Why You Should Avoid Instagram Bots Like the Plague

An Instagram Bot is essentially a script that automatically likes, follows and engages with your community on your behalf. Whether your goal is to grow your business, engage with your audience, or gain an engaged following, instagram bots will appear to help with that, but they are doing just the opposite.

Businesses set their bots to follow a particular hashtag and if you use the same set of hashtags each post you do, you will start to see them in your notifications a lot. As a social media manager, I manage several accounts for local businesses in my city, and sometimes the bot usage is out of control. When the same company is commenting the same 3 comments across 5 accounts, you can be sure it’s not genuine.

Bots are “supposed” to engage your audience and grow your accounts, but they really act counterintuitively. People don’t want to see your bot on everything they post, and they can tell when your “Cool Snapshot” on their illustration isn’t genuine.

Even if you’re not a social media manager, you can tell when a comment you get on a post you’re really proud of doesn’t make sense. We’ve also heard horror stories of people’s bots posting horribly inappropriate happy comments on posts honoring lost loved ones, tragedies, etc.

Bots are meant to save you time; I’ll admit I spend hours on Instagram liking and commenting on posts in my community because I genuinely love seeing people’s artwork. Yes, it would save me a lot of time, but in my opinion, I’d rather spend the time engaging with people and building real relationships.