Playbook 2: reply drafts for comments and DMs

What this playbook does

Comments and direct messages are the part of social media that arrives on its own schedule. A few are requests a rule could handle. Most are not: a question about allergens, a compliment, a complaint, a 'do you deliver to my street'. This playbook puts a written reply next to each one, so the person answering starts from a draft and not from a blank box.

Nothing is sent by the drafting itself. The automation is the writing. The sending remains a decision.

Setting it up: what the drafter needs to know

A draft is only as good as what the software was told. Four inputs cover most of it. Keep the facts current: a confident draft built on last year's hours is worse than no draft.

• The facts. Opening hours, prices, locations, booking and delivery details, and the link that goes with each.
• The voice. Two or three replies you wrote and liked, as examples of length and tone.
• The limits. Topics a draft should pass to a person without attempting: refunds, complaints, health questions, anything legal.
• The approver. One named person and a backup.

How it should behave

Read the first few dozen drafts closely and hold them to four expectations.

• It answers the question that was asked, with the right link where one exists.
• It sounds like you at your most helpful, and it stays short.
• It says when it does not know, instead of inventing a price or a policy.
• It waits. A draft stays a draft until someone acts on it.

The approval step

Every draft gets one of three decisions: approve as written, edit and then approve, or discard and write your own. Expect to edit a fair share at first. That share should fall as the facts improve.

Speed matters to the person waiting. Set fixed times to clear the queue, such as opening, mid-afternoon and close, and name who covers days off.

What stays manual

A few kinds of message deserve a reply written from scratch: an upset customer, a safety concern, a request for money back, a journalist. Use the draft only as a note of what was asked.

Agree in advance who takes these. The person clearing the queue at closing time may not be the right one to answer them.

Where Link AI fits

The tool we recommend for this playbook is Link AI by Linkme. Reply drafting is stated outright on Linkme's page: Link AI drafts your replies to comments and DMs, and you approve. The customer care role shows a Social Inbox, with a sample exchange in which someone asks 'How do I get a table for Friday?' and the answer comes back with the right link.

One of Linkme's example prompts is 'Auto-reply to comments'. What that request sends, what it holds for review, and how the agent is given your facts, voice and off-limit topics are details to see live. Try Link AI in a demo with ten real comments from your own account. For who should hold the queue, see the approval steps entry.

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