7 Smart Ways to Automate Instagram Marketing for Your Business

May 26, 2021

Instagram is the go-to platform for marketers these days. With 1 billion monthly active users, it's fast becoming a game-changer for modern businesses and marketing strategies. Thanks to the fact that it enables brands to connect with their customers in an entirely new way.

As we know, people react well to visual content in marketing campaigns, and storytelling is becoming immensely important for brands and businesses. People are expected to remember only 10% of the information they read, but if there's a relevant image attached, they can retain 65% of that information. 

So, with this fast-growing social media platform, your brand needs to maintain its presence via the right Instagram marketing strategies. You should also learn how to improve your IG marketing with automation.

Luckily, there are great Instagram automation tools available and they help improve the efficiency of your marketing campaigns. It would still help if you're very careful while applying these tools, as Instagram is increasingly stringent about anti-automation rules.
 

What is Instagram automation?

It's the process of using apps and software to manage your Instagram page. IG automation is usually done with the help of bots, with the bots carrying out tasks such as scheduling, commenting, liking, and reporting your posts.

The word ‘’bot’’ may have you thinking that the process is filled with ‘’spam,’’ but that view is quite wrong. Instagram disallows inauthentic activities from any bot, but not all automation tools are spammy.

Using tools that manage your account’s backend, such as publishing, analytics, and reporting is not against Instagram’s laws. You can use them to auto-publish your posts exactly when your followers are most active. You can also discover useful hashtags to expand your reach.

Let’s look at some of the best ways that automation can help you develop a more efficient Instagram marketing strategy for your brand.
 

1. Automate Post Scheduling

Your chosen software for post scheduling keeps your online presence active, even when you're not available. You can plan and publish your Instagram marketing content in one place, and have it posted at a later time.

Posts scheduling tools allow you to schedule even a single image, or video posts, or Instagram Stories. They also offer the facility to cross-post content to more than one profile at once, which saves time.

The best way to use any of these tools is to auto-publish posts when engagement is expected to be higher. And you can identify more active hours and user trends using analytics tools.
 

2. Automate Likes

Using automation to like your Instagram posts is reasonably safe. Automation can help identify posts of your brand and like them on your behalf. Likes are a non-intrusive way to enhance your odds of engagement, and Instagram won’t take it as spam. 

When your content gets more likes, Instagram’s algorithm picks up the post to indicate it's useful and popular. And this also leads to improving your search engine ranking. Using automated likes is similar to paying the platform to have your account shown on user’s feeds through ads.

Pro-Tip: Stormlikes offer 10 free likes as a trial to the service. Just input your username and you'll see the magic. If you like the service, you'll be glad to know that you can get 500 likes for as low as $6.79.
 

3. Automate Commenting

Many Instagram marketers will advise you to avoid comment automation because it looks spammy. However, when you apply it correctly (using neutral yet positive comments and including a range of options for the bot to rotate through), it'll not come across as fake.

It's recommended that you should only automate commenting for a few posts every day since it’s impossible to program the software in a way that will create context-relevant comments. It does provide you the chance to craft real statements manually.
 

4. Automate Direct Messaging

Along with comments and likes automation, some tools also offer message automation features. For this purpose, you'll have to use generic phrasing to keep a variety of neutral-yet-positive statements (such as "Thanks for contacting us") in the depository for the bot to work with.

But it'd be best to keep this service limited to a small number of DMs every day. It's also challenging to make contextually relevant messages for every user the bot will encounter.
 

5. Automate Following and Finding New Accounts

Most of these tools can help automate following and finding new accounts. You only need to specify the accounts and hashtags you want to follow.

Through automation, you can pick random accounts using a hashtag and start following them. And the software will gradually track a certain number of new accounts every day to lift your activity. 

On Instagram, regularly following new accounts can make a massive difference in terms of engagement. Ensure your automation software also has unfollowing features to automatically stop following accounts that aren't useful to your brand.
 

6. Automate Monitoring & Increasing Post’s Engagement

Automation provides you with the opportunity to monitor and increase engagement with your followers. That is, you can easily keep track of discussions about your business online.

Analytics tools can break down your discussions on Instagram and help you to preserve the best of them. Use metrics such as mention-by-post-type, mention-by-type, mention history, etc.

Constantly keeping your audience engaged is essential, and analytics tools help you understand your followers' interests and needs. Engagement automation is something you need to try; it can build serious hype around your brand.
 

7. Automate Assembling and Understanding Analytics

Actionable insights can lead to a well-optimized Instagram marketing strategy. Use software to automate analytics and make data-driven decisions for your marketing campaigns.

Collecting, examining, and using data of your page and posts have a direct impact on the performance of your content and community. You can also use automation to understand the analytics of Instagram Stories, revealing vital info like your completion speed by story type and the best time to post your stories.

Engage with your audience on a personal level and work towards making a social space of like-minded people. Establishing communities and personal connections is what Instagram thrives on.
 

Final thoughts

Use Instagram automation tools to save your time and focus on creating high-quality content that your audience is looking for. But don’t leave it all up to automation. You still need to spend some time on Instagram to engage with your followers naturally, professionally, and actively. 

Instagram automation tools can help streamline routes to achieve the best results. The best strategy for marketing is a multi-faceted one. You'll find this technique vital in the Instagram marketing arsenal of your brand.

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