If you’ve got a small business and you’re not on social media, you’re screwing up. Big time. 2.4 billion people are on Instagram, and all of those people are scrolling, commenting, and liking your Instagram Story — all the things you want for business visibility. And those people can all be potential sales.
People are on the platform 24/7 — just go anywhere in public and you’ll see plenty of heads buried in their phones. Small businesses need to create their Instagram marketing strategy. It just makes sense for brand awareness. Many small businesses have had their fortunes changed thanks to marketing directly toward their Instagram followers along with the ones out there in the wild.
With IG’s highly visual format, the platform showcases your products, services, and brand personality in a way that’s eye-catching and instantly shareable. The platform’s discovery tools — from hashtags to Explore pages to targeted ads — make it easy for potential new Instagram followers to find you, even if they’ve never heard of you, but stumbled on a random Instagram post they loved.
Instagram’s engagement features (Stories, the all-powerful Instagram Reel, Lives, polls) connect you with potential customers in real-time, fostering those one-to-one relationships and trust that can turn potential customers into loyal followers. And with over a billion users who are ready to double-tap, comment, and share, it’s a massive stage where your small business can have a big voice — without spending a fortune on marketing your Instagram account.
The obvious downside? Managing your business Instagram account can be time-consuming. Posting quality content, answering customer direct messages, dealing with influencers, and more can overwhelm a small team.
So, what do smart companies do?
They automate parts of their Instagram marketing and engagement with the help of some tools that get that critical visibility across the board.
Does Instagram Allow Automation?
They sure do. If you’re Meta-approved, that’s the seal of quality that you need. (Manychat is, just sayin’.)
But, Instagram doesn’t allow automation designed to manipulate the algorithm or misrepresent what you present via your account.
An easy example of bad automation is using a spammy bot or duplicitous growth services that make it seem like you have more followers or engagement than you actually do. That’s just kinda… gross. Don’t be that person. Be authentic with those Instagram posts — people can tell.
Using services that auto-follow/unfollow accounts, leave mass comments, or buff up your follower count with fake followers is against Instagram’s terms of service. You’ll find yourself on the banned list real quick, and Instagram will shut down that account faster than you can buy new followers.
Instagram wants real people, followers, and authentic engagement — especially when it comes to how a small business handles their digital marketing. Acquiring thousands of fake followers and comments won’t boost revenue; instead it’ll repel prospective customers. Good automation services work with Instagram to ensure their tools comply with IG’s terms of service. Approved Instagram automation includes scheduling posts, reporting, DMs, and auto likes/replies (within your own content).
Because Manychat is for the people, we compiled a list of Instagram automation tools that work with Instagram. These tools help manage and grow your account while saving serious time.
The 9 Best Instagram Automation Tools
By all means, this list isn’t perfect. Everyone has their own needs when it comes to how they’re playing the social media engagement game. Having a strong Instagram presence is equal to their Instagram success.
Some tools are better for different needs: try a few to see which ones work best for what you’re trying to do with your small business.
Kicksta
Price: from $49 per month, 14-day money-back guarantee
Kicksta is a simple automation tool that drives growth by automatically liking people’s posts. Don’t worry — it doesn’t go buck wild spamming other accounts with comments or DMs.
It works by liking one or two posts from accounts that already follow other accounts you’ve specified are similar to yours. In doing so, it educates potential followers on your account content, and then they can decide whether or not to follow that Instagram post featuring your world-famous chili dog that you’re so proud of.
The platform also includes a handy hashtag generator tool and manager.
Best for: Marketing agencies or influencers who want to speed up their growth.
Features include:
- An Instagram-like automation system that helps to capture the attention of potential followers. This is brand awareness 101.
- A hashtag generator tool that enables you to manage and group hashtags to use on different posts, saving you from having to manually input them all the time.
Available on: Web
Trustpilot rating: 3 out of 5
Buffer
Price: Free plan, $6 per month for Essentials plan (or $60 per year) per social channel
Buffer is a social media management toolkit that helps you schedule posts on Instagram (and other social networks) and measure the performance of your content.
Buffer is easy for brand awareness. This simple drag-and-drop scheduling tool gives you a visual representation of your content calendar, which helps when you’re paying attention to what lands with your Instagram followers. Buffer’s analytics tool can help you build detailed reports with metrics that matter to your business account.
Best for: Small businesses and influencers who want to plan and analyze content.
Features include:
- Post scheduler tool to plan and automatically publish posts at specific times or via its smart auto-schedule.
- An at-a-glance view of your social media content calendar.
- Team collaboration on content, including an approvals process.
- Ability to include a “first comment” on your posts for things like hashtags or links in bio reminders.
- Analytics dashboard featuring demographic analysis, Stories and post engagements, and hashtag performance.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5
Sprout Social
Price: from $89 per user per month, free trials available (no credit card required)
Sprout Social is another social media management platform similar to Buffer but with a few extra features. The cheapest plan allows you to manage up to five profiles, automatic scheduling and posting, and an all-in-one social inbox.
As an added bonus, you can also monitor and repost user-generated content (UGC) within the platform and monitor reviews across multiple platforms.
Best for: Medium to large businesses with social media teams trying to pump up that Instagram strategy.
Features include:
- Management of up to 10 social profiles (advanced plans only).
- All-in-one social inbox to monitor DMs, comments, replies, and mentions.
- Automatic content publishing, as well as content drafting and queuing.
- Review management tool to monitor reviews from Facebook, Glassdoor, Trustpilot, etc.
- Detailed, professional analytics of group, profile, and post-level reporting.
- Tasking and social CRM tools.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5
Combin
Price: Free plan available, from $15 per month for standard and $20 for the pro plan.
Combin is a social media tool tentatively included on this list; its features are handy and impressive. It offers a post and Stories scheduler desktop application (which is free) and allows you to preview your Instagram feed before posting to help create a strong brand voice. It also offers a “growth service” platform that allows you to follow/unfollow or engage with Instagram users’ content en masse — which is against Instagram’s TOS.
Combin is transparent about the risks involved with abusing this system and recommends using it within “safe limits” (we wouldn’t recommend using the growth platform side of Combin if you want to be absolutely safe).
Best for small businesses and influencers who want to build a brand aesthetic. This is a great way to use Instagram to see your popularity creep from just a small business, but into a brand with some oomf.
Features include:
- A desktop application (i.e., doesn’t require internet access to work).
- Ability to schedule Instagram posts and Stories using an appealing content calendar.
- Unlimited account management for up to 15 Instagram accounts.
- Automated Instagram engagement, e.g., comments, likes, Story views, and follow/unfollow (which you can use manually instead of en masse).
Available on: Desktop app on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu
G2 rating: 3 out of 5
Hashtagsforlikes
Price: Free features available, from $19 per week for pro plans.
Hashtagsforlikes is a hashtags research tool that helps you find the best hashtags for your posts.
Search competitors, influencers, and social media hashtags you’d like to target. The tool’s built-in analytics suggest similar trending hashtags you can curate and save as a set. This tool is a timesaver for those manually searching for hashtags to include in posts.
The pro subscriptions offer a dedicated growth manager, performance reports, and live analytics on trending hashtags. The tool is safe because it doesn’t mess with your Instagram profile.
Best for: Influencers who want to gain exposure and Instagram followers.
Features include:
- User-friendly hashtag generator tool to help find new and trending Instagram hashtags.
- Social media hashtags performance reports that help you see which hashtags are working well for you.
- Option to curate hashtags into groups that you can use in future posts to save time.
Available on: Web
G2 rating: 5 out of 5
Tailwind
Price: Free plan available, from $19.99 per month (or $119.98 annually) for pro plans
With its automated post scheduler and hashtag finder, Tailwind is another well-rounded tool. These particular features are great, but Tailwind stands out among others because of its Smart.Bio feature, which is a dynamic landing page for clickable links on your Instagram posts.
The tool also features a “Smart Visual Designer” that helps you create high-quality Instagram content that automatically applies brand styles.
Best for: Small businesses often use the “link in bio” phrase.
Features include:
- An intelligent social media scheduling system that automatically posts when your audience is most active.
- Hashtag finder tool that suggests similar hashtags for your posts.
- Smart.Bio feature that auto-updates your bio link with recent posts to which you can add links (to drive traffic to your website, store, blog post, etc).
- Detailed profile performance analytics with summary reports daily, weekly, or monthly.
Available on: Web, iOS, and Android
G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5
CrowdRiff
Price: Not publicly available (you have to request pricing)
CrowdRiff is a marketing tool that helps you source user-generated content across the web, including social media accounts. Its primary focus is content from the travel and tourism industry, making it a niche and powerful tool for those industries.
Use it to quickly find, secure the rights, and share UGC as part of your social media marketing strategy. CrowdRiff also features an automated post scheduler similar to other tools on this list.
Best for: Small businesses in the travel and tourism industry.
Features include:
- A media library in which you can store brand assets that are approved for use by team members and PR agencies.
- Ability to source UGC and acquire rights to use it on your brand’s business accounts.
- Engagement rate tracking for your visuals will help you optimize future posts based on the insights you learn.
- Publisher platform that automatically creates posts and Instagram Stories.
Available on: Web
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5
Manychat
Price: Free plan or $15 per month for Pro plan
We’re an official Facebook (now Meta) Business Partner. We help you automate those DMs, comments, and keep you focused on your business. The best part? It’s so easy.
Its clean, intuitive interface makes it easy to visualize the path of chat conversations. It also includes growth tools that direct people into your chatbot flow from posts and Stories — without feelings like they’re interacting with a bot. You’ll be the one directing the conversation. A natural, human-centric conversation with your Instagram followers, especially when you’re a small business, totally matters. No one wants to feel like they’re being explicitly sold to via social media.
We’ve also got detailed tutorials on how to build the best chatbot for your business and walkthroughs of its Instagram growth tools that work alongside the chat functions.
Best for: Small businesses and influencers who want to generate chat leads.
Features include:
- An intuitive Flow Builder: Easily build automated chatbot flows.
- Keyword triggers: Send users into a chatbot flow from DMs using predetermined Keywords or phrases. For example, let’s say you want to give away a freebie digital guide. Just create a post or Story that asks users to DM you the word “eBook” and when they do, Manychat will send them into the giveaway chatbot flow.
- Comments Automation: Automatically like and reply to comments on your content and send those users DMs. You can even create randomized replies so that not everyone gets the same response for more authentic user engagement.
- Story Mentions Trigger: Instantly respond to anyone who mentions you in their Story. You can automate a quick “thank you” message or build a flow that generates leads or encourages further engagement.
- Conversation Starters: Direct common customer questions or sales into specific flows. For example, you can create a flow that showcases your current sales or helps people understand shipping costs.
- Information capture: Manychat automatically captures and stores user-provided information that you can use across your marketing channels and for future campaigns.
- Live Chat: You can set up unlimited team members to speak with people, and the Live Chat dashboard shows you key customer information and interactions.
- Popular integrations: To automate internal processes, use MailChimp, Klaviyo, Shopify, Google Sheets, Zapier, and more.
Available on: Web, iOS, Android
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5
Start Automating Your Instagram Today
There are good and bad Instagram automation tools available across the internet. The tools in this list are all safe to use and will help grow your brand on Instagram without violating Instagram’s TOS.
When you’re researching other tools to use, look for these key red flags to alert you to a suspicious product:
- Instagram digital marketing tools like Jarvee, Upleap, Growthoid (and others) that “sell” followers, likes, or comments.
- A product that needs your Instagram username and password to perform its services (instead of opening a separate, native Instagram log-in window that asks for permission).
- Tools that use any part of the Instagram name in their brand are at risk of copyright infringement and are likely to be shut down.
If you’re looking to automate your Instagram account, we’ve got options. Let’s talk. Instagram success can be yours if you’re trying to level up your brand identity as a small business.
For a small business owner, embracing Instagram automation is like supercharging your Instagram marketing strategy without adding grueling social media hours to your day. Integrating automation into your Instagram for small business game plans, you streamline mind-numbing tasks like responding to DMs, engaging with comments, and nurturing leads — all essential for boosting brand awareness. By going hard on automation, it frees you up to focus on the creative aspects of social media marketing, like crafting compelling content and building genuine relationships with your audience, which also lures potential customers.
Instagram strategy via automation allows a small business owner to stay responsive and active, making your brand feel more present and engaged, even while you’re off juggling the endless demands of running a business — not obsessing about how to best use Instagram. In a crowded social space, the right automation tools help you cut through the noise and amplify your presence, making sure you’re always top of mind with your Instagram followers.
