Answering social media messages at a 51-to-200-person training club: a paid inbox open about 4 hours a day, and about $1,560 riding on every prospect who gives up waiting

For the executive who decides

• The customer acts
• The machine acts
• A person decides
• Nothing runs

An illustration built from the posting and the club's published prices: the times are examples, and the member's value and the minutes are estimates.

1The job

Replying to comments and direct messages on the club's social accounts every day, answering prospects' questions, and guiding the interested ones to book a call with the club's team. The same part-time manager also posts to the calendar, edits short video, runs daily stories and reports on performance. A members' strength and conditioning club where members train in "squads" of up to 20 with a dedicated coach, two sessions a week, with about ten clubs in New York, Hoboken and Chicago and more cities planned. About 51 to 200 people. It posted the role on 7 October 2026, remote, on Instagram and TikTok, across its main and Chicago accounts. The number of messages a day is not given; this job assumes about 25.

2The number today

Manage the community: reply to comments and DMs every day, answer prospect questions, and guide interested people to book a call And in the same posting: About 4 hours a day on weekdays and about 2 hours a day on weekends, to keep coverage consistent 7 days a week The pay: "$28–32/hour, depending on experience". That is about 24 hours a week, about $34,900 a year for the whole role at $28. The comments and messages are one of seven duties. At a quarter of the hours, they cost about $8,700 a year, about 96 cents a message.

The bigger number is the prospect who waits. A member pays about $260 a month at the club's standard rate in one city ($295 every four weeks in another). Kept for six months, that is about $1,560. Coverage runs about 4 hours on a weekday and 2 on a weekend day; a question sent outside those hours waits for the next one. If slow replies lose one prospect a month, that is about $18,700 a year. If they lose one a week, about $81,000; treat that as a ceiling.

Estimate. The quarter of the hours, the 25 messages a day, the six months a member stays and the one prospect lost a month are assumed, because the club publishes none of them. A week of its own counts replaces all four.

3The verdict

Hand over the first answer and the booking link. Keep the members and the complaints.

• Hand to the machine: watching both accounts' comments, messages and story replies around the clock; sorting each one (a question the approved answers cover, a prospect, a member, a problem); answering covered questions within minutes, saying it is automated; sending the booking link to prospects and logging each one for the call, with the club and the times they asked about; hiding spam.
• Keep with a person: every member's message; every complaint, public or private; anything about an injury, health or a refund; anything off the approved answers; voice notes and photos; the brand voice on public comments; the sales call itself.
• Not yet: replying in public to a critical comment; messaging anyone who has not written first; following up more than 24 hours after someone's last message (the platform allows only a person to reply after that); quoting any price or offer that is not on the club's own pages.

What the manager is for now: the community. The members' questions, the complaints and the replies that carry the club's voice. The machine answers the same ten questions at 9:41 pm.

4The bill

About $58 a month, with a messaging automation tool that answers comments and messages with AI (Manychat Pro, $29 a month billed annually, one plan for each of the two Instagram accounts). Writing the approved answers and the never-answer list is about a day's work for the manager, once.

Other routes the platform's own free automated replies, which send the same text to everyone and cannot answer what the person wrote. A social inbox with an AI agent: $199 a seat a month, $399 for AI-written replies. A service with people: $450 a month for up to 150 replies on weekdays, or $599 for up to 25 hours. Built from parts: about $6 a month in model use and 20 euros a month for the software that runs the steps, then the build and the upkeep. The person, as today: about $730 a month on this part of the role.

Checking: for the first two weeks, the manager reads every automated reply each morning, about 10 minutes a day. After that, the checking time is not known until it is counted.

Estimate. The $58 assumes one plan per account, at about 750 messages a month; the 10 minutes assume about 25 replies at 20 seconds each.

5Owner and off switch

The head of marketing owns it, because every reply is the club speaking in public and the first thing a prospect hears. The off switch: turn the automation off in the reply tool's settings. Messages wait in the inbox for the manager, as today. It takes under a minute. Try it once in the first week.

6The brief to hand your builder

The job: on both our social accounts, answer comments and messages that our approved answers cover within five minutes, any hour, saying it is automated; send prospects the link to book a call and log each one for the call; hold everything else for our manager.

Today: one part-time manager covers the inbox about 4 hours a weekday and 2 a weekend day, on top of posting, video, stories and reports. Messages outside those hours wait.

Done when: for two weeks, every message gets a first reply within five minutes, or is held for the manager within five minutes; every held message is answered the same day; the manager changes fewer than 1 in 20 automated replies; no member, complaint, health or refund message gets an automated answer; and calls booked from social are counted every week against the baseline.

It may never, on its own: answer a member, a complaint, a health or injury question or a refund; reply in public to a critical comment; message anyone who has not written first, or after 24 hours; quote a price or offer that is not on our pages; or pretend to be a person.

You get from us: the 20 questions we answer most and our answers to them; each club's times and prices from our pages; the never-answer list; 50 recent conversations, messy ones included; admin access to both accounts and the booking calendar.

We own: the accounts, the approved answers, the tool account and the billing.

We get back: each morning, every automated reply from the night before with the message it answered, every held message still waiting, and the calls booked from social.

Ask whoever sets it up	A good answer	A bad answer
What happens to a message it can't answer?	It goes to a held list with an alert, and the manager sees it the same morning, with the conversation so far	"It sends a friendly default reply"
How do you stop it sending the booking link to someone who asked a real question?	It answers the question first, from your approved answers, and sends the link only when they ask about joining	"Every message gets the link. That's the conversion"
What does it do with a voice note, a photo or a complaint?	It sends nothing and holds it for a person	"The AI handles everything"

For the operator who builds and runs it Paid layer

7The working set

• Trigger: a new comment, direct message or story reply on either account, at any hour.
• Steps: receive the event; skip spam (hide it) and the club's own staff; sort the message as covered question, prospect, member, problem or unclear; hold members, problems, health, injury, refund, complaints, voice notes, photos, messages over 100 words and anything unclear for the manager, with an alert; for a covered question, write the reply only from the approved answers, opening with a line that says it is automated, and send it inside the 24-hour window; for a prospect, answer the question first, then ask which club and times suit and send that club's booking link; when a call is booked, log the prospect with the club, the times they asked about and the source; on a public comment, answer covered questions with a short reply that moves the conversation to a direct message, and hold any critical comment.
• Data: one record per message: message ID, account, channel (comment, DM, story reply), received at, sender (prospect, member, unknown), sort, approved answer used, reply as sent, sent at, minutes to first reply, held reason, held at, answered by the manager at, manager's change (none, edited, replaced), booked call (yes or no, club, call time).
• Review step: for the first two weeks, the manager reads every automated reply each morning and answers every held message the same day; after that, 10 automated replies a day. The head of marketing reads 20 conversations a week.
• Alerts: a held message waiting more than 4 hours in coverage time; any held message older than 20 hours (the 24-hour window is closing); a critical public comment; a message from a member sorted as a prospect; a disconnected account; and the wrong-but-green count, the automated replies the manager changed.
• If it breaks: what you see: no automated replies overnight, the same person answered twice, or a member got the prospect script. Check first: both accounts are still connected to the tool; the approved-answers file has not been edited into a broken state; the member list the sorter checks is current. Safe fix: turn the automation off; messages wait for the manager, as today.
• Cost per message: about 8 cents ($58 a month over about 750 messages). Built: about 0.8 cents in model use (about 3,000 tokens in and 200 out a reply on Claude Sonnet 5.5), plus the workflow runner.
• Baseline, before switch-on: one week of: comments and messages a day by account and hour; how many arrive outside coverage hours; minutes to first reply (from the inbox, not memory); the share that are the same questions; the manager's minutes on the inbox (time it, do not ask); and calls booked from social.

Estimate. The cost per message assumes about 25 messages a day and one plan per account. The baseline week replaces both.

Tools by name: Manychat Pro ($29 a month billed annually, $348 a year, Manychat AI, 2,500 active contacts a month; Instagram, Messenger and TikTok among its channels); Meta Business Suite automated replies (free, the same text to everyone); Sprout Social (Standard $199 a seat a month with its Trellis AI agent, Advanced $399 with AI-written replies); community management services ($450 a month for up to 150 replies on two platforms, weekdays; $599 for up to 25 hours); built: the Instagram messaging API, n8n (Starter 20 euros a month billed annually, 2,500 runs), Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2 per million tokens in, $10 out). Meta's rules: 24 hours to reply to a message; a manual reply under the Human Agent tag up to 7 days; say it is automated where the law requires it.