For some, the idea of using an Instagram bot, or any social media bot to get more followers feels a bit like cheating, and it may seem unethical. In reality, it can be done in such a way that accentuates your social media marketing efforts -rather than harms them.
It’s all in making sure you’re not only using it the right way – but for the right reasons- to connect with real people in less time – not to completely remove the need to pay attention to your social media efforts.
1. Use Only One Bot at a Time
While it may be tempting to try to accelerate your growth by using more than one bot at the same time, this is not a good strategy. Instagram cracks down on accounts that engage in any fake activity, and if you’re taking too many actions too quickly,then it will flag your account and put you at risk for deletion. Quality Instagram bots will put natural delays between each action so it looks like there is a real human out there doing the liking, following, and unfollowing.
There’s nothing wrong with trying multiple Instagram bots to see which one will work best for you. Try the first one you’re interested in for a few days or weeks. Then, stop using it before you start using the next one. Rinse and repeat until you find the perfect Instagram bot for your needs.
2. Use a Bot to Automate Following/Unfollowing
Instagram bots can automatically find new people to follow for you, based on accounts you’ve selected in your niche or hashtags you’ve chosen to follow. They will choose to follow a certain number of people every day.
Then, if you set it up just right to unfollow people, the people you follow will be given a certain amount of time to follow you back (usually around three days or so)before the bot will unfollow them because they did not engage with you. This is all designed to help you keep your follower/following ratio in line with network expectations for a good profile.
3. Use a Bot to Automate Liking
Liking photos on Instagram is a great way to get engagement and attention from people who may be interested in following you. Because it doesn’t take much effort, it’s safe to go ahead and use a bot for this. Because likes don’t take long, the bot can safely accomplish liking hundreds of photos a day without making the activity appear suspicious.
4. Skip Automated Comments and Direct Messages
There are a number of Instagram bots out there that offer the ability to automatically comment on posts and send direct messages to people on your behalf. There are many people who recommend this approach because it helps boost engagement, but at the same time, because you cannot craft a truly personal message for each comment and message, there are many people who caution against it. Too many of the same generic comments or direct messages will come off as fake and could signal to others you’re using a bot to take care of your account for you.
5. Use a Bot to Schedule Your Posts
Posting consistently is an important part of getting your followers and teaching them what to expect from your account. If you’re having to manually remember to post something new everyday, or multiple times a day, it can be hard to make sure you’ve got the content ready and then remember to actually do it.
Many Instagram bots make it possible to schedule your posts. You can create your graphics or photos and upload them from a computer – which makes it easier than having to carry your phone around and snap something for sharing on Instagram – and then schedule the posts.
Some will post it for you, while others will just send a push notification to you with everything ready to go, to remind you to post. Then, you have to open that push notification and post it yourself.
In either situation, you can create your content in batches. It’s much easier to sit down once a week and schedule 5 to 21 posts (one to three a day, either five or seven days a week) at one time than it is to remember to do it every day!
6. Use the Time You Save to Create Higher Quality Content
One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that if you use an Instagram bot, you can set your account and forget it. A bot is not designed to replace your need for a social media strategy. Instead, it is meant to help complement the strategy,so you have more time to focus on the content creation side of things. If you lack quality content that’s engaging and will catch your audience’s eye, then there’s no point in participating in the network.
That said, you do not have to have a fancy camera or photography knowledge to do well on Instagram.Many niches can benefit from using basic graphic design software like that provided by Canva or Pic Monkey to create quotes and other graphics without using any smartphone photography.
Focus on creating a bot that works naturally alongside your efforts – not replaces them. Program your bot to do the liking and following, while you work on content to post on your account, and take the time to comment on other people’s posts and direct message them yourself. Just because you canautomate everything, doesn’t mean you should.