logo creation tool,
so I didn't have to use Photoshop.
I didn't have to use Sketch or any sophisticated design tool.
I simply used Squarespace's logo generator to generate the initial logo for Art Chatbot.
So I had the name, domain, and logo.
Now I needed to figure out: how am I actually gonna build this?
So I started researching some tools
and then also joining some of the chatbot developer groups on Facebook,
which I can link down here to some of those
which are a huge resource in a lot of, you know, knowledge sharing going on
But I found Chatfuel.
So Chatfuel is an easy way to create a chatbot,
and it's basically a visual, kind of, chatbot creation platform,
and I started to just see what the other options were,
and I just said okay.
I'm just gonna commit to using chatfuel, learn how to use it.
So I signed up for chatfuel.
Super easy platform to use, by the way.
They actually have templates that--that are on there
so you can get started using a template and modify it towards your needs.
Now, once I created my account through chatfuel,
and the Facebook page for Art Chatbot,
which I needed because that's how people were going to send a message to Art Chatbot,
I just, kind of, started using one of their placeholder templates,
and I just understood from there
chatbots are all about conversation design.
So just like when you road--when you roadmap an app or even a website--
kind of the wire framing process--
you can use that simple process to actually create the chatbot using chatfuel.
So you can think about things like blocks,
and so when someone types an initial message,
you know, this block then goes to a next block,
and you're gonna have different variable blocks
to send them different messages or display other information,
and then all of that together composes this kind of conversational design of the chatbot.
It's really not that complicated.
You know, to be honest, it's probably one of the easiest things I've ever built,
and that's Art Chatbot.
So within about 30 minutes,
I had the initial template in place for Art Chatbot,
and I just started testing, real-time, the messaging on this,
and just started iterating the conversational design of what Art Chatbot would be
and what it actually is now in the stages it is live.
And I'll link down here and screenshot, also, the website that I created
and you can actually test it out yourself
and let me know what you think and give me some feedback on it
I'll, you know, obviously want to improve it.
But you can kind of get a really good idea of that conversation design of Art Chatbot.
So in about 30 minutes to an hour,
I had this initial version of the Art Chatbot actually built.
What I did from there was
I wanted to go ahead and get people to start using this.
What I did was I actually open-sourced most of the build.
In doing that, I started to tweet about what I was doing.
I let people first off know, "Hey, I'm building a side project, Art Chatbot" on Twitter.
I started to join and post in a lot of these groups
for, you know, chatbot developers and chatbot communities on Facebook.
I also shared on my personal Facebook.
I also shared on my Instagram, which I'll link down here.
It's @yoroomie, and then I also Instagramed stories.
And I really showed people what I was doing.
As I was doing that, people were becoming aware of this chatbot project that I was building.
They were giving me feedback, being involved in the process,
and obviously once I had this ready to launch,
some people already knew of what I was doing
and they were aware of it, and they had, kind of, participated in it in some sense in their mind.
So I had some initial first users and an initial traction before I'd even launched.
Keep in mind, this is literally within about the first hour to, you know, two hours.
As I was going through this process
and letting people know what I was doing and sharing more on the project,
I also created a Google Doc where I was going to create a public product roadmap
so people could contribute their feedback and their potential feature requests to this chatbot
all via link and I created a bitly short link to that so I could send that,
you know, on all my social and I could track that,
but I wanted people to be involved in this project
because if they were, then they were going to have some investment in the project
and be more willing to probably share it
and I could build some initial, kind of, traction and momentum as I launched.
So people at this time were aware of what I was doing.
They were giving me some feedback. I was, kind of, taking that feedback.
I was adding it to the Google Doc.
Then at the same time, I was being very open and honest
about how many users, you could say, the chatbot had
and then the amount of messages that it was sending.
So I was sharing the analytics, and that is actually something that is interesting to a lot of people.
What I found out is people want to know, you know,
not only in the process of how you build these things,
but also, like, how do you actually launch these
and how effective are the launches?
Are people messaging it? If so, what are the actual analytics like?
So these--these are things that typically startups don't share as much,
so I was being open and honest and open sourcing most of this,
which was actually its own, kind of, angle of interest
that people started becoming interested in.
So at that time, I had initial chatbot built,
and I had an initial, kind of, community around this that I had created in the first users.
One of the biggest objectives for having a chatbot website
is not only to let people know about what the chatbot is and the functionality
but simply to get people to message it
because once you send a message to a chatbot, that is technically considered a user.
And I'll just use air quotes because that's, you know, loosely defined.
But that is an opt-in. That's considered a user.
And for analytics, that starts the messages that are counted as messages that you send out.
I'll link to it down here, and I'll screenshot with you the current website,
but it is www.artchatbot.com.
But as you can see I just simply have the name, the logo, the tagline.
I have a large button that's the call to action,
then I have a visual image of the Art Chatbot,
and some of the artwork that's displayed,
and then also at the very bottom in the footer,
I do have a link to that open source Google Doc
so people that come to the site can not only see Art Chatbot,
not only send it a message,
but be aware of,
"hey, you can contribute your feedback to Art Chatbot
and you can see the analytics real-time, kind of, open source of this project
and stay up to date and in the loop with this."
I've actually found that there's been thousands of hits to that Google Doc
and a lot of people are very interested in how many messages are being sent too
and contributing to this.
So it's just been a really cool project for me,
and not only have I learned a lot about chatbots--
you know, built out a network of other chatbot developers,
of people that are working on, you know, building chatbot, kind of, tools--
the developer ecosystem--
but also, too, perfecting my process of not only how do I approach side projects, but how do I build them?
How do I market them?
How do I share more information about these projects to people?
And then also learning, what are people interested in, you know, seeing with these side projects?
And really sharing it.
So that's one of the biggest things that I like doing
is just being open and honest
and open sourcing a lot of these side projects and sharing with people.
Hopefully you know a little bit more about Art Chatbot,
how I'm approaching chatbots,
and how I got started building this,
how effective it's been.
I'll link down below to all the tools and resources that I used to build this chatbot.
And hit subscribe,
so that way I can keep making these videos.
And comment below to let me know any questions that you have
on chatbots or anything relevant to this
and also what you want me to make my next video on.
See you.