Type “How to get more Instagram followers” into Google search and you’ll find a lot of media and blogs, including our own, offering tips and tricks for how to grow your community. You’ll also probably find a lot of content about paying for new followers.
Most people see these as the only two options for succeeding at Instagram: figure it out, or shell out. The first one is for the ‘good guys,’ and the second is for spammers, or at least that’s how it’s generally perceived. In truth, there’s a third option: Instagram automation.
More and more people are turning to automation tools, or bots, in order to boost their Instagram followings. These bots work in several ways. They can Like photos on your behalf; they can follow people on your behalf; they can even comment on your behalf. These actions can be targeted based on specific hashtags or even specific users.
All of this engagement is intended to boost your following with real people, as opposed to the spam accounts you’re likely to get when you buy Instagram followers. It’s an appealing pitch: save time and avoid buying fake followers. But you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true.
That there’s a downside to this approach almost goes without saying. That’s why I tested two of these automation services, for three days each (we’ve also tried buying followers, which you can read about here). Using my personal Instagram account, I discovered the pitfalls of relying on bots, so you don’t have to. While they more-or-less live up to their promises, I wouldn’t recommend them for anyone, especially not brands. Here’s why.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear. Plus we’ll show you how you can use Hootsuite to grow your own following on Instagram and other platforms.
What happened when I tried Instagram automation
A tale of awkward comments
My journey starts with about 338 followers. I followed about the same number of people at the time also. I didn’t set a goal for followers because I really had no basis on which to set one. I had no idea if this would work at all.
One of my colleagues put me onto the scent of Instagress, one of the most popular Instagram automation services. Instagress allows you to enter specific hashtags you want to be associated with and then automatically like photos or follow people based on those hashtags. The service allows allows you to enter preset comments which the bot will then post on photos on your behalf.
Instagress costs $2.00 for 3 days, $5.00 for 10 days or $10.00 for 30 days, so it is really affordable. The service also offered a 3-day free trial, which was perfect for this little experiment I was running.
I decided from the get-go that I wouldn’t use the “liking” features, since this was a fairly simple process and I felt it wouldn’t impact my following very much. I wanted immediate results, like most people who use these automation services.
Instead, I focused on the commenting functionality. I chose the hashtags that my bot would search through, a mix of geographic ties, my interests and generic ones (#Canada, #Montreal, #Vancouver, #PNW, #Fishing, #Water, #Awesome). Then I chose the comments that my bot would post. I tried to choose generic comments that would apply to any situation:
- “Nice one!” (This works for about 90 percent of photos)
- ”Damn!” (same idea, but cooler?)
- “I’m jealous!” (I thought this would apply to those beach sunsets and vacation pics)
- and “your pics > my pics” (complementary, and encourages them to look at my pics for proof)
With all my targets set, I pushed start.
Within 12 hours, I only had 6 new followers, around 40 new likes on my photos and about 25 new comments. Not bad for literally zero work on my part, but fairly underwhelming.
Far more concerning to me was that my comments had caused a string of awkward situations with random people who were now wondering what my problem was.
In one case I had commented “damn!” on a random bride’s wedding photo (she graciously said ‘thank you’ instead of calling me a creep). I had also written “I’m jealous!” on…
