What is a bot?

An Instagram bot is a piece of software that automatically likes, comments, follows and unfollows accounts on your behalf. They can target hashtags or your competitor's followers. Less time doing menial tasks, more followers and better engagement, sounds great right? If you take a closer look, you'll see they can cause a lot more harm than good!

Here's why you should stay away:

😒 Reputation

Most people don't like bots, or the people that use them. Bots have a bad reputation because people perceive them to threaten the authenticity of Instagram. We all want to know that we're dealing with a real person. If your audience suspects you're using a Bot, it will change their opinion of you or your brand.

😬 Insensitive and inappropriate comments

Bots will never understand the context. There is no bot currently available that can truly understand what they are seeing and reading. This can lead to awkward and embarrassing situations where they comment something like 'love this pic 😍' at a funeral... At best, a bot's comment will be generic, but at worst it could be deeply insensitive or completely out of context, causing irreparable damage to your brand.

🥺 Poor engagement

It is very easy to spot a bot so it should come as no surprise that if you see a generic comment that says 'wow!' on something very unwow that no further interaction comes from it. When you automate the way you use Instagram the results instantly become very unnatural, bots can comment on hundreds of photos an hour with generic sentences like 'great photo!', but unfortunately it's been proven highly unlikely to convert that into gaining a new follower or more likes on your content.

😭 Bots Get you Banned

The main problem that people tend to ignore is that it violates Instagram's terms of use. Here are just a few of the terms listed by Instagram that you are violating by using a bot:

Don't use an unreasonable amount of bandwidth, or adversely impact the stability of Instagram.com servers or the behaviour of other apps using the Instagram Platform.Ensure your comments are uniquely tailored for each person. Don't post unauthorized commercial communications or spam on Instagram.Don't enable a business to take more than one action on Instagram at a time.

If Instagram discovers that you're using a bot, it could have a catastrophic effect on your brand and could even lead to your account being shut down, blocked or shadowbanned.

A 'Shadowban' is a filtering process adopted by Instagram for accounts that violate their terms of use. When you are shadowbanned, your photos practically become invisible to your audience. Your posts won't appear in hashtag search results or the 'top posts' section and your engagement will take a huge hit too.

We have a large number of clients reach out to us after using bots, so we have heard all of the horror stories!

So to sum up, when it comes to interacting with your fan base, there is nothing better for your brand than a human touch. If you'd like us to help you grow, click here to see our Growth Plans 🤗