Nowadays, the presence of Instagram bots is getting trendier. This term may sound fishy or scam since this is not that familiar. Digital marketers and professionals are making the most of Instagram to leverage their ventures. Despite some issues it has, Instagram bots are making a name in bringing the best of the Instagram platform.
A good and legitimate Instagram bot automates the interactions you have to appear more visible on the activity feed. Moreover, it helps increase the number of followers, profile visits, and how many times an account has checked. With these, an Instagram bot can save you time while continuously gaining your popularity.
Are you getting intrigued about the concept of an Instagram bot? Let this article be your ultimate guide in knowing the Instagram bot and how it work.
Table of Contents
What is an Instagram Bot?
Generally, a bot is software that helps you as a network user in performing particular tasks. Some of these bots are performing single tasks, while some are said to multi-purposive.
From this concept, Instagram bots are designed to help you do actions on Instagram via automation. Tasks like liking, commenting, and following other Instagram accounts are responsibilities by an Instagram bot. Besides helping you save time and effort, Instagram bots can do other tasks like plugging in parameters, identifying target accounts, and setting specific hashtags.
Features of Instagram Bots
Hashtag Generator
Hashtags generators are a big help in making sure your hashtags will be appealing to your audience. It can also help you save time in pondering the right hashtag for your product or service.
This feature can be maximized in various online activities like discussions, forums, contests, and events. With this, it can help you attract more customers.
Auto Like and Follow
Instagram already establishes itself as one of the frequently-followed social media platforms nowadays. As millions of messages are exchanged in this network, there is a need for your brand to acquire more followers and engagements.
If you only have a few followers at this time, the Auto Like and Auto Follow are the two tools you will need.
Like in other social media networks, you had more followers creates a perception that your posts are valuable and worth checking out.
Meanwhile, more and visible engagements can encourage other Instagram users to follow and even participate in the post by commenting.
Auto Unfollow
While following other Instagram, users can be a good strategy, “following too much” can also be a recipe for disaster to your brand. It can blow up your feed and make you sound less authentic.
Auto Unfollow is the best tool if you do not want your followers to leave your brand.
Auto Direct Message (DM)
Instagram activities like commenting and liking posts, sending a personalized message, and answering private inquiries are great ways to gain and engage with your Instagram followers.
Everyone appreciates a direct connection, and this is something that can be maximized. However, answering every message is another challenging work to do. This is when Auto DM’s come to the rescue. In fact, sending answers to inquiries and messages is the most popular bot task from Instagram.
What are the Advantages of Using Instagram Bots?
Basically, we mentioned that Instagram bots could save us from consuming time doing particular tasks, just like the other bots. Aside from that, here are the things that you can benefit from using this software, especially in your business.
Regular posting has always been one of the winning factors of your dominating competitors. Fortunately, scheduled posting became available on Instagram.
Read: How To Sell More On Instagram
Safety and security
When taken with precaution and responsibility, you can set up your bot to do exactly what you want it to do. It’s generally a safe and secure way to automate some of your Instagram posts.
Accurate statistical figures
If you are a business professional, statistics are very vital for you. Fortunately, Instagram bots can provide those figures that you will need for your brand.
With its statistics, you can determine if you have to change, improve, or retain your digital marketing tactics. It will be an essential factor between your profit or loss.
Technical and Marketing Support
Like other digital tools and features, Instagram bots are not perfect. There will be instances that it may not work well. When these things happen, technical support is always available to handle your concerns any time of the day.
Some Risks of Using Instagram Bots
Meanwhile, here are some of the issues and risks you have to watch for when using Instagram bots, especially for the business.
Instagram bots can cause awkward scenarios
Since bots are bots, its task doesn’t include reading the context of a post or comment. They will post a comment. This limitation can create insensitivity to your responses, which can make both awkward situations and issues.
Instagram bots lose real engagement to the Instagram community
The real and genuine connection between you and your followers is another disadvantage of using the Instagram bot. Worse, some people can detect comments that don’t come from a real person. Unluckily, this is the other side of Instagram bots-they can decrease your followers too.
Instagram bots can increase the risk of shadow banning
Instagram can sense if your daily activity is something that is “too good to be true.”
Instagram has daily and hourly limits (typically, a user should be 150 likes, 60 comments and 60 follows/unfollows every hour), exceeding this can cause you to become shadow banned.
It means that some of your posts will be invisible to some, if not all, of your followers. Regardless of the hashtags and images you post, this will not stop Instagram from banning it in a particular period of time.
How to tell if Somebody is Using Instagram Bot
This part does not check and assess other brands (especially your competitors) if they are using Instagram bots. Instead, these are some of the red flags that you must evaluate to your brand to ensure that you are using this software responsibly.
- Unexplainable number of accounts following compared to the number of followers
- High engagements but few followers
- Inconsistent number of engagements
- Too many views but few comments’
- The presence of the automated direct message
- Lots of activities
- Too much following but little to no engagements
- Most of the followers have avatar characters or are from strange places somewhere in the world
How to Use Instagram Bot without Getting Banned
As mentioned, being responsible is an essential key to making most software like Instagram bot without disobeying its policies. To keep you guided, here are some of what you can do to enjoy the benefits of these bots
Be focused and get targeted
Choosing to become particular about your targets lessens the chances of creating red flags with the Instagram community.
A good quality Instagram bot has good filters for automated interactions. There are Instagram bots, like the Instazood, that can control some Instagram features, like:
- Accounts- it focuses on a particular account’s followers (can be applied to assess competitors)
- Hashtags- it targets accounts based on specific hashtag posts
- Location- it focuses on accounts on a specific local or geography
- Characteristics- it targets accounts based on a particular profile, like age, gender, and follower counts
- Priorities following the rules all the time
Don’t Try And Abuse the System: You Will Get Banned
Following Instagram’s policy is necessary. If you don’t follow their policies, you can get banned. We are somehow familiar with its term of service, but we also have to know its “unpublished” rules.
Start slow- One red flag for the Instagram team is when an account follows or unfollows thousands of accounts in a single day. It is still better if you decide to slow down on this process. You can periodically increase this activity once you gain more followers and engagements.
If you do things that normal people won’t do, you will get banned.
Follow who’s relevant for your brand- Never aim to follow without any relation or relevance to your brand. Instead, be mindful and target accounts with hashtags and content that can be relatable to your brand.
Check the activity of the accounts you’ll plan to follow- Make the most of your account’s automation filters to follow regularly active accounts. Also, check those with a certain number of posts and followers (and following) on their pages.
Build a Brand. There are some things your bot can’t do.
Be sure to make your presence be known- Do not rely too much on Instagram bots to do this. Another cause of being banned is when you become dependent on automation to do the job for you.
It’s still better to log in to your account and participate by responding and liking other followers’ comments.
Focus on creating the best content- Always aim for the best quality content on a regular basis.
Some Alternatives from Using and Maximizing Instagram Bots
It’s quite understandable if you are somehow uncomfortable in using the Instagram bot.
Fortunately, there are different ways that you can do to make sure the success of your brand in the Instagram community.
Hire a social media manager or virtual assistant
It may sound more expensive, but a virtual assistant or social media manager can save you in various ways.
They can provide reliable and genuine engagements to the brand followers on your behalf. This can minimize the chances of having awkward scenarios since the comments and messages are relatable to the post.
Read: Outsourcing Your Social Media: Build Systems For More Profits
Do it yourself
We already mentioned that even if Instagram bots are available, it is still better to set some time to do some of the tasks in your brand’s Instagram account.
Time management is a crucial key to become successful in doing this. Try to do the most important parts like content creation on your platform.
Give your audience a face. They want to see who you are and what you stand for.
Maximize the Instagram advertisements (ads)
Like other social media platforms, Instagram ads can help your brand be noticeable. Compared to other strategies, this is much cheaper. Yet, it can easily reach your audience and get more engagements too.
Aim for quality, not for quantity
While Instagram bots can increase your followers faster, we all know that it is not authentic.
Frequently-Asked Questions
If I prefer not to use an Instagram bot, how can I still gain more followers?
Here are some ideas of how to attract followers, especially if you are getting started in this social media platform:
- Posting high-quality content related to the brand
- Posting on a regular and consistent basis
- Using relevant hashtags, especially those that are relevant to the brand, location, and content
- Genuine engagement and interaction with followers
- Faster responses
What are these Instagram ads?
Instagram ads are the advertisement that you can run if you have a Business account. Nowadays, there are various ads that you can freely share on this network, like Stories Ads, Photo Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, and Collection Ads.
There are slight differences from these advertisements, depending on the purpose that it strives to achieve.
What should I post on my Instagram account to gain followers?
Actually, there is no universal or definite answer to this question. It depends on the goals you want to achieve. Take into considerations your audience, competitors, and marketing strategy, there are no specific rules on what to post.
Instagram bots and other computerization instruments may be acceptable from the start for individuals who are new to online media promoting. Be that as it may, utilizing these robotization instruments can damage your image and Instagram account over the long haul.
Doing your online media advertising physically is as yet the ideal way to improve your Instagram following since it won’t put your image and Instagram account in danger. You can utilize the bot options referenced above to build your Instagram following securely and naturally.
