The chatbot scene on the Kik Messenger app (or Kik), places heavily toward entertainment. With an audience included primarily of teenagers and young adults, the object, content, and overall vibe of Kik skews younger than many platforms. So, if you’re building a bot that targets a younger demographic, this platform could be just the place to deploy it.
How does a Kik chatbot work?
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When a Kik Messenger App user sends a message to your chatbot, their messages go from their device – the phone or tablet running the app – to Kik’s servers. Kik’s Messenger App server infrastructure handles tasks like login and message management. Kik then sends the message via REST to your chatbot via the webhook you created once you configured your bot.
That webhook we mentioned earlier? That’s your bot’s address on the internet. It’s the bot’s “point of entry” for messages. The bot can process the message, formulate a reply, then send it back to Kik.
Who can build a chatbot?
If you’re planning on crafting and deploying your own chatbot, then typically you’re getting to need programming skills and knowledge. If you’re not a coder, read on – we’ve listed some links to talk agencies that will assist you to build Kik bot.
You’ll also need a place to host your chatbot.
Because Kik’s chat infrastructure is RESTful, you’ll develop your bot in any language you wish, as long because it has support or libraries available which will request or get / post data to internet web servers. This includes extremely popular languages like Python or node.js. We even have bot development SDKs for these languages which will help speed up the event of your bot.
Where does a chatbot run?
You’ll also need somewhere for the bot to run – in any case, it’s a program. For development purposes, this will be your own Mac or PC, if Kik can see your webhook.
Additionally, many chatbots are hosted in the cloud. Services like Heroku, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud Platform are cost-effective ways to deploy a chatbot, without having to stress about managing an actual physical server.
How do I get started?
Here are a few steps to get started with your first Kik bot. You can even use Kik usernames suggestions to name your bot.
Step 1: Give your bot a purpose.
Before writing the primary line of code (or using one among the chat companies listed below), decide what you would like your bot to try to. Will it be a trivia bot? Choose your own adventure? Will it be a utility? Perhaps a reminder bot or something which will help others?
Step 2: Give your bot a personality.
What will interacting with the bot be like? Will this be a laid-back, cool bot? Or will it be professional and serious? Who will your bot be talking to? Sit down and compute your bot’s personality, its purpose, and therefore the audience.
Step 3: compute how your bot will work.
Once you’ve got a thought of what your bot goes to be like, you’ll want to style the interactions, or chat flows, that the bot will have with its users. Think of it as kind of a script for the bot – or a roadmap to navigate the bot’s functionality.
We’ve published an excellent article on the way to build an excellent bot – it’s recommended reading for anyone who’s building a chatbot, no matter the platform. Be sure to see out other bots also and choose what is going to work (and won’t work) for your bot. Pay special attention to why the bot is popular and the way it interacts with users.
Step 4: Get to know the platform.
You can’t build a house without understanding what tools are available to you. Explore the chat platform and learn what sorts of messages you’ll send and receive, and the way they will be used.
We have many tools to get you acquainted with the platform easily. Review the API documentation also – that’s where you’ll learn not only about the message types but also what rules got to be followed for the bot to function properly.
Step 5: Get to know the code.
We’ve put together a great “How to Get Started” sample code package and have published it as open source, so anyone with Python programming experience and a desire to develop their own Kik bot can hit the ground running.
The README file on the GitHub repo has detailed instructions on the way to found out your chatbot. You’re welcome to clone the repo and use it as your start line in building a Kik chatbot.
Do I really need to build program?
No! There are many chat agencies that concentrate on building chatbots for people. Everything in this post would still apply. The rules for building a tremendous chatbot experience are not any different when working with a talk agency.
A few agencies that do exceptional work with Kik are Automat.ai, imperson, Massively, and Sequel.
- The benefits of using a chat agency are:
- They take care of the technology behind the bot.
- They let you concentrate on the bot experience.
- They can usually target multiple chat platforms simultaneously.
We hope that after reading this post, you’ll be well on your way to launching your own chatbot – one that will become a source of fun and delight for Kik users.
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