I tried Instagram automation (so you don’t have to): experiment

Have you ever been seduced by the elusive unicorn of Instagram automation?

We cannot blame you. Instagram automation software sites paint a beautiful picture of your phone organically exploding with likes and comments. Your social networks scale easily while you sit back and relax.

Brands like Nike, NASA, and everyone running Obama’s social media are begging you for advice.

And, oh, who is that in your DMs? Taika Waititi and Dodge Cat asking for a sequel? Wow, that’s everything you dreamed of, isn’t it?

Wrong.

I tried this and not only did Doja Cat not respond to any of my messages, but I also lost time, money and some dignity.

Not everything is lost; There are some really useful Instagram automation tools out there. We will return to them at the end of this article. But first, here’s what happened when I tried to automate Instagram.

What is Instagram automation?

To be clear, the type of Instagram automation we’re discussing is bots that like posts, follow accounts, and comment on your behalf.

Ideally, you train your bots to sound and act like you. These bots then go out and find accounts they think you’ll like. They interact with them using the options you have set up in advance, hopefully in a natural way.

The idea is that by interacting with other accounts, those accounts will expand and interact with you. This way you will build followers with real people using a bot to get the job done.

But just like friends in real life, you can’t use a robot to build relationships for you. Wall-E types except, of course. It’s impersonal and people tend to understand when a bot is pretending to be human and people hate it.

And when people on Instagram hate something, Instagram tends to hate it too, and bans follow quickly. They want their real users to enjoy spending as much time on the app as possible, so they take their social media tricks pretty seriously.

Instagram automation is one of those annoying black hat techniques, like the engagement modules we tried, and spoiler alert, they failed. This corresponds to buying Instagram followers. We tried that too, and we were left with inflated followers, zero engagement, and a long list of clearly fake followers.

What is NOT Instagram automation?

Let me be very clear: there are great, legitimate Instagram automation tools and software out there. They do the groundwork for you, allowing you to focus on tactics that can truly scale your social efforts, such as creating content your followers want to see.

In the context of this article, we are discussing Instagram automation techniques that are black hat tactics. The legitimate tools we know and love do not fall under this umbrella. At the end of this article, we have listed a few of our favorite tools and programs.

What Happened When I Tried Instagram Automation

Now that we understand what “Instagram automation” means, we can get to the point.

I started with what you probably did to get here – I googled “Instagram automation”. I settled on Plixi, one of the first advertised Instagram automation offerings on Google. This seemed like a good place to start.

Experiment 1

Step 1: Register

Registration was quick and easy. I linked my Instagram account and entered my credit card information. I used an old account that only had 51 followers so the only way was up!

Plixi’s homepage boasted of having a “patented”model. Basically, they crawl Instagram and use machine learning to find and interact with like-minded accounts, engage with them, and reward followers.

Step 2: Growth Settings

After signing up, Plixi asked me to set my growth options. The free (for 24 hours before you have to pay $49 per month) version lets you choose “slow”for your subscriber growth. It’s slow.

I added “accounts like mine”so that Plixi can target its followers. It was a little tricky since the account I was using – Scholar Collars – was a stupid clothing line that I launched at the start of the pandemic.

What are Scholar Collars, you ask? I created collared shirts for those Zoom meetings at the last minute, oh my god I’m still wearing pajamas.

You can leave it in your desk drawer and then wear it under a T-shirt or sweater for an instant professional upgrade. On Zoom, you can only see your neck and shoulders, which is why other meeting participants think you’re dressed in chic, business casual attire.

As you can see, it wasn’t easy to find similar accounts, so I added @Zoom.

There were several other options to set up my account for success, but they were all protected by the Pro account.

Step 3: Start

I clicked the “Start Growth”button and Plixi started getting me new followers. I had one for the first 2 minutes – a crypto app account.

Plixi also told me on my activity bar that they “reached 9 users based on @zoom”, though it’s not clear what that actually means. As far as I could tell, they didn’t contact nine users.

Step 4: Watch My Followers Grow

After 24 hours, I had eight more followers, which increased my number from 51 to 59. The next day, my number of followers rose to 100. Within a week, my number of followers rose to 245, which is quite normal – it was not so cheap and easy, as well as other ways to buy followers. But the accounts looked legit and growth was slow enough that Instagram didn’t seem to be keen on tagging my account.

But now I had 245 followers and only seven likes on one of my photos. And no activity from my own account. I got the impression that Plixi would also like to comment on my account. This is wrong.

Growth was fine and all, but what’s the real point? For $50, I didn’t have any activity other than an increase in subscribers. And since Plixi didn’t interact with other accounts, I couldn’t be sure where the followers were coming from, but it wasn’t from organic interaction.

So, Plixi was a disappointment. But, like any good researcher, I did a second experiment.

Experiment #2,

Step 1: Find an Instagram comment bot

After Plixi, I wanted to focus my efforts on interaction automation. Naturally, I googled “Instagram comment bot and automatic Instagram likes”.

I found one that sends DM automatically. Yes. Somehow it seemed too personal. And another one who promised me that this is a real person, who, if you read the do’s and don’ts of our chatbot, you know that a chatbot is not allowed.

I thought Instaswift was the one for me – and they advertised a free trial of an Instagram-like bot. Sales.

Step 2: Try the Instagram bot for free

Free Instagram bot gave 10 to 15 free likes on your last 3 uploaded photos. When I tried this I ran into an error message. Difficult start with Instaswift.

Source: Instaswift

Step 3: Pay for it

A week of Instaswift with 3-4 comments costs $15, so despite the frustration of the free trial, we’re still moving forward. Maybe they treat paying customers a little better.

Step 4: Post a photo

You have to post a new photo for it to work, and the one I chose with my friend’s cat Gus got 110 likes and four comments. The spike in likes would have looked fake if I hadn’t run a follower campaign first. Now it looks fake, only if you look closely.

I have decided to cancel my subscription as it auto-renews every week.

Now I just had to find a bot to comment from my account.

Experiment 3

Step 1: Find a comment bot

For the third experiment, I tried PhantomBuster. He promised to publish comments from my account automatically.

In addition, he promised free Instagram automation with a 14-day trial. Sales.

Step 2: Sign up and get started

PhantomBuster uses cookies to log into your account in order to comment on your behalf. Once I sorted it out, he asked me to provide a spreadsheet with post URLs and sample comments.

I then sent the Phantom Buster to “go away”and leaned back in my chair.

Step 3. Check your results.

The bot automatically commented on three posts. But it was the three account URLs and comments that I added to the spreadsheet. It would take me less time to comment on the posts myself.

If it wasn’t for a free trial, I’d be upset that PhantomBuster billed me for something I could have done myself.

Instagram Automation Lessons

Instagram automation is not a secret path to Instagram popularity or even more engagement. For me it turned out to be a waste of time and money.

There is no such thing as a legitimate, secure Instagram automation service.

As authors Paige Cooper and Evan LePage found out in this experiment, marketing and engagement automation on Instagram is not.

Paige Cooper tried three different sites: InstaRocket, Instamber and Ektor.io. She described her experiment as “shockingly ineffective”after gaining and losing fewer than ten followers. However, Paige ended up with some comments, specifically “Why did you buy followers”and “You don’t get many likes.”

Evan LePage used the now defunct Instagress to get 250 followers in 3 days. He reported:

“I [automatically] commented “your photos > my photos” on a selfie of a boy who was clearly in high school. In fact, his account consisted of only four photos, three of which were selfies. I felt awkward. A teenager told me I was being modest.”

Yes.

And as for me, the experience was a lunch bag disappointment. Yes, I got some new followers and some comments. But ultimately, the followers weren’t attuned to my brand and comments.

It is impossible to legally, efficiently and safely automate Instagram.

Don’t waste time searching and setting up

One of the biggest frustrations I found was that finding “legitimate”(aka apps that didn’t look too sketchy) automation brands took time and effort. Then setting each one up to work with my Instagram account and verifying them all took time and effort too.

If I had spent the same amount of time just working on a social media strategy, I would be in a much better position now.

Legitimately Useful Instagram Automation Tools

Now for the good part. All hope is not lost when it comes to useful Instagram automation tools. Like most things in life, there is no magic wand you can wave to get what you want. But there are magic wands that can make your work day a little easier.

Hootsuite planning software

The scheduling software lets you schedule your Instagram posts ahead of time so you don’t have to scramble for a day. Hootsuite’s scheduling features are a dream come true for busy content creators and marketers – and the key to saving you time on your social media marketing efforts.

Analytics Hootsuite

Instagram’s analytics and metrics tools can automate reports for you so you can see what’s working and what’s not and easily get reports for clients or managers that show results across all your social media platforms. We’re obviously a little biased, but we love Hootsuite Analytics, and social media managers too.

heyday

Chatbots for Instagram can make your chores easier with FAQs, customer support, and sales—you just need to find someone you can trust. We love Heyday so much that we became partners with them.

Heyday lets you manage all of your customer inquiries from a single dashboard, so your Instagram private messages are easy to check. And it automates messages for you, such as FAQs.

Source: Rise

Hootsuite Social Listening Tools

Social listening and hashtag monitoring tools can crawl for keywords important to your brand. You can search for relevant topics, see who says what, and then comment.