How TechCrunch uses Facebook Messenger to boost its audience

Emmanuel Quartey of Chatbots Magazine looks at how TechCrunch uses Facebook Messenger’s chatbot to get people to read its articles.

Quartey writes, “I like TechCrunch, but after I stopped visiting the site daily, the number of TechCrunch articles I read plummeted. I now read TechCrunch articles when they come to me in the form of a link on Twitter or an email newsletter, so having the articles sent to me each morning has been a great way to get me re-engaged without requiring me to download an entire app or subscribing to yet another email newsletter.

“TechCrunch articles sent to my phone’s lockscreen via push notification + Instant Articles = Reading a lot more TechCrunch

“I’ve already read more TechCrunch posts in 2 days than I read all of last week. I suspect this is the case with many people who activate the bot. I wasn’t surprised to read a TechCrunch rep saying:

Since launching, we’ve seen tremendous growth in active user sessions. Without sharing too much data, I can say that within a few months I expect it to rival the current monthly session numbers we’re getting from our TechCrunch app.

“I should mention that while some of TechCrunch’s articles were in the Instant Article format, many weren’t. I wonder why they don’t set all of them to be Instant Articles.

“UPDATE: Travis Bernard (TechCrunch’s Director of Audience Development) replied with the following helpful context:

“Almost all of our articles are in Instant Article format. the only ones that aren’t are ones that have formatting issues like a huge feature piece. Also, old articles aren’t instant.”

Read more here.