Best practice tips
Viber Public Chats are an opportunity to give your followers exclusive content and the latest news and updates on your brand. To set you up for success running your new Public Chat, we've compiled a list of best practices that should serve as inspiration for your team of Public Chat admins. The best Public Chats are the ones that are tailor-made to fit their audience needs and meet brand goals.
Content
As with content planning for any social channel, planning content for Public Chats takes time, effort and consideration.
Create an editorial plan and keep it in a calendar with key dates. Topical content and content that relates to real-life events is easier to promote and make for engaging topics for discussion
Develop broad and simple content themes (per day or week) to help with idea-generation and making sure there's always something to talk about
Prep content in advance to have more control over quality and to maintain flexibility in calendar changes
Curate content from the web. Links, especially YouTube video content, perform very well. Bonus: YouTube video links can be played within the app with the conversation in the Public Chat continues
Always credit content that isn't your own - either by including a link or mentioning the originator by name
Managing participants
Public Chats are most interesting when the conversation is lively and inspired. Your audience will only be compelled to follow along if the participants in the Public Chat are engaged.
Plan ahead for time spent encouraging participants to do their part. Don't underestimate the behind-the-scenes investment to keep participants engaged
Create a private group chat as a backstage setting to the Public Chat. In this "offline" forum, you can update participants on the day's/ week's topics and nudge them to take part in discussion
Use incentives, like prizes, linked to weekly stats as motivation for participants
Define who sends the final message in a conversation if you'd like to close it off neatly or want previous posts to be the first seen by new followers
Conversation flow
Keep the tempo natural. Intervals between messages should reflect regular chat conversation - impromptu discussions are the best for this, but content planned in advance shouldn't be sent so quickly that it feels copied and pasted from a spreadsheet
Avoid a feed of links, photos and other media. The feed should feel conversational, with links and media used every few text messages
Engagement
Post plenty of photos, videos and stickers. Visual content receives more 'likes' than textual content
Use bit.ly to track your links. 'Likes' do not always mean click-throughs
Create quizzes/ polls for followers, asking them to vote by liking
Encourage interaction from followersby asking for a minimum number of 'likes' on a post to lead to an action by you (e.g. "If I get 100 likes on this picture, I'll go skydiving and share the video here")
Post content you want the most engagement on as the last message in a conversation. Leave them there for a few hours or overnight for maximum engagement before moving on to the next topic
Interviews
Hosting guests as participants in your Public Chat is an excellent way to bring new and exciting content into the chat. Your audience can look forward to the added value of a relevant interviewee when following your Public Chat.
Set expectations with the interviewee (e.g. What the interview is about, language guidelines, how long it is expected to take place, things they can and can't share in the chat, etc)
Make sure the interviewee is comfortable with the platform and knows how to post pictures, use stickers, etc
Open a separate, private chat with the interviewee to coach them through the interview if necessary
