You need more followers, likes and comments on your Instagram? You need a shortcut to go in pro mode and / or automatic pilot to optimize your IG?
You are thinking about using an Instagram robot, « a bot ». Automating Instagram isn’t easy, as we’ve seen. Depending on your strategy, budget and time, you need something to boost your Instagram.
Should you use an Instagram bot? If so, which one? What strategies can you use? Are there solutions that are in a greyish area, or forbidden?
Instagram is the trending social media, perfect to boost your website, via your account and ads. Check how to optimize your e-commerce on Instagram with the tools needed for a good content strategy.
INSTAGRAM, FIGURES WORLDWIDE
The numbers of users has been steadily rising since 2013 and the curb is quite impressive.
📈Every month, 700 million users are active in the Instagram app.
🚀Every day, 400 million users are active on the Instagram app.
🔥59% users connect every day
🏷8 million companies have an account
📸More than 40 billion pictures and videos have been posted since it started
📹95 million pictures and videos are posted each day
❤️Posts get more than 4.4 billion “like” every day
WHO ARE THE WORLD’S INSTAGRAMMERS?
🌏70% users are outside the USA, which shows Instagram is an international phenomenon
🙋🏼♀️Instagram is more of a women social network as 65% users are women and 35% are men
👵🏼42% users are between 35-49 year old, 32% 15-24 year old and 13% 25-34 year old, 53% of 18-29 are on Instagram
💰In 2016, the turnover was 1.53 billion dollars
📱In 2017, Instagram should generate 2.81 billion from mobile ads, an increase of 400% since 2015
📈In March 2017, Instagram announced that they had over 1 million monthly users
SISTER APPS TO USE FOR INSTAGRAM
Boomerang & Layouts allow you to bolster your posts, these are distinct apps that you can add to Instagram
With Instagram, you can do photo editing with the Layout app, which is used by 50 million users already
The Boomerang app allows you to do small visuals that play over and over and are downloaded by 10 million users.
THE MOST POPULAR HASHTAGS IN 2017
The top 100 Instagram hashtags have been completed and updated, add them to your favourites!!
HERE IS THE LIST OF THE 15 MOST USED HASHTAGS on INSTAGRAM:
1 – #love = 1.117B
2 – #instagood = 620.4M
3 – #photooftheday = 435.9M
4 – #beautiful = 404.1M
5 – #fashion = 399.7M
6 – #happy = 381.6M
7 – #tbt = 379.0M
8 – #cute = 375.8M
9 – #followme = 346.5M
10 – #like4like = 344.8M
11 – #follow = 332.6M
12 – #picoftheday = 327.6M
13 – #me = 327.1M
14 – #selfie = 310.3M
15 – #summer = 298.9M
Send some #love, #beautiful be positive, take nice pics and use filters ❤ don’t forget emojis!
BRANDS USING INSTAGRAM
90% of Top 100 brands are on Instagram, the 3 most followed are:
National Geographic: 91.9 million followers
Nike: 81.1 million followers
Victoria’s Secret: 61.3 million followers
⅓ of the “stories” the most watched, are from the brands.
The engagement rate of brands on Instagram is
😳58 times higher than Facebook
🤗120 higher than Twitter
💥The engagement rate per user all smokes all other social networks at 4.21%
THE 15 INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS OF BRANDS MOST FOLLOWED WORLDWIDE:
SO WHY USE AN INSTAGRAM BOT? WHAT FOR?
An Instagram bot is a robot that automatizes time-consuming actions in order to speed up your popularity rate.
It will manage the tasks you set up, depending on your hobbies, what you like and the social network you wish to create.
MAIN FUNCTIONALITIES OF INSTAGRAM BOTS
❤️ AUTO LIKER:
The bot will like, depending on the setting you chose, but often hourly, pictures that have a specific hashtag.
e.g: You set up the bot to like 50 times an hour all the posts that have the hashtags: #fitness #love
🐑 AUTO FOLLOWERS :
You tell the bot what followers you aim for, depending on hobbies, localisation, etc. The bot will go on their account according to the settings you chose.
🗣AUTO COMMENT :
The bot will comment on the targeted profiles. You can set up one or several sentences.
Comments are often “I love your account, it’s great” or “Great picture, I love your profile”.
Find anything better to fly under the radars.
👋🏼AUTO UNFOLLOW :
After following accounts and gotten a follow back, the bot will unfollow the account after a certain time.
📩AUTO DM :
The bot will send private messages directly to a few selected accounts.
🤖POSTS PLANIFICATION:
You feed the bot the pictures to post on the account for the current week or month. You can set up the frequency, the time, the hashtags, the text, the emojis…
THE INSTAGRAM BOTS THAT HAVE BEEN CLOSED BY INSTAGRAM
⚰️INSTAGRESS, THE MOST POPULAR
3 years of service and then it’s done. Closed by Instagram on April 20th 2017, Instagress was the most popular and the most used bot for professional and private purposes.
Instagram via Facebook is gearing up to close fake accounts and the automated management systems which all advertise that they can make you get lots of followers on Instagram and become popular”.
⚰️ ARCHIE THE OTHER DEAD BOT
« Archie is being discontinued due to a request from Instagram and is no longer accepting new clients. »
Archie was also killed because of automation and Instagram. This sentence is their new home page and the service is dead.
😬BYE BYE MASS PLANNER AND THE AUTOMATION OF INSTA
The same thing occurred to Mass Planner, which had to shut down. Bye bye, bots who could like all day.
By closing these 3 popular services Instagram, Facebook sent a message to all scammers, spammers but also to everyone who wants to automatize their Instagram with a bot that can generate likes, followers and comments : party’s over !
So what can you do? Can you use other services?
HOW TO USE A BOT TO AUTOMATISE YOUR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT?
Piracy is never over. As usual, one service closes on Monday, a new one opens on Tuesday.
There are a lot of new offers available, ranging from great product and tools to… mediocre ones. But whichever one you chose, you will have to change tools at some point.
Instagram has just begun hunting down nots and other services will be taken down next.
BEST INSTAGRAM BOT STILL ALIVE
FOLLOWADDER, The best Instagram bot
Followadder is the best Instagram bot on the market. A powerful picture liker, a bot for comments, it also schedules your posts. Automation is both important and smart.
🚀🤖Automatize your daily tasks on your Instagram account and get more followers.
Price = 50 US Dollars for 6 months to manage an account, hence less than $9 a month.
Get more followers by using an Instagram Bot
More likes and auto comments on IG
Real Followers by Instagram username and User ID
Photos caption optimization on Instagram, use the most popular Hashtags
Now you have just configured your first Instagram bot, you can automatise as much as you want !
This is the most exciting part of the job after that. You will see your profile growing if you are making the right settings. Don’t be greedy at the beginning please, take it easy 😉
DON’T OVERDO INSTAGRAM BOTS
At the beginning, like a puppy, you want to explore everything as quickly as possible.
But bots aren’t good at being creative.
Then, comes the moment when you realise that you went too far and need more.
If you don’t overdo it and automation is managed well with the right tool, you will get a lot of experience from this moment. Don’t go overboard, you’d risk having your Instagram account closed.
Do some test, observe, measure the results. Do you have good quality followers? Are they taken by your posts and pictures? You’ll get good and bad surprises, depending on your choices.
But maybe an Instagram bot isn’t your cup of tea. You don’t feel like toying with tools that could get your account closed or ruin the reputation of your brand or product.
So how can you outsource your Instagram account management?
CAN AN AGENCY MANAGE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT?
In general, it’s not cheap, but quality is often there. You have different options, but the main ones are :
✍️Daily posts and answering comments
📸Creating pictures and videos
👨🏼🍳Managing Instagram ads
🐑Follow and select influencer accounts
📈Weekly performance management
An Instagram agency needs to help you communicate with influencers and within your community
Tell your story, get more presence for your brand on Insta, manage and optimize interactions with customers/ followers, and above all, get new sources of business and revenue.
A FREELANCER OR A CONSULTANT TO MANAGE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT?
Let’s work together on your Instagram account management. It will be just like an agency except that we are happy!
admittedly, you can use a platform such as Freelancer or Upwork to find a freelancer specialized in social networks.
Be as accurate as possible in your ad, determine a budget, and above all, take some time to talk directly with the freelancer, on Skype, check their availability and get check points.
Or you can be surprised… in the worst possible way.
IN THE DEPTH OF INSTAGRAM AUTOMATION
You bought some likes and followers through an app or a site and your account now gets a lot of these.
But quality isn’t there. The accounts are fake, you end up with followers brought up in a farm in Russia or in China.
The trafficking of fake bot accounts is a plague.
They are used widely and they are using very sophisticated methods. The click breeders are numerous and use new methods to avoid detection.
2000 followers to credit an account that has just been created or send 3000 likes on a post to make it more legitimate and popular… this happens more frequently, especially in South east Asia.
Likes and followers fraud or ad click fraud are being targeted by Facebook and Instagram.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF A CLICK BREEDING FARM FOR INSTAGRAM
Inside of a Chinese click farm in China. Many fraudulent companies are currently using these giants phone farms to generate millions of fraudulent clicks and fake account.
2 YEARS OF BOTS ON, THE STORY OF CANON_BW
It’s the story of @Canon_bw this Instagrammer, a photographer specialized in black and white pictures and he tells us how he used an Instagram bot for 2 years, via Instagress
🧠A simple Instagram strategy:
✅He answers the same to every comment (Thank you or…?)
✅He posts always the same list of 30 hashtags in a first comment
✅365 posts, 11 000 followers, between 500 & 1500 likes for each picture
He compares his original account, which has less followers, but of higher quality, whereas a lot of fake accounts follow him on his bot account.
Also, he points a finger at the policy of Facebook / Instagram regarding the use of bots, accusing them not to do enough to stop them.
The result of bot use, in his opinion, is quite disappointing on his test account.
INSTAGRAM STRATEGY : YOU ARE YOUR OWN BOT
A technique is to send « mass DM », send massively private messages. It could be seen as spam, but not at all, it is just “business development”.
You don’t know Garyvee? In this video, this entrepreneur/ speaker tells us that to get business, you need to be aggressive and determined.
Start the video at 2:05 if you want to skip the intro, but if you have time, watch everything.
Here is the concept: spend 5 to 7 hours a day on this technique, nearly a full time job.
- Check the hashtag of your target: plumber (in this example)
- Check all his posts regarding this hashtag for 25 minutes and check if they belong to actual plumbing companies.
- If yes, got to the profile page of the account and check out their website.
- If they have a good website, leave it alone, and go to the next one.
- If the site is awful, not performing enough or not responsive, you can send a message along the lines: I really like your account, but I can give you more business opportunities by improving your site or the quality of your posts.
And you do this all day. You personalize the message every time, depending on the target, the product, the project you need to buy/ sell.
IS AUTOMATISING INSTAGRAM WINNING?
If after reading the whole article you’re still not sure of whether or not you should use a bot, don’t try to optimize our website alone.
Ask yourself the right questions, if your business is thriving, then your account is precious to you. The risks involved shouldn’t be underestimated.
Think carefully, test, don’t mess up. You will learn a lot, even from tools that are doomed to disappear. Get inspired by automation tools to transform yourself or your teams into bots. Or at least, get the philosophy of it.
Your Instagram account, if it is still online, will be happier.
N.B : I’m trying my best to keep my articles up to date. If you know more tools or if you notice a dead link or anything missing, tell me in the comments section and I’ll modify them 😚
Do you have a marketing strategy in place? Let’s work together.
Article By
Gregory Taslaud
Founder and Full time Blogger at INSG. Inbound Marketing enthusiast since 2001, I love data, test and review Tools. On a mission to build Media & eCommerce projects with various Brands and Creators.