Instagram automation: Maximizing efficiency without losing the human touch

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Managing your Instagram marketing strategy is time-consuming. From posting content at the right time to keeping up with your comments—there’s a lot that goes into it. The good news is Instagram automation can take over some of these repetitive tasks. This frees up your time to focus on strategic and creative campaigns.

But before you jump the gun and look for automation tools, Instagram has terms and conditions in place on what you can and can’t automate. So let’s explore the topic a little further to understand how to automate Instagram the right way.

What is Instagram automation?

Instagram automation refers to the use of third-party social media automation tools to manage your account. These tools help you 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 effectively “take control” of your front-facing interactions with users. This includes interactions like comments and messages.
Tools that automate Instagram behind the scenes. This includes 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 before you automate your Instagram.

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

Pros of Instagram automation

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. This brings in more visibility, which is crucial to get more followers on Instagram.
Uncover important insights about your audience: The right automation tools help you learn more about your target audience. They encourage you to take a deeper dive into your audience’s preferences. So, you can discover what Instagram hashtags people use or what types of content interests them most.

Cons of Instagram automation

Instagram isn’t a fan of automation “hacks”: Instagram has a history of taking action against tools that they consider spammy. The platform wants its users to engage authentically and organically. So Instagram sets limits and penalties for tactics they see as potentially gaming their algorithm. More on this in the next 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. Instagram 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.

Is Instagram automation allowed?

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 support your social team and improve your strategy.

What can be automated 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: Similarly, you can use bots to automate some aspects of your social media comments. You can set up auto-responses for comments on your own posts. Additionally, set up bots to leave authentic comments on relevant posts from other accounts. Make use of Sprout Social’s Saved Replies feature and pair it with automated chatbots to streamline your engagements.
Follows and unfollows: Follow and unfollow relevant and irrelevant accounts, respectively. Take care not to overdo this, so your account doesn’t get flagged for spam.
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.
Scheduling and publishing: Schedule your Instagram posts to automatically go out at a predetermined time. This is one of the most impactful forms of Instagram automation, allowing you to reach your audience at the best times.
Reporting: Automation tools also help you monitor your Instagram analytics. You can use them to automatically collect insights and reports showcasing your performance.

What types of automation to avoid on Instagram

Instagram doesn’t explicitly state what you can or can’t automate. But here are some things to watch out for:

Spammy and mass action activities such as liking, commenting, following or unfollowing in bulk. When you’re engaging too much too quickly—faster than a human typically could—Instagram could put a limit on your account.
Avoid buying likes and followers, so Instagram doesn’t penalize your account. This also distorts your engagement rates and makes your account seem less legitimate.
Steer clear of chatbots that pretend to be humans.
Don’t use tools that collect private information from users or ask them for credentials.
Avoid using 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? Get a head start with these nine Instagram automation tools.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool with robust automation capabilities. You can use it to automate Instagram tasks like publishing and response management. Sprout lets you schedule your posts to go out automatically, find the best times to post and track relevant hashtags.

The Smart Inbox lets you monitor all your comments, DMs, tags, brand mentions and Story replies in one place. You can then use AI-powered summaries to find out which messages to prioritize and manage your responses effectively. The Enhance by AI Assist feature provides automated suggestions on how to improve your responses to make them more impactful.

Sprout also offers a number of productivity tools and analytics to automate your Instagram management. So you can streamline your work without missing customer interactions.