13 Best Instagram Automation Tools and How To Use Them

Whether you’re a small business trying to wow your customers or a large global corporation seeking to inspire change, Instagram is the platform to use. It’s extremely popular with a wide, diverse audience and its user-friendly interface makes it easy to connect with customers and build relationships.

Developing a strong Instagram presence takes time and consistent effort to engage with other users—something not all businesses can afford to do. However, Instagram automation tools are leveling the playing field.

What is Instagram automation?

Instagram automation is the use of advanced software to automatically perform Instagram-related tasks without additional supervision or intervention from the user. The best Instagram automation tools tend to be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) because they can operate autonomously without human oversight and use machine learning to improve accuracy and efficiency in performing tasks over time.

Types of Instagram Automation

The exact capabilities of each Instagram automation tool vary widely, but all Instagram automation software can be classified into one of three general categories:

1. Posting. This type of Instagram automation includes any software that helps streamline the back-end operations of an Instagram account. Examples include scheduling applications that automatically plan and post prepared content or hashtag optimization programs that analyze the most popular and effective hashtags when posting and then automatically add them to the post.
2. Engagement. Any type of application that automates engagement activity on Instagram falls into this category. This group of tools are more front-end focused, automating common platform interactions such as liking posts, following accounts, replying to comments, and even auto-responding to DMs (direct messages).
3. Analytics. This type of automation is where AI-powered automation tools shine due to AI’s superior analytical capabilities. Any Instagram automation software that analyzes performance, engagement, audience behavior, and other key data points and then generates reports or key insights about that data falls into this category.

Benefits of Automating Instagram Tasks

More companies are adopting automation technology every day due to the high ROI of marketing automation. Here are a few of the many reported benefits of using Instagram automation.

Improve Customer Service and User Interactions

A business’s Instagram presence is an extension of its storefront, so it’s important you make a good impression. Instagram automation tools make it easier to keep track of all incoming communications and enable businesses to respond faster. Fast response times lead to better user experiences and more satisfied customers.

Enhance Sales

Real-time answers significantly boost sales efforts. You’re improving the customer experience with fast responses, and reaching potential leads when they’re most interested instead of hours later when they may have found an alternative. You can also use Instagram automation tools to create pre-written responses that instantly communicate important purchase information. Learn more in this step-by-step guide for how to sell on Instagram.

Keep Content Flowing

Instagram is a primarily visual medium, so everything from your imagery to your copy must be top-notch. Automation can help businesses maintain a high level of quality in their posts while also increasing the quantity. With automated scheduling tools, business owners can more easily maintain a consistent, steady flow of content and ensure they’re posting at the optimal time to get the highest level of engagement.

Track and Gather Analytics and Insights

Instagram automation can also provide significant analytical services and key insights into consumers’ online behavior, Instagram post performance, audience demographic information, and more. This information can be used to develop more strategic marketing efforts and guide your content creation process, helping you get that elusive blue check on Instagram.

Save Time

One of the greatest benefits seen by companies that automate Instagram is the amount of time saved. Instead of team members having to manually post, like, comment, share, and follow every day, automation tools can schedule and perform these repetitive tasks automatically if the right conditions are met. These tools free up significant time for team members to spend on other, more complex tasks.

Is Instagram automation allowed?

The short answer is yes, as long as your automation efforts abide by Instagram’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.

Instagram is committed to authenticity, so the platform has built-in detectors that look for and penalize accounts with inauthentic content or a lot of fake followers. Some red flags that tell Instagram the content is inauthentic are faster-than-humanly-possible response times (indicating an Instagram bot is being used), sudden and significant increases in the number of likes (a sign that you’re buying likes instead of earning them organically), and the use of automation tools or software that do not use Instagram’s API (shows they are not a legitimate Instagram partner).

Instagram automation tools that optimize your social media efforts and streamline your posting process are allowed because they facilitate sharing your original content and foster engagement. However, the use of Instagram bots to automatically follow users or like content and also the creation of fake followers to artificially boost the number of followers you have are practices that are generally frowned upon. Be careful that your automation doesn’t work so efficiently that it starts to mimic a bot by responding unrealistically fast or following every profile it encounters. If your account triggers too many red flags, you can be penalized or even have your Instagram account deactivated and deleted.

13 Best Instagram Automation Tools

Podium

Podium is one of the leading tools on the market today for generating and converting leads and now, you can integrate Podium with Instagram. Consolidate all of your communication channels—including Instagram—into one place: the Podium Inbox. From here, team members can quickly respond to story replies, direct messages, comments, and story mentions as well as emails and other customer messages without having to change platforms.

Podium ensures no message falls through the cracks so your team can respond to every inquiry in record time. Plus, if you use Podium’s AI Employee, you can now use it to help you respond to Instagram questions and start conversations with potential customers.

Sprout Social

With the goal of being an all-in-one Instagram management tool, Sprout Social can do a little bit of everything. It offers scheduling and publishing automation, hashtag monitoring services, DM auto-response and text suggestions, and automation for sourcing user-generated content (UGC). It also provides analytics to help users identify key insights about their performance and their customers.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is one of the best social media marketing tools for creating positive customer interactions. While it does come equipped with standard reporting and scheduling and publishing automation, its standout feature is the ability to save content and responses for use again in the future. This enables teams to repurpose evergreen content and respond even faster to commonly asked questions.

Kicksta

The Instagram-approved way to grow followers and get more likes. Kicksta uses AI to analyze existing content and automatically like and comment on relevant posts that meet the guidelines you set for it. It’s designed to generate authentic responses on Instagram, ensuring your audience grows authentically and organically.

Nitreo

Similar to Kicksta, Nitreo is also centered around helping companies organically grow their followers on Instagram. However, it offers a greater variety of automation options including the ability to automate comments, likes, story views, and profile visits. It does not include any content scheduling automation and its analytical reports available are limited.

Tailwind

Tailwind is all about the hashtags. Scheduling and planning tools combine with hashtag analysis software to provide tailored scheduling services and suggestions for hashtags that will increase visibility and get a greater response. It’s best suited for visual content, making it a popular choice among content creators.

Instavast

A smart, web-based service, Instavast is focused on both Instagram growth and management. It primarily uses bot software to automate likes, comments, follows, etc. Instavest follows the basic strategy of liking/following others to get them to like/follow you back. Users can build a custom publishing schedule that aligns with their Instagram marketing goals and even make the schedule recurring, which is a huge time saver.

Upleap

Upleap focuses on targeted organic Instagram growth. They boast of achieving growth without the use of bots or fake accounts to promote content. It does this by targeting users and interacting with them on the business’s behalf. In this way, Upleap creates meaningful connections with accounts and lays the foundation for loyal customers in the future.

Hashtag Expert

Hashtag Expert is a hashtag generator app. The user enters one base hashtag, and then, using advanced algorithms, Hashtag Expert identifies trending hashtags related to the base hashtag and suggests a group of hashtags to choose from. The user can then easily copy the hashtags to their Instagram post to ensure they use high-ranking hashtags that will catch their target audience’s attention.

NapoleonCat

This automation tool is ideal for large teams overseeing more than one Instagram account. NapoleonCat provides a central platform that monitors performance metrics across multiple accounts with additional features to help simplify the management process. It’s known for its customizable reporting and deep analytical capabilities.

Inflact

Inflact is a marketing toolkit for Instagram. It has three different modules that businesses can choose to use: the Promo module (an AI-powered system with hyper-targeting capabilities to help increase followers), the Direct module (a CRM specifically for Instagram), and a Posting module (an Instagram scheduler with auto-captioning capabilities).

Iconosquare

After connecting your social media profiles, Iconosquare uses AI-powered software to comb through all data associated with the profile and deliver actionable insights that businesses can use to make informed decisions about their Instagram strategy. Iconosquare also offers scheduling and publishing automation to make it easier for businesses to implement their marketing strategy. It even facilitates social listening by providing benchmarks for how your business metrics stack up against others in your industry.

OnlySocial

OnlySocial includes the most popular automation like scheduling and advanced reporting, but its standout feature is its Instagram Sales bot. This bot allows you to integrate your online store with Instagram and have a live chat feature. The Instagram Sales bot is also capable of auto-replying to mentions and comments, ensuring all of your customers receive answers in a timely manner.

Grow Your Instagram Influence with Podium

Organic Instagram growth starts with having excellent user engagement. This means not just posting content regularly, but also taking the time to respond to every comment and question from your followers. Managing it all by hand can be time-consuming, which is why Podium’s Instagram integration is so exciting. By moving Instagram into your Podium Inbox, you’ll have all the tools you need to automate repetitive actions and save time. Plus, you’ll never have to worry about missing an incoming mention or DM again.

Learn more about Podium’s Instagram Integration and how Podium can help you grow your Instagram presence.