How to Automate Facebook

The Page does the job a phone book used to do

A Facebook Page is the one page about a small business that customers reliably read. It carries the opening hours, the phone number, the address, the photos and the last thing the business said out loud.

People treat it as a directory rather than a feed. Somebody hears the name, searches it, and lands on the Page to settle three things: are you open, are you any good, and how do I get hold of you. Those answers come from the details at the top, the Recommendations underneath and whichever button is showing.

Then there is the part a website never had: the Page is also a doorway. People comment under posts, send messages, ask about you in a local group, and leave a recommendation weeks after the job was finished. All of it arrives in the same place, and almost all of it is public.

The comments and messages outrun the person clearing them

Posting is not what a Page costs a business. Keeping up with what arrives is.

The same questions come back every week under every post. How much is it. Are you open Monday. Is that one still available. Every answer exists, and every answer is somewhere else: the booking diary, the price list, the stock screen.

Underneath runs a second stream. Somebody scans the comments for the real question buried under twenty tagged friends. Somebody spots the complaint while it is still one sentence long. Somebody watches a local buy and sell group where a person is asking, right now, for what you sell. Somebody changes the hours before the bank holiday, and most years somebody forgets.

None of it is scheduled, so it gets done in gaps: at the counter, in the van, at half past ten at night.

Facebook

Comments answered, not just hidden The question under this morning's post gets a draft reply carrying today's price or Saturday's free slot, read off the system that holds it.

Recommendations that get a response Every new recommendation, warm or furious, surfaced the day it lands with the customer's history and a suggested reply beside it.

Page details held to the truth Opening hours, holiday closures and the phone number checked against what the rest of the business says, before somebody drives to a locked door.

Moderation Assist can only judge a comment by its shape

A business Page comes with more tools than most of them ever switch on, and an hour spent there is cheaper than anything else on offer.

Meta Business Suite includes Planner, a calendar where posts and stories are written once and scheduled ahead across Facebook and Instagram together. Inbox puts messages and comments in one queue, with automated responses that answer common questions the moment they are asked. Moderation Assist hides comments against criteria you pick: accounts with no profile picture, no friends or followers, or made in the last week, comments carrying links, images or keywords you list, and profanity. Recommendations can be switched on or off for the Page, and Insights reports how each post did.

Set all of that up and two walls are still standing.

The first is that Moderation Assist reads a comment by its shape, not its meaning. It cannot notice that the polite comment on Tuesday is a regular saying their order never turned up.

The second is bigger. An automated response can only say what somebody typed into it in advance. It cannot say yes, there is one left in blue, or Saturday at two has gone but four is free, because those facts live in systems Facebook has never heard of.

Every question on the Page has an answer somewhere in the business

Answering well is less about typing quickly than about having the answer to hand when the message arrives.

The comment asking the price of the jacket in the third photo gets a draft reply with today's price and whether it is still in stock. The eleven o'clock message about Saturday gets one built from the slots that are actually still open. The recommendation left after a job gets a thank you that names the work that was really done, because something read the job sheet first.

The watching matters as much as the answering. A complaint under a three week old post, lifted out and put in front of a person the morning it appears. The local group post asking for a plumber this week, flagged while it is still worth answering. A competitor's page read weekly, so their new offer is not news a month late.

The Page's own details can be held honest too: hours corrected before a holiday, a changed mobile number caught, the seasonal closure still advertised as open.

The line does not move, though. Reading a Page and preparing a reply is safe. Anything that appears in public is permanent enough to wait for a person.

An agent goes and finds the answer first

Every reply has two halves: going to find out, then knowing what to say. Only the second needs somebody who knows your customers.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It reads the comment, the message or the recommendation, opens the diary, the price list or the stock screen that holds the answer, and leaves a reply ready for somebody to send.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. It does not comment on other people's pages or pretend to be a person who is not there. Anything public waits for you.

Each workflow below is already built, and every one lists the screens it opens.