One of the most effective ways to grow your Instagram following is to find and engage with new users who share your interests – or users who fit the target audience for your brand, if you are managing a business account. Of course, searching for and engaging with the right users can take a lot of time. What if there were a tool that could do this for you?
Enter Instagress, an automated Instagram engagement tool that helps users engage on Instagram and grow their following, without actually manually doing it themselves. Instagress can comment, like and follow new accounts for you while you’re busy doing other awesome things like working on business development. Or sleeping. But, there are some things to consider before using a tool like Instagress. Should you trust an automated tool to engage on your behalf? Is this akin to buying followers? What are the downsides? Read on for some of the pros and cons to weigh when thinking about whether Instagress is right for your account.
Should You Use an Instagram Automation Tool?
Before we dive into the pros and cons, it is important to note that automation tools like Instagress go against Instagram’s Terms of Service. If Instagram detects activity on your account that it considers spammy or suspicious, they can freeze your account. This alone is enough of a reason for many people to decide automation tools just aren’t worth it, either because of the risk or because of ethical concerns – or both.
Pros:
- Straightforward
Instagress’s user interface is easy to navigate, and it’s pretty straight-forward about what options you have available. Instagress makes it simple to select how much activity you want the bot to do, and lets you set up specific hashtags, locations and people to target. Users also get to select a pace they want the bot to use for posting – slow, normal or fast.
- You Gain Real Followers
In order to gain more followers, some people choose to “buy” followers, which are often fake or spammy accounts. Using Instagress brings in followers that are real accounts.
- Saves You Time
The biggest and most obvious benefit to using a tool like Instagress is that you don’t have to spend as much time on trying to find new followers or content to engage with. Instagress is constantly searching for images your account should ‘like’ or comment on, allowing you to grow your account with minimal time investment.
- You Control What It Can and Can’t Do
Instagress users have the option to set up exactly what Instagress can comment on your behalf. You can also turn off the settings to prohibit Instagress from following users for you or commenting.
Cons
- Short Free Trial
The free trial period for Instagress is only three days, which isn’t a lot of time for users to decide if if the results they are getting are worth it. After three days users have to start paying for Instagress’s services, but Instagress is still a fairly affordable service.
- It’s a robot. Take it with a grain of salt.
The point of using a bot is so you don’t always have to be on your Instagram trying to build a following. You’re not always going to be controlling what is being commented and liked by your account when you have a bot using it, and sometimes this can be a negative thing. Instagress will follow your instructions to target specific hashtags and accounts, but you never know what kind of inappropriate or off-brand content this might lead your account to. It is also possible that your account will post comments that don’t actually make sense to the photo it’s commenting on.
- Followers Don’t Equal Engagement
While you probably will gain some more followers by using Instagress or other automated Instagram bots, followers don’t equal more engagement, and like all PR pros know, quality is more important than quantity.
An Instagram automation tool like Instagress can seem like a great solution on the surface – who doesn’t want to save time when it comes to growing their following? But there are definite risks involved – you give up a lot of control and authenticity when you allow a bot to do your engaging for you, and ultimately, you could even lose your account.
What is your opinion of automated Instagram tools? Have any stories to share? Tell us in the comments!
