Ways and methods for efficient Instagram automation

Automation is a valuable ally for any social media marketing plan, including Instagram. This is due to its ability to handle routine tasks such as scheduling, generating reports, and replying to frequently asked questions in direct messages.

Despite the usefulness of automation on Instagram, it is essential to maintain a personal touch in your strategy. Automation can help reduce the burden of monotonous tasks, freeing up your social team to focus on crafting innovative campaigns. To assist you in achieving the optimal balance, we have created a guide that explains what Instagram automation entails, what aspects can be automated, and various tools that can aid you in beginning the process.

Let’s get started.

Can you explain what Instagram automation is?

Instagram automation refers to the use of third-party software to manage your account, carry out tasks and/or interact with users without a human present.

Simply put, Instagram automation tools can be put into two buckets:

Services that efficiently manage your public interactions with users, such as likes and comments.
Tools that automate Instagram behind the scenes, taking care of tasks such as publishing, reporting and analytics

But does Instagram automation make your business look lazy? We say no—but only if you do it right. As with any other tool or strategy, there are pros and cons to weigh in how your team will implement automation.

Here are some pros and cons to help you decide if you want to start automating certain tasks on Instagram.

Pros:

Save time on smaller, tedious tasks. Growing an Instagram presence organically definitely requires a combination of time and strategizing. Instagram automation tools can pick up some of the slack trimming, down time spent on tedious tasks.
Grow your follower count faster. Automation undoubtedly helps you boost your follower count. Simply spending time on the platform and interacting with accounts in any way, shape or form will set you up for more engagement by default.
Uncover important insights about your audience. There’s no doubt that automation tools help you learn more about your target audience. From breaking down what hashtags people use to suggesting accounts to follow, bots encourage you to take a deeper dive into your audience’s preferences.

Cons:

Instagram does not approve of automated shortcuts. The platform has a track record of cracking down on tools that are perceived as spam-like. Instagram encourages genuine and natural interaction among its users, and has therefore implemented restrictions and consequences for strategies that may manipulate their algorithm. Further information on this topic will be provided in the following section.
Poor automation looks spammy. People can spot a bot at a glance. Automating likes and comments is a recipe for a potential social media crisis. Brand accounts should emphasize human interactions and avoid anything that looks spammy.
Potentially miss out on important customer interactions. The more you automate on Instagram, the fewer opportunities you have to interact with followers and customers. You can’t provide personalized service with purely automated interactions. Instead, only automate aspects of your Instagram account that encourage you to spend more time with your followers.

Can you use automation on Instagram?

As we’ve discussed, there are pros and cons, but those are subjective. Let’s talk about legalities—or at least, what abides by Instagram’s Community Guidelines—so your account doesn’t get penalized.

The short answer is yes, Instagram automation is allowed. The long answer is that certain types of automation cheapen the experience and make your business look bad online. And some types of automation can even get your account banned.

First, let’s talk about the good kinds of automation—the kinds of automation that can assist your social team and improve your strategy.

Which tasks can be set up to run automatically on Instagram?

If you’re interested in using automation to your advantage, here are a few tasks on Instagram that you can get some robot help with.

Likes: Set up a bot with a group of hashtags so the bot can like posts you say are relevant to your brand.
Comments: In the same way, a bot has the capability to leave comments on social media platforms, both on your own posts and those of others. The Saved Replies and Asset Library features of Sprout Social serve as an excellent illustration of this functionality.
Follows and unfollows: Follow and unfollow relevant and irrelevant accounts, respectively. This can help you grow your own follower count.
Direct messages: Send and respond to DMs with the help of a bot. You can even set bots up to send messages to people who comment on your posts with a trigger word.
Planning and posting content: Setting up a schedule for Instagram updates is a type of automation that is crucial for any social media team to utilize.
Reporting: Automation tools can also help you monitor your Instagram analytics with insights and reports showcasing your performance.

Things you need to be wary of are engaging too much too quickly—faster than a human typically could—or Instagram could put a limit on your account. Buying likes and followers is also frowned upon. And you’ll want to avoid working with bots and tools that don’t have access to Instagram’s API as they’re not considered legitimate Instagram partners.

9 Instagram automation tools to streamline your work

Want to get started with basic—and allowed—Instagram automation? These nine tools can help give you a head start.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that helps with a number of automation aspects and making Instagram management as seamless as possible for your team. Sprout can assist with a number of tasks, like publishing, response management, productivity tools and analytics. Through automation and other Sprout features, your team can effectively plan, post and manage your Instagram campaigns.