Instagram Journey - Automation Scripts

[SenpaiShop]

Hi all,

Decided to come out of the woodwork. I've been lurking BHW for about 3 years, mostly picking up knowledge on SEO. But now I've started my first business and I'm working on the social media.

What I've done:

• Using a custom written script cron to post on Twitter and Instagram products from my Shopify Site.
• Instagress for commenting and products. Highly customised schedule, mimics human activity.
• ifttt.com to post Facebook into Twitter, Instagram to Pinterest

What my script does:
It runs on my VPS and each day picks a product from the Shopify Store and stores it's ID into a database. From here it then queries what IDs are in the database and keeps it there for 7 days. It will then tweet + Instagram post 3 times a day.

9am - 11:59am - 3pm

How my Stats are now:

Store Statistics since doing this:

 

[Google Prince]

Sounds like you have a good script & plan to make some money, keep going!

 

[mynameisfrankenstein]

good work on the scripting. how does your post to instagram work?

 

[SenpaiShop]

good work on the scripting. how does your post to instagram work?

There's actually a github public script for this, all I've done is utilise that and merge it into my Twitter posting script as well! If you have basic > intermediate experience with PHP it's rather easy (I can't link yet).

It basically logs into your account and uses the Instagram API to send the image you send, I simply added a snippet that downloads the shopify image before hand as a JPG to my VPS and then upload that

 

[SenpaiShop]

Update on this:

I've been leaving this on autopilot for a while, but on the side tweaking the script ready for my next revision.

The plan is to make it take the Tags from the shopify product and add them as the primary hashtags. I will stock this at 15, this means each product will rank SEO wise for those tags as well as be on instagram which is a huge majority of our traffic.

I've spent around £100 on sending goodies to influences I'm testing.

I will also be adding Imagick filters to the images to give them the whole 'instagram' vibe. All this automated.

I have got a revision of the script which contains an overlay watermark I will be pushing at the same time.

 

[SenpaiShop]

Update since the 25th! I decided to hold back on the influences because I want to work on growing my own audience. However! The Instagram is 100% growing! Saturdays do tend to be very quiet though.
I've updated the script to now incorporate tags from Shopify and make them hashtags, this means I'm no longer using my generic anime tags and I can target a larger audience!

My sites bouncerate has dropped too! From 69% to 58%. So 100% improvements there!

I have an official vendor for various different types of merchandise, instead of upselling dropshipped stuff via Instagram.

I'm going to work on Facebook more soon and then maybe Twitter? But I feel like Twitter isn't as strong as FB and Instagram.

All is going well! I'm averaging +780 followers a month

 

[tbdrogue]

It seems you have a pretty agressive f/u amount per day. Isn't that too much 200-400 unfollows per day? Would you mind sharing some more of your instagress settings? Do you also like photos? Thank you in advance.

 

[SenpaiShop]

It seems you have a pretty agressive f/u amount per day. Isn't that too much 200-400 unfollows per day? Would you mind sharing some more of your instagress settings? Do you also like photos? Thank you in advance.

Hey!

So the way I do it is that it has a 'staffing' structure. It works between 9am - 5pm And then the odd hour in the evenings as if someone is working from home.
Ontop of this, I change the schedule every week! Doing this allows the account to see more legitimate

I currently run the following settings:

Follows Per Hour: 25
Unfollows Per Hour: 40
Comments Per Hour: 15
Likes Per Hour: 40

The stuff being posted is also scheduled for every 3 hours. I will be adding a randomer to this to make it automatically post up to 15 minutes late.

I also engage in conversation manually when I get replies from the bot and answer a LOT of PMs

 

[DEFINE]

Good stuff man, good luck!

 

[MEng]

solid plan! good luck.

 

[tbdrogue]

Interesting, thank you for your answer and settings. Have you already tried to optimize your Instagress settings? Tried to improve the targeted hashtags, maybe change them up a little for some days and analyze which ones bring you the best results? Maybe add targeted competitor usernames?
Because when I was on the Instagress trial, I used slightly slower settings than you have and was seeing nearly the same income of followers per day, and this was towards a very, very specific "nerd" niche.
Follows Per Hour: 20
Unfollows Per Hour: 25
Comments Per Hour: 0 *no comments
Likes Per Hour: 35

For the 3 days I had a total of 170 new followers.

I don't know, there are plenty of variables, I've just started as you, am trying to learn and how can I improve so It's nice to be able to discuss this with someone and find better routes together.

 

[SenpaiShop]

Interesting, thank you for your answer and settings. Have you already tried to optimize your Instagress settings? Tried to improve the targeted hashtags, maybe change them up a little for some days and analyze which ones bring you the best results? Maybe add targeted competitor usernames?
Because when I was on the Instagress trial, I used slightly slower settings than you have and was seeing nearly the same income of followers per day, and this was towards a very, very specific "nerd" niche.
Follows Per Hour: 20
Unfollows Per Hour: 25
Comments Per Hour: 0 *no comments
Likes Per Hour: 35

For the 3 days I had a total of 170 new followers.

I don't know, there are plenty of variables, I've just started as you, am trying to learn and how can I improve so It's nice to be able to discuss this with someone and find better routes together.

Also need to take into consideration niche. My niche is quite small so that might explain it.

I haven't tweaked with going for targeted competitors yet. But I would like to try that! I'm messing around with methods on a weekly basis at the moment but I think I'd like to try monthly. I will keep you updated, however I'm happy commenting more extra as it fits into my strategy which is BRAND AWARENESS

 

[tbdrogue]

Also need to take into consideration niche. My niche is quite small so that might explain it.

I haven't tweaked with going for targeted competitors yet. But I would like to try that! I'm messing around with methods on a weekly basis at the moment but I think I'd like to try monthly. I will keep you updated, however I'm happy commenting more extra as it fits into my strategy which is BRAND AWARENESS

I see what you mean, I wish I had more time to mix around and switch settings. It will be nice to hear about your results. I'm still trying to figure out how I will handle automation, and still not sure if I will go with instagress, which seems to be the easiest option for only one or two accounts, if I will go with massplanner wich seems to be the favorite around these parts, or if I will go with followliker wich seems to be the cheaper.

 

[komo22]

Sounds like an awesome plan would like to maybe do some automation and the hashtags are a great idea! Sent a pm

 

[SenpaiShop]

After changing to stricter settings (Specifying specific users etc) we've found this isn't working as well. Turns out using the 'username' settings is an issue. I will be going back to generic terms HOWEVER I will be changing this weekly in relation to upcoming themes

 

[tbdrogue]

Turns out using the 'username' settings is an issue. I will be going back to generic terms HOWEVER I will be changing this weekly in relation to upcoming themes

Well this is an interesting find! thank you for the update.

 

[SenpaiShop]

Well this is an interesting find! thank you for the update.

No problem, I found it halved my growth (A bit demoralising) and as such halved my interactivity! I'm going to focus on 'cosplay' next as they tend to have very nice followings and I can follow this up with working with them!