How to handle enquiries that come in through social media
Businesses spend months trying to be seen and then lose the people who respond. Direct messages and comments are where small businesses leak the most work, and unlike reach, it is entirely within your control.
Speed is most of it
Someone messaging you on a Tuesday evening is not committed to you. They are comparing, usually across two or three businesses at once, and the ordering effect is brutal: whoever replies first with something useful tends to get the job, and it is frequently not the cheapest.
The reason is simple. A fast reply is the first evidence of what dealing with you will be like. Someone who answers within the hour reads as someone who turns up when they say they will — and that is the actual worry, more often than price.
You cannot always be fast. You can nearly always be faster than "when I next open the app", which for most businesses is the day after.
Set up the boring plumbing once
- Turn on notifications for messages specifically, and off for likes. Otherwise the one alert that is worth money is buried under fifty that are not.
- Know where messages land. Facebook and Instagram messages can arrive in more than one place, and message requests from people who do not follow you sit in a separate folder that businesses routinely never open. Check it — new customers are by definition not followers.
- Write an away message that is honest. "Thanks — I'm on jobs until 5, I'll reply this evening" holds someone far better than silence, and better than a cheerful auto-reply that promises an hour you will not meet.
- Pin the answer to the question you get most in your bio or a saved reply, so the hundredth time costs you nothing.
The two questions to ask first
Most enquiries arrive incomplete — "how much for a kitchen?" — and the temptation is either to guess a price or to send a list of questions. Both lose people. Guessing produces a number you have to walk back later; a questionnaire feels like work.
Ask the two things you genuinely cannot proceed without. For most businesses that is where and when: the postcode or area, and the rough timeframe. Both are effortless to answer, both immediately tell you whether this is a real job, and asking exactly two makes replying feel easy rather than like an application.
Give something back in the same message — a range, a typical figure, the thing that usually decides it. A reply that only asks takes; a reply that answers and asks earns the next one.
Comments are enquiries too
"How much?" under a post is a lead, and it is also a public moment. Handle both halves:
- Reply publicly, briefly. Everyone else reading the comments learns you answer people. That is worth more than the individual conversation.
- Do not quote in public. A number without context invites comparison against jobs that were not yours, and it becomes the price you are held to.
- Move it. "Sent you a message" — then actually send it, rather than waiting for them to come to you.
The most common mistake is doing the reverse: replying only in a DM and leaving the public comment hanging, so every future reader sees a question you appear to have ignored.
Get it off the platform, politely
Social inboxes are poor places to run a business. They lack any record, threads get buried, and nothing connects to your diary. Once the enquiry is real, move it somewhere you can work: a phone call, an email, or a booking link.
Do it by making it easier rather than by asking them to do more. "Easiest thing is to grab a slot here, takes a minute" moves people. "Please email us at…" is a task, and a proportion will not bother.
Follow up once
People go quiet because they got busy far more often than because they chose someone else. One short follow-up a few days later — no pressure, no guilt, just still available — recovers a meaningful share of conversations that had simply stalled.
Once. A second and third chase converts almost nobody and costs you the goodwill you were building.
Keep a note of where they came from
You do not need software. A word in your diary next to each job — Instagram, Google, recommendation — is enough that in three months you know which effort is producing conversations and which is producing applause. That single habit answers more marketing questions than any dashboard, and it costs nothing to start today.
How Soclo approaches it
Where the enquiry ends up matters as much as where it starts. A booking or payment link can sit in your posts and on your site, so a message can turn into a confirmed slot without a chain of back-and-forth — and the money lands in your account rather than being held.
Read the payments guide →The bottom line
Turn on message notifications, open the requests folder, reply fast with an answer and exactly two questions, handle public comments publicly and prices privately, then move it to a call or a booking link and follow up once. None of it is clever, and it recovers more work than any change to what you post. See also getting customers to book online and responding to a bad review.