ManyChat is a powerful tool for helping you turn social media engagement into sales of your digital products.

It can automate conversations with your audience, respond to messages and comments, capture leads, and guide potential customers towards your offers - without you having to manually respond to every interaction.

For digital product sellers, this means you can use ManyChat to start conversations, build relationships, grow your audience, and guide interested people towards the right product or offer - helping you turn more of your social media attention into potential customers and sales.

This beginner-friendly guide will show you how to get started with ManyChat, connect it to your Instagram account, and begin using automation to help promote and sell your digital products.

Start by creating your ManyChat account

ManyChat currently offers a Free plan, which is useful if you're just getting started and want to experiment with automation before deciding whether you need more advanced features. The Free plan currently supports up to two channels and up to four live automations.

Follow the on-screen instructions to create your account.

Once you've created your ManyChat account, you'll need to connect the Instagram account you want to use.

Important: Your Instagram account needs to be a Professional account — either Business or Creator. Personal Instagram accounts can't be connected to ManyChat.

If you're creating your ManyChat account for the first time:

1. Choose Instagram when asked which channel you'd like to start with.

2. Choose whether you'd like to sign up using Facebook or Google.

3. Follow the on-screen instructions.

4. Give ManyChat the permissions it requests.

5. Select the Instagram account you want to connect.

6. Complete the connection.

If you've already created your ManyChat account, you can connect Instagram by going to Settings → Instagram → Connect.

Now for the fun part!

An automation tells ManyChat what to do when someone takes a particular action.

For example, you could create an automation that:

💬 Responds when someone comments on one of your posts

📩 Sends them a message automatically

🔗 Gives them a link to your digital product

🎁 Sends them a link to a free resource

For your first automation, keep it simple.

You don't need to build a complicated sequence with lots of messages. Start with one useful action that solves a problem for your audience.

One of the most useful ways to introduce yourself to ManyChat is with a comment-to-DM automation.

The idea is simple:

Someone comments on your post → ManyChat sends them a DM → You provide something useful → You can then direct them to your offer.

For example, imagine you create a post about starting a digital product business and tell people:

Comment "START" and I'll send you the details.

ManyChat can then automatically respond to that comment and start a conversation with the person.

You could send a message such as:

Hey! 👋 Thanks for commenting START. Here's the information I promised you: [LINK]

The exact options available to you may depend on your ManyChat plan and the channel you're using, so follow the options shown in your account.

Once you've created your automation, you can include a link to wherever you want your audience to go next.

This could be:

🌱 Your digital product

🎁 A free download

📧 Your email list

🛍️ Your digital store

📖 A sales page

The important thing is to give people a clear next step.

Don't send someone through five different links and expect them to figure it out. Keep the journey simple:

Content → Conversation → Offer

Before sending people into your automation, test it yourself.

Check that:

✅ The automation triggers correctly

✅ The message makes sense

✅ Your links work

✅ The customer reaches the correct page

✅ Everything looks good on mobile

It's much better to discover a broken link yourself than have your first potential customer discover it for you!

Once you've tested your first automation, start thinking about where automation could genuinely help your business.

You could use ManyChat to:

✔ Answer common questions

✔ Respond to comments

✔ Start conversations with followers

✔ Share useful resources

✔ Direct people towards your digital products

✔ Create simple lead-generation campaigns

Remember, automation shouldn't replace genuine interaction.

Use it to handle the repetitive first step, then step in personally when a conversation needs a human touch.

You don't need dozens of complicated automations to get started with ManyChat.

Start with one useful automation, learn how it works, and build from there.

The goal isn't to automate everything.

It's to use automation to save time, create better conversations and make it easier for the right people to discover what you have to offer.

🚀 Ready to try ManyChat?