Your go-to guide on everything Instagram Bots-- what you need to know to keep your account safe, productive, and profitable.

Looking for the best way to grow your Instagram account and gain more reach, followers, and interest in your brand? You’re not alone. These days, most businesses and brands understand the importance of having an active social media presence, and they also realize that it can be a huge opportunity to make connections with new people, expanding their chances of conversion and profit gain via Instagram.

Perfect, right? Well, the bad news is that Instagram growth can be a tricky thing. It can be extremely time-consuming to go through and find users in your target audience, engage with them, respond to engagement, and then hopefully get a follower out of it. Most brands and businesses just simply don’t have to do this all on their own, so they’re looking for alternatives.

Over the years, Instagram bots and automation services have been a topic of heated discussion and one of the most common types of Instagram growth services that you can find on the market. Not without their controversy and set of issues, Instagram bots still have a relatively lucrative market out there with people still willing to buy the services.

Are Instagram the best way to grow your Instagram followers and engagements? Not necessarily. Are they the only option for some people in terms of boosting their follower growth from a third party? Without a doubt.

With so much competition out there, and with services like Instagram ads and marketing platforms charging an arm and a leg for even the smallest amount of exposure, the only viable option for some people is to go with automated engagements or an Instagram bot.

In this article, we’ll give you the lowdown on the Instagram bot market in 2020 and some other possibilities such as Growthoid, that may exist for your Instagram growth and engagement.

What are Instagram Bots?

So, what are Instagram bots, anyway? Some people may still be a little fuzzy on what we mean when we say “bots,” so let’s explore that a bit.

Instagram bots are typically parts of an automated service that you can buy in order to increase your engagements and visibility on the platform.

The more people who come across your username or content on Instagram, the more views and potential followers you can have. Bots help to speed up the process through automating some of these different interactions that might get you viewed by more target audience members.

Sounds harmless enough, right?

How Do Instagram Bots Work?

Well, now that we have a basic understanding of what bots are, let’s talk about how they work.

When you sign up for an Instagram bot or automation service, They will basically automate a variety of different engagements for you so that you can interact with users on the Instagram platform. This is attractive to many people because it’s one of the most effective ways to incur organic Instagram growth, but can be really time consuming for users to do on their own.

Bots can automate pretty much any interaction on the Instagram platform, including things such as likes, comments, DMs, story views, as well as follow/unfollow. All of these engagements are the preferred interactions in order to prompt follower growth on Instagram.

It’s undeniable that an Instagram bot is very attractive to many users. Let’s face it, running an Instagram account alongside a business and any other side projects and responsibilities is no easy task. The idea that a bot can do all of the stuff that is pretty mindless for you anyway seems like a great idea.

Instagram growth services that use automation know that, and they prey on good people trying to get them to sign up for a service that promotes these types of engagements, but can rarely deliver on their promises.

Let’s examine a few reasons why an Instagram bot may not be able to deliver what they promise they can.

Instagram Hates Bots

Okay, harsh, I know. But it’s true-- Instagram has done everything they can for years now to get rid of bot presence on the platform.

When Instagram first blew up, everyone was buying packages of bulk followers, because the most important thing was follower count. Eventually, Instagram and users alike caught on to this, and Instagram effectively dismantled services that work with purchased followers.

You may still be able to buy IG followers, but it’s likely that these accounts drop off over time because they’re fake, inactive, or bots, all of which Instagram actively cleans out and removes from the platform.

In any case, after the fake follower boom, Instagram growth services reinvented the wheel with bots and automation.

At first, all was great. People were getting followers and interacting with pretty much anyone under the sun. But as with fake followers, Instagram was not far behind.

Instagram started to target these growth services and force them to shut down, effectively ruling out these types of services. Not only that, they also began to flag, suspend, or even deactivate completely accounts that were using bot services.

They also put a daily engagement cap on the platform, and while no one knows what it is, Instagram automation services and bots have to operate at extremely low levels so as not to flag the algorithm.

Instagram basically does all they can to keep bot activity to a minimum on the platform. Obviously it still exists, because you can see a ton of it on many profiles in terms of comments. There are even accounts like @botpolice that will call out bots and try to get them banned.

It’s clear that Instagram frowns upon the use of bots and will do everything they can to flag your account if any logins or engagements look suspicious on your part. They severely limit the way that third party apps can interact with the Instagram platform, and bots are no different.

Instagram argues that bots affect the user experience in a negative way, and while we are all for Instagram growth, they do have a point.

The takeaway here is that Instagram bots are against Instagram’s terms of service. You have to keep this in mind; using bots or automation services automatically puts you at risk of being banned. Whether it’s a risk you’re willing to take is up to you.

Bots Don’t Follow Targets Well

Another thing that is really important when growing your Instagram account with targeted users that may actually care about your content and engage with it. Follower numbers aren’t as important as finding real users who actually want to check out your stuff and could potentially be a client or a partner of yours one day.

When you work with an Instagram bot service, you’ll basically have a lot less control over who is being engaged with. An Instagram bot isn’t sophisticated enough to completely rule out followers that may be of no use to you, so you may find your account flooded with users who aren’t even in your area, or are completely out of your niche or demographic.

This is negative not only because you can’t build any business results, but because they will affect your follower to engagement ratio. If you have a bunch of followers that do nothing with your account, this ratio will go down, ultimately showing the Instagram algorithm that your content isn’t trending or performing well, not even with your followers.

This can be detrimental for perpetuating future reach and performing well against the Instagram algorithm. The algorithm works based off of engagement, so if you’re lacking there, you won’t find yourself in a favorable position.

Shadowbanning

Another way that Instagram can punish you for using bots or automation is to shadowban you. This effectively means that none of your content will reach anyone who is not already a follower of yours. Instagram can detect when you have strange or unusual activity, and for that reason, they’ll place this ban on your account.

You won’t know that you are shadowbanned, but you may see a big decrease in engagement. Even if you use hashtags, you won’t be able to get any new followers because none of your content will be appearing.

If you think you’ve been shadowbanned, stop using bots or automation immediately so your account can get back to normal activity and regain it’s natural reach.

Bots Can Embarrass Themselves

Bots have no way to perceive context of posts or photos, so everything that they do is incredibly general and generic. There are some engagements on Instagram, such as likes and story views, that don’t need to create any type of actual text or message, but all other engagements require a personalized response.

If you’re using a bot, they can’t create a real response that is going to apply in a variety of situations; this can cause some pretty embarrassing problems.

Creating generic comments or DMs doesn’t go unnoticed by users, and ultimately it completely destroys your credibility. Imagine if you post a picture of your dog on Instagram, and you get a comment from an unknown user that says, “you look great!”

Well, thanks, but I’m not a dog! That’s the problem-- for more specific engagements that require actual text, bots simply can’t do the job.

If you only use them for likes or story views, that is perhaps the only time they may work in some way, but remember, they are against Instagram’s terms of use and they really can’t follow targeting Instructions for the same reason they can’t leave relevant comments or DMs. They’re not human, and they can’t recognize context and other important factors.

Best Instagram Bots: Alternatives

So, bots are probably not sounding like the best option, and they’re really not. The best alternative to the top Instagram bots on the market is one of the most successful Instagram growth services out there: Growthoid .

Growthoid is an Instagram marketing service that is free of bots and automation, which totally changes the game. They provide real Instagram followers through a manual service-- that means they assign you an account manager and your account manager will take care of interacting with followers that are in your targets.

The best thing? Growthoid can actually follow your targeting instructions because a real person is in control of your Instagram growth. Once you sign up, they’ll give you a dedicated account manager that will get your targeting information and then work to grow your real followers.

This is great because not only will you get targeted followers, but these followers are much more likely to engage with your content because it’s relevant and valuable to them.

The best thing you can do to make sure that you gain more followers, regardless of the growth service that you use, is to produce top-notch content that is interesting and valuable to anyone who comes across your profile. A huge mistake that most people make is that they assume a growth service will do everything for you, and that content doesn’t matter because you’ve got a growth service working for you now!

This is totally false. The only way to perpetuate organic Instagram growth is to have a strong platform with consistency, a clear brand image, and excellent content. Growth services aim to bring you potential followers, but it’s up to your content and your offerings whether they decide to stay as a follower.

Instagram Bots are Best Avoided

Based on all of these factors, an Instagram bot simply isn’t worth the risk, and they aren’t likely to be effective even if you did take the risk. There are too many restrictions from Instagram and too many functional restrictions of bots such as the inability to detect context or follower targets.

The only way that you could potentially use bots safely is to automate only likes and story views.

It’s vital that if you decide to use bots, you don’t use engagements like comments, DMs, or follow/unfollow. These actions put your account at risk and the only way to stay as safe as possible is to focus on likes and story views.

Now, just because bots are on their way out doesn’t mean that you don’t have any alternatives for Instagram growth. Growthoid can definitely help you get the followers you need without using any bots or automation. They’re like an extension of your own hand.

And if all else fails, you could always do it yourself! Anything bots can do, you or Growthoid can do better.