Irrespective of the industry you are in, if you’re not on Instagram, you’re missing out on the new ‘search engine’ for a majority of demographics. 

 

With more consumers discovering new brands, products, services, and trends through social media, it is becoming important for businesses to do more than just post consistent content – they need to proactively engage their audience. 

 

While most Instagram engagement can be seen driven by community specialists and social media marketers manually, handling the same at scale as the business grows is tough. 

 

That’s where Instagram automation comes in. 

 

In this post, we’re discussing Instagram automation vs manual management strategies, and what you should choose.

What is Instagram Automation?

Instagram automation refers to using the platform’s features or tools to handle repetitive tasks on your behalf. This could include liking posts, following/ unfollowing users, sending direct messages, scheduling content, or responding to comments. Automation tools like Interakt are designed to help businesses actively engage their audience with several benefits: 

– Time-saving – Automation can handle mundane tasks like responding to comments or story DMs about product/ service pricing, answering FAQs, and more. 

– Consistency – Businesses can ensure their content is published on time and all engagement is responded to actively in a consistent brand voice. 

– Scalability – Automation allows you to handle multiple conversations simultaneously, letting you target wider user demographics on the platform. 

– Nurturing – The timeliness of engagement driven by automated workflows can help nurture a user’s interest and nudge them towards making a purchase.

What is Manual Instagram Management?

Manual Instagram management refers to a more hands-on approach to interacting with your target audience. From posting content to responding to DMs, comments, and shares, this strategy requires a dedicated resource to manage the platform interaction. While it is time-consuming, it comes with some benefits: 

– Authenticity – The manual approach ensures more personalized interactions that help build trust. 

– Niche targeting – Direct engagement can help identify and cater to a very specific audience, creating a more high-value customer base. 

– Real-time adaptability – Manual management allows you to instantly course correct should an approach not work for engaging your audience.

Key Differences: Automation vs. Manual Management

While both strategies come with their pros and cons, let’s discuss the key differences to understand what works better:

1. Time efficiency

Automating repetitive tasks like responding to FAQs, price-please queries and more can save time. This helps human agents focus on more complex issues while keeping the engagement running on auto. 

 

On the other hand, manually managing Instagram requires hiring a dedicated resource and investing a significant amount of time on the platform. 

2. Audience engagement

Automation tools can help streamline interactions like sending DMs and responding to comments, ensuring no opportunity is missed. When using tools like Interakt, you can further set up custom workflows to handle more complex conversations on the platform. 

 

On the other hand, manual engagement can often lead to delayed responses, missing out on potential customers.

3. Content publishing

Automation tools guarantee that your content goes live at the most optimal times. This helps your business ensure consistency even during holidays or off-hours, keeping your brand top of the mind in competitive markets. 

Manually managing the posting schedule can often lead to missed opportunities to tap into trends or peak engagement hours. 

4. Cost

Instagram automation does require investing in tools. But if you’re using a solution like Interakt, it helps automate engagement on multiple channels including Instagram and WhatsApp, helping you drive higher ROI. The automation tool acts as a team to manage all interactions on the social media platform. 

 

If you intend to manage things manually, it requires you to hire manpower for simply managing one platform alone as it is high on effort.

5. Scalability

If you’re running marketing and advertising campaigns to boost engagement, Instagram automation tools offer easy scaling. You can handle multiple interactions in comments, DMs, and Stories simultaneously using a solution like Interakt. 

 

Manually managing the platform is limited by resources and the time allocated to Instagram. This makes it harder to scale without hiring more manpower.

6. Risk

Unless you have an engagement strategy and an authorized Instagram automation tool like Interakt, you can run into compliance issues. Meta actively flags bots and mass-promotion tools that enable bulk likes, follows, and unfollows. 

 

When approaching Instagram manually, the risk of being flagged on Instagram by the algorithms is lower as long as you follow all the engagement guidelines.

7. Insights

Instagram automation tools provide detailed analytics. This helps you track campaign performance, identify trends, and improve your engagement strategy proactively. 

 

Manual management and engagement are often measured based on assumptions. This limits the takeaways a business can gather to improve audience engagement on the platform.

What to choose: Instagram Automation vs. manual Management

It is a fact that manually managing the platform gives you more control over what content gets published when, who you engage with or respond to, and how you do it. But in times when consumers seek instant gratification, manually managing each interaction can only result in delays. 

 

A good strategy is to tap into the power of both. 

 

We recommend identifying and automating repetitive tasks or engagement that can be answered with standardized responses. In addition, you should also have a seamless hand-off process between the automated workflow and a human agent should an interaction require manual intervention. That’s where authentic and personalized manual interaction can help close the loop!

Conclusion

Fast-growing brands on Instagram are using both engagement strategies in tandem to keep their audience hooked, driving more conversions from the platform. 

So if you have been struggling to keep up with queries and managing complex requests, it’s time to set up Instagram automation. 

Get started with Interakt's Instagram.