Although Instagram automation is a big no-no in Instagram’s terms and condition, it is a stable and efficient way to grow your followers base if you do it right.

There is still a degree of risk of getting banned, but it’s becoming increasingly challenging for Instagram to detect. Instagram automation tools have gotten very smart in mimicking human behavior. For example, there are settings to delay intervals for every like, follow, or unfollow and ability to randomizing the actions of the Instagram bot similar to what a human would.

Before we get into the do’s and don’ts, Instagram automation can only perform the following tasks on Instagram.

Posting: The ability to post photos, add captions, and post stories automatically.

Follow: The ability to find and follow Instagram profiles by tags, followers of specific accounts, those who commented or liked particular posts, and many more.

Unfollow: The ability to unfollow Instagram profiles after a certain amount of time, or if they have not followed you back.

Likes: The ability to automatically like posts with specific tags, from particular people, and many more.

Comments: The ability to automatically comment on photos with specific tags, from particular people, and many more.

Direct Messages: The ability to send direct messages to people who newly followed you, your entire follower base or Instagram influencers you want to engage with.

We have been testing and building bots for ourselves and clients for over two years. Now we want to share our knowledge and findings of the best way to set up your bots, to make it as difficult as possible for you to get banned.

Only Automate These Tasks

Do not automate everything. There are specific tasks that will draw attention to your account if it looks like spam. Our recommendations are only to use Instagram bots for posting, following, unfollowing, and liking photos.

Automating direct messages is a big no-no. Just look at Twitter as an example. Every time you follow someone, you get a spam message to check out their website or buy their products. So much that you stop checking your direct message inbox.

The Twitter direct message behavior has not carried over to Instagram yet. People are very responsive to their DM’s and will reply if you message them. The risk is that if your DM looks anything like spam, its highly likely the individual will report your account. Therefore it’s a good idea to avoid automating DM’s.

Comments are the same. The problem with automating comments is that all your comments need to apply to a wide variety of photos. If you’re paying attention to the comments on your posts, you’ll probably see a lot of “Love this” or “Wow” or “Amazing” comments on your photos. These are most likely bots trying to get your attention.

Steady Ramp Up

Count the volume of likes and follows you do manually a day. Then set up your bot to mimic your current situation before ramping out. If you have been liking and commenting on 50 photos a day, it’ll raise huge flags on Instagram detection tools when you suddenly like and comment on 800.

Proxy your IP

For those not familiar with computer terms, IP is a unique string of numbers that is unique to your computer. Similiar to your passport number, your IP is how the internet identifies you. If you want to learn a little more, we recommend you reading this article on What is an IP Address

Only do this if you plan on managing a lot of Instagram accounts. We tested this and found that the maximum amount of Instagram accounts you should have on one IP is five. Anything more risks yourself of getting all your accounts banned.

You can either use a free proxy at Free Proxy List or Rent/Buy IP’s on hosting companies such as GoDaddy. Some automation tools also provide you the options to use a list of their IP’s as a proxy.

Confirm your Phone Number and Email

Confirming your phone number and email on your Instagram profile is a significant way Instagram tells if you’re a real person or not. When we first started out, we saw many occurrences where our bot accounts got deleted after we refused to put in a phone number on the confirmation screen.

As a disclaimer, there’s always a risk of getting banned on Instagram when using automation tools. Automation is not a single solution to growing your Instagram to millions of followers. But you will see substantial growth by over 200%-300% when done correctly. As always, use cautiously and don’t be solely dependent on automation to grow your followers.