What is Instagram Automation and how to get started

Growing your Instagram account instantly with an authentic number of followers can be quite a challenging task. Moreover, it would require serious commitment from your end. Thankfully there are automation tools that would do the job for you with ease. However, according to the latest updates of the Instagram algorithm, using such automation tools for

Growing your Instagram account instantly with an authentic number of followers can be quite a challenging task. Moreover, it would require serious commitment from your end.

Thankfully there are automation tools that would do the job for you with ease. However, according to the latest updates of the Instagram algorithm, using such automation tools for your marketing can be pretty tricky. The good news is that you can use automation tools by adhering to the platform’s guidelines. In this article, you will discover how to use the automation tools correctly to gain the best results.

What is Instagram Automation Anyway?

Instagram Automation uses third-party software to manage your Instagram account and carry out tasks and interactions with other users without your intervention.

Instagram automation software tools fall into two categories:

Frontend Instagram Automation-Frontend Instagram Automation tools or bots interact with the front-facing activities of an Instagram account, such as leaving comments on other users’ posts, liking them, etc. So you may think that these are all spammy activities as it sounds so. However, you need to know that you are on the safe side if you don’t go against the “inauthentic activity” of Instagram rules.

Backend Instagram Automation-These automation bots work on the backend to automate your posts, find the right hashtags to reach your posts, and many more.

Is it possible to automate activities on Instagram?

Likes -Automating likes on someone else’s posts is one of the safest ways to get your Instagram account in front of more followers. You may ask why? This is because Instagram likes are the platform’s familiar form of acknowledgment. Having said all these, likes represent low-effort interaction that is not likely to get you much traffic.

Find followers- This is one of the most proactive features of Instagram’s automating bot, as it can analyze hashtags and discover accounts relevant to your target audience. As a result, you will not have to go through the trouble of digging the hashtags to determine who will be your target audience.

Follows/Unfollows -The concept behind automated following is that the more accounts you follow, you are likely to get more followers. Some of the automation tools have automatic unfollows to help accounts achieve a better follower-to-following ratio. Having said that, if you are following more than 7,500 people, Instagram’s algorithm will not allow it, and you’ll encounter an error message.

Comments- As you have guessed it right, automating comments is terrible and unethical. So then shall we have a full-stop right there with no questions asked? But then you may wonder why people bother with automating comments? Because of the more frequent interactions such as comments and likes you have, it would be good for Instagram’s new algorithm.

However, automating comments would cause Instagram to block your account. As a best practice, you should only automate the comment feature to save a list of replies to the comments that you get all the time. Such comments you can store and publish without having to write them manually.

Story Views- Similar to likes, the views will not significantly enhance incoming traffic to your Instagram account. So the concept behind automating story views is to get at least some minor engagement in your account. However, engaging with your target audience is likely to achieve better results.

Scheduling and publishing- To keep up with the continuous publishing of posts, the automation takes care of queuing up and scheduling content. If you are cross-posting from other social media networks, you can optimize the timings for posting.

Reporting- With Instagram, you can also automate the reporting and analytic process. Social analytical tools such as Sprout Social will do the heavy lifting of pulling data and compare them with other social networks. Therefore this saves your valuable time, which you would have to spend otherwise when doing it manually.

Direct Messages(DMs)-Like commenting, unsolicited direct messages are considered spammy. For instance, you might have encountered such messages that get buried in your Message Requests, likely from automated bots.

Instagram’s new algorithm for Instagram Automation

With the previous Instagram algorithm, you can buy up to 20k followers and stand a chance of driving more traffic to your Instagram account. However, after Instagram tweaked its algorithm, there was no room for fake followers. As Instagram did not publicly expose its changes, no one knows how exactly it works. Having said that, we can be certain that the new algorithm favors engagement – likes, comments, views, and DMs.

How to design your Instagram account for an awesome Botting Experience

As mentioned earlier, although Instagram bots are a great way to interact with other peoples’ accounts and build followers, they wouldn’t be of any worth if your Instagram account does not have excellent content. It would be a waste of your time, effort, and money you spent on the bot. 

On the other hand, an Instagram account with awesomely crafted content would drive more audience. Then you can use the bot as rocket fuel to multiply the growth rate for the already performing account. So before you start the bot, let’s look at how you can design your Instagram account for a fantastic botting experience:

Create a differentiated, visually appealing grid and content

As with anything in life, the first impression counts, which applies to Instagram as well. Therefore, how your account looks will be a critical factor in deciding whether to follow you after a user receives a “like” from your bot.

There will always be competitors selling identical products as you. So in order to stand out from them and create content that people value, it would be best if you design your content using a differentiated visual grid. The differentiated visual grid will ensure that most visitors would convert to followers. You can find out more about how to create this grid in this blog post.

Explore hashtags and accounts that your target audience needs

After you design amazing content as mentioned in the above step, you need to ask yourself the following:

• Who are the users on Instagram who will likely find your account valuable?
• Which hashtags are they likely to check?

Then when you find answers to them, you can identify the accounts and hashtags using the methods mentioned in the relevant links. Now when you have hashtags and accounts it will be simpler for your bots to convert each interaction as each interaction is appropriate.

Using the Instagram bot legitimately for automation

Now that you have created content, hashtags, and identified accounts. So it’s time for the Instagram bot to discover more engagement on your account by automating likes, commenting on posts, follow/unfollow, DMs, and more. With such automation, your page will have more engagement and will also receive genuine engagement in return. In addition, it would undoubtedly make Instagram’s updated algorithm happy.

While the settings on different bots may differ, their fundamental concept remains the same. For example, when targeting the audiences for the bot to engage with, you can set it based on people in a specific location, age, gender, the language they speak, and who they follow. Of course, you could also target a random audience, but it will not drive the engagement that you desire. Now let’s discover some of the legitimate ways in which you can use your bot for automation.

Scheduling to publish when most people are active – You could schedule your backend bots to post content during hours when people are most active so that it’s easier to get more engagements. 

Simulate Human behavior- Obviously, the bots provide an edge over humans in working hours as bots can operate 24/7. On the other hand, this can have a negative effect as Instagram’s algorithm notices that when you’re active 24 hours, it could potentially be the work of a bot. As a result, your account is likely to get a ban. So it would help if you gave your bot a rest by setting a sleeping interval for 6-7 hours, perhaps.

Be realistic about the number of likes, follows, and comments- Although Instagram doesn’t officially release the figures on the number of likes, follows, and comments, you must always ensure not to exceed 150 likes, 60 comments, and 60 follows/unfollows per hour. Exceeding this number would cause Instagram to clock your account as spam.

Maintaining an adequate number of photos – Let’s assume that you have a minimum of 5 photos in your profile and have more than 5k  followers. Without a doubt, this would be suspicious. Since Instagram is also a photo-sharing platform, you must have an adequate number of photos.

Refrain from promoting your products in a comments section – You must avoid this at any cost as it may not drive any users to your account.

Use of Proxies for Instagram bots

Up to now, you have looked at using the bots the right way for Instagram automation. However, to get the optimum results for your bot, it would be ideal for you to use proxies along with it. So in this section, we would look into Instagram proxies.

What are Instagram Proxies, and why use them?

They are private proxies that are used specifically for Instagram. Often you will be required to create multiple Instagram accounts for different segments of the same brand. Since Instagram has a strict policy on creating multiple accounts using the same IP address, your account is likely to get an IP ban. So to overcome this issue, you can use Instagram proxies which conceal our IP address.

Another primary reason for using Instagram proxies is that your bot might not access geo-restricted content when targeting users in various locations. To overcome this issue, Instagram proxies are used.

How ProxyScrape could help you with Proxies

Since ProxyScrape has about 5 million residential proxy pools, it can meet your needs suited for Instagram proxies. Residential proxies are IP addresses of actual residential owners, so Instagram will be least likely to block them as they would not appear suspicious.

Conclusion

Now you have fundamental knowledge in how to automate Instagram accounts the right way. Before automating with any bot, you need to create awesome content, as discussed in the relevant section. Then only you have to automate the bot along with the best practices that we have mentioned. We hope you will put into practice what you have learned in this article.