How To Create Instagram Chatbot for Free
By Joren Wouters • Updated on
You don’t want to bother with setting up an Instagram chatbot? Here’s why you should!
Research shows your leads are 9x more likely to convert when you follow up within 5 minutes. An Instagram bot can do that for you.
They provide 24/7 customer engagement that responds to followers instantly at a fraction of the cost.
Plus, you can do it in minutes, and you don’t need to know any code to build one.
In this Instagram chatbot tutorial, I will cover:
- What Instagram Chatbots are
- How to make your own Instagram chatbot for free
- How you can add AI to your Instagram bot
And you’ll get my FREE template so you don’t have to build it yourself, and you can just copy-and-paste it.
If you’re thinking about creating an Instagram Chatbot, you’ll find this guide super helpful.
Table of Contents
What is an Instagram Chatbot?
An Instagram Chatbot is a program that automatically replies to messages and comments on Instagram. Here’s what it can do:
- It can automatically send direct messages to your followers who comment on your posts. This is a great way to engage directly and personally with people interested in your content.
- The chatbot can quickly answer questions about your business. It provides instant info to your followers.
- It’s also a handy marketing tool. It can inform people about new products or special deals. It works around the clock as your marketing assistant.
These chatbots are very beneficial for businesses. They boost sales, generate leads, and automate customer support, all without constant human oversight.
How @theplantedrunner uses an Instagram Chatbot to collect 2,000+ leads on autopilot
Let’s look at an example of an Instagram bot that brings in leads 24/7, on auto-pilot.
Claire Bartholic is a Planted Based Running and Mindset coach and she runs the Instagram account @plantedrunner with over 50K followers:
I actually worked together with her to set up an Instagram chatbot that collects leads and grows her email list.
And her Instagram bot works in 4 simple steps:
- Any time someone comments “GUIDE” on her post, she automatically start an Instagram DM Conversation
- In this conversation, she first asks if people want to get her guide
- Once someone has confirmed their interest, she asks for the first name and email
- And lastly, she delivers her lead magnet inside the Instagram DM Conversation
And here’s how her funnel looks on Instagram (and the results she got):
By using this Instagram bot, she managed to collect over 2,000 emails at a 80% conversion rate!
(Compare that your average landing page, and you will notice it’s 16X higher!)
How to Make a Free Instagram Bot in 3 Steps
Setting up an Instagram DM Bot for your business is super easy. Here’s how you can do it in 3 steps:
Step 1: Create a Free Manychat account and connect it to Instagram
The first step is to create a Manychat account, which is the platform we will use to create our Instagram chatbot.
Manychat is one of the best Instagram chatbot platforms. I have used it for all of my clients for the last 4 years. I use them because it is:
- Easy to use: Manychat is simple, you don’t need to code. You can just drag and drop blocks to build your chatbot.
- 100% Meta-Approved: So you don’t risk getting banned on Instagram
- Cheap: They offer a free plan and their paid plans already starts at $15/month
So just click the button below to create your Free Manychat account (and get my 100% discount code):
Your Discount Code
joren_wouters_edc
This will bring you to the Manychat website, where you need to click on Get Started Free:
Select Instagram:
And log in with your Facebook account:
Once you are logged in, Manychat will verify your email address and will ask you to log in to your Instagram account.
When you have done this, you can eventually connect Manychat to one of the Instagram accounts you are an admin of:
And now you have successfully connected your Instagram account to Manychat!
And I also have a tutorial that explains all the steps you need to do to connect your Instagram Account to Manychat. I highly recommend checking it out, to ensure a good connection:
Step 2: Set up a Instagram DM Keyword Trigger
Now that we have connected our Instagram account to Manychat, we can start with creating our first Instagram DM Automation.
To automatically reply to messages on Instagram, we need to go to Automation and add a New Automation:
Each automation in Manychat starts with a trigger, which is an event that starts the automation.
And we want to start the automation when someone asks a specific question to us.
To do this, we can click on Add trigger:
Select Instagram and choose for User sends a direct message with a Keyword:
Let’s say, we are creating an Instagram chatbot for an eCommerce business and we want to automatically reply to messages about our return policy.
Then, we need to set it to Message contains return and add a Message Condition:
And set the Message Condition to message contains policy, so it looks like this:
So now every time someone asks as question about our return policy, we can automatically reply to it.
Step 3: Create automated response for the Instagram DM
Now, the next step is to set our automatic reply for this question. This will be:
At EcommerceBizz you always have the option of returning your order within 14 days after delivery. Make sure that the products have not been worn and have all tags attached when they are returned.
So now, every time someone DMs you about the return policy, Manychat will automatically reply to it.
And after you gave an answer to a question, you always need to ensure a good customer experience. So you want to check if the chatbot actually answered their question.
To do this, we can add another message to our Instagram DM Automation:
Does that answer your question?
And we can add two quick replies: Yes, it does! and No, I need help:
Quick replies in Manychat are buttons where people can click on in the Instagram DM.
So if someone clicks on the first button, we will thank them.
But if they click on the No button, we will connect them with one our support agents:
And this is great about Manychat. Manychat has a built-in live chat that you can use to forward a conversation to a human. And then a support agent can answer any questions your Instagram followers have.
To forward a conversation to an agent, we need to add the Actions block to our automation:
Within this block, we need to add three actions.
First, you need to click on + Action, choose for Live Chat and select the Mark Conversation as Open:
In Manychat, you have two types of conversations:
- Closed Conversations – handled by your chatbot
- Open Conversations – handled by your agents
By opening the conversation, it will be handled by your agents.
The next step is to assign the conversation to a specific team member.
Just add another action, click on Live Chat again and select Assign Conversation:
Here, you can select a group of members or a specific team member. In this case, I will just assign myself:
And lastly, we can notify the person that is assigned. By doing this, that agent will get an automatic email from Manychat.
So you can add another action, choose for Live Chat and click on Notify Assignee:
Now, your automation should look like this:
And that’s it! So now you only need to click on Set Live in the upper-right corner and your Instagram Chatbot is working!
And now you can basically set up an automation for each question you want to automatically answer with your Instagram Bot.
Or you can use AI to automatically answer question with your Instagram Bot.
How to Add AI to your Instagram Chatbot
The next step is to add AI to your Instagram Bot.
By adding AI, your chatbot will become much smarter and can answer more questions automatically. It can:
- Train itself on your data: your AI chatbot can train itself on your website or internal documents, and answer questions about them automatically
- Answer complex questions: Instead of replying to simple words, it can understand complete sentences (no matter how you ask them)
- Learn automatically: an AI chatbot gets better with each conversation because it learns from past experiences
This means customers get fast, smart help, making them happier. Happy customers are more likely to shop and come back. So, an Instagram AI bot is great for people needing help and businesses wanting to grow on Instagram.
To add AI to our Instagram Chatbot, we will be using Chatbase, because Manychat doesn’t have built-in AI.
Chatbase is a third party AI tool that you can train on your own data, such as your website and documents. And it starts at only $19 a month, which is really cheap.
So just click on the button below to create your Chatbase account:
Once you have created your account, you can click on New Chatbot:
And upload the document you want to train your chatbot for Instagram on:
For this tutorial, I will be using a knowledge base document of an eCommerce business, containing information about returns, delivery and warranty (which is part of my free template).
Important: You can also train your Chatbase chatbot on text, website URLs, questions and answers and even your Notion account. In this tutorial, I will be just using the File option.
And then click on Create chatbot to create your Chatbase chatbot:
Once your Chatbase chatbot is created, you can immediately talk to it:
Now that we’ve created the chatbot in Chatbase, the next step is to connect it to Manychat.
Basically, every time Instagram users ask a question in Manychat, we need to send that question to Chatbase.
Then, Chatbase answers the question for us and we can send the answer back to Manychat.
To create this integration, we are going to use Make.
Make is an integration platform we can use to connect applications with each other. In this case, we will be using it to connect Manychat to Chatbase.
Just click the button below to create your Make account and get 30 Days Make Pro for free (only if you click the button!):
This might sound like a lot, but I actually have a step-by-step tutorial on how you can set up the integration between Manychat and Chatbase via Make:
In this tutorial, I will not explain this integration in detail, but we will be using it to create our AI Instagram Chatbot.
So let’s set it up in Manychat.
In Manychat, go to Settings and click on Instagram:
Here, you will find the Default Reply. The Default Reply is the automation that is sent when no other automations is triggered in Manychat.
Just click on Select Existing and select the Default Reply automation that is part of my free template. It looks like this:
There are some important things with this automation. It starts with the Default Reply trigger and this must be set to Every time:
This ensures that this automation is sent every time someone asks a question.
Also, I have enabled the Skip story replies, because story replies are often not related to questions and don’t have to be answered by AI.
Secondly, we are saving the Last Text Input to a custom field called “Chatbase – Question”.
And lastly, we are triggering Make to send the question to Chatbase.
In Make, we are using the following scenario:
This scenario works in 4 steps:
- First, it gets the data from Manychat
- Then, it sends the question to Chatbase and Chatbase gives the answer to the question
- Next, we story the answer from Chatbase in a Manychat field (called “Chatbase – Answer”)
- And lastly, we are sending an automation in Manychat
This automation is also part of my free template and looks like this:
Here, we give the answer to the user’s question and ask if we answered their question.
If we didn’t answer it correctly or the user has more questions, we will connect them with a live chat agent.
Now, you only have to click on Set Live and your Instagram AI chatbot is live!
Free AI Instagram Chatbot Template
And that’s it! That’s how you create an AI Instagram chatbot in 2024.
And if you just fill in the form below, you will get my Instagram Chatbot Template for free 👇
Your Next Steps
And that’s it! That’s how you can create an Instagram AI chatbot in 2024.
But there’s actually much more that you can do with your Instagram Bot.
For example, you can also automatically send a DM when someone comments on an Instagram Post:
And if you want to get more familiar with Manychat, I also have an Instagram Beginner Course that you can find over here.
And as always, if you have any questions on creating Instagram Chatbots or using Manychat, please leave a comment below and I will reply as soon as possible!
Types of Instagram Chatbots
Instagram Story Responder Bots
These bots chat with people who reply to your Instagram stories. They’re like having a quick helper who answers right away when someone sends a message about your story.
DM (Direct Message) Bots for Answering FAQs
DM bots are like your own info desk inside Instagram. They answer common questions fast. Ask them something like “When do you close?” and they’ll give you the answer right away.
Chatbots for Order Placement and Product Recommendations
These bots are like smart shop assistants. They help customers pick and buy products. Tell them what you’re looking for, and they’ll suggest the best stuff or help you place an order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can create Instagram Chatbots?
Only Instagram Business Accounts and Instagram Creator accounts (with less than 500K followers) can create Instagram DM Bots.
If you currently have a personal account, just go to the Instagram app (it does not work on desktop), go to your profile and click on the menu bar at the top-right:
Click on Settings and privacy:
And then go to “For professionals” and click on Account type and tools:
And click on Switch to professional account:
What if I don’t see my account in the Manychat list of Instagram Accounts?
- Your Instagram account is not connected to a Facebook Page
- You are not an admin of the Instagram Account and/or Facebook Page
If you fix these two things, your Instagram account should show up in Manychat.
Why Should Businesses Use Instagram Chatbots?
Businesses should use Instagram chatbots because they help answer customer questions quickly, can sell products, and work all day and night. This means happier customers and more sales.
What Features Should I Look for in an Instagram Chatbot?
Look for an Instagram chatbot that can talk to customers naturally, understand different questions, send helpful answers, and show your products or services. It’s good if it can learn from chats to get better over time.
Can Instagram Chatbots Improve Customer Engagement?
Yes, Instagram chatbots can improve customer engagement. They talk to customers right away, keep them interested, and can even send them updates or special offers, making customers more likely to stay connected with your brand.
Are Instagram Chatbots Suitable for E-commerce?
Instagram chatbots are great for e-commerce. They can show products, help customers shop, answer questions about orders, and even handle simple problems. This makes shopping easy and fun for customers.
Can Small Businesses Benefit from Instagram Chatbots?
Small businesses can really benefit from Instagram chatbots. They help handle customer chats without needing a lot of staff, save time, and can even help make more sales, all of which are super helpful for smaller companies.
Is It Possible to Personalize Interactions Using Instagram Chatbots?
Yes, it’s possible to personalize interactions using Instagram chatbots. They can use a customer’s name, remember past chats, and suggest products based on what the customer likes, making each chat feel special and personal.
How does a chatbot for Instagram work?
A chatbot for Instagram works by automatically responding to messages and comments on your posts. It helps manage customer interactions, answer frequently asked questions, and engage followers without manual effort.
Can Instagram bots work for small businesses?
Yes, Instagram bots work well for small businesses. They automate customer responses, streamline sales processes, and handle basic customer service tasks. It allows small business owners to focus on growing their business.
How can I integrate a chatbot with my Instagram account?
To integrate a chatbot with your Instagram account, you’ll need to use a platform like Manychat. Once connected, you can create automated flows that guide users through interactions, answer common questions, and provide a seamless experience for followers.
What is a chatbot flow, and how does it improve user interactions?
A chatbot flow is a sequence of automated messages that guide users through a conversation. It’s a conversation flow that streamlines communication, so followers get the information they need quickly.
Can I use automation to handle customer inquiries on Instagram?
Yes, you can use automation to handle customer inquiries on Instagram. You can automate responses to frequently asked questions, process orders, and provide support. This way, your business runs smoothly even outside working hours.
I like!!!
Can a chatbot be used on my Square space homepage to personalize the experience by asking what the user wants to look at first? I am thinking of a completely automated bot with no human backup. I am planning a complete rebuild. It is a site that will have 2 artists, 2 subject matter options (educational/engagement opportunities) and a store for affordable options. Also how will I know if you answer this question?
Hey Lenore! Yes, you can create a chatbot and place it on your Squarespace homepage.
What service do you recommend for this proposed chatbot? Can it be free or inexpensive?
Wait does this mean i have to pay for ads?
If you want to use ads, you need to pay for them.
We want to make a simple chat bot for our game using Instagram private message like start the game using “!start” Command and “!help” and other commands which will be used. Is there a way we could do it for free?
Currently not… But Instagram is working on opening its platform for chatbots, so hopefully, this will be possible in the coming months!
Is there any way we can reach out for Instagram APIs (any email id)?
Unfortunately, you cannot. It is only possible to apply for the Instagram API through one of the chatbot builders, such as ManyChat, Chatfuel or MobileMonkey. And even then the possibility that you are included in the Beta is really small.
Use the smmbot.net service, you can use it to create a chat bot on Instagram.
Thank you for the suggestion, I will have a look at it 🙂
chat bots can be very helpful for responding on the queries of the customers on time, hi there! thanks for sharing this informative article with us its really very helpful for me.
Thank you 🙂
Hi there! I wish more companies will be allowed to connect IG to their conversational motors, but until then, lets try Manychat or Chatfuel! thanks for this.
Hey Lordee! Yes, I would like that too. But for now, we still need to wait for the official release to come…
Hi there I am doing some self learning about instagram marketing and I must say that this article i very helpful for me, using chatbots can really be very helpful for a brand.
Thank you!
I was reading Instagram marketing, and i got your blog. After reading this whole blog, I got some new information regarding Instagram chatbot. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Thank you, Ruby!
when i reply chat bot still replying with me in the same time
Hey Isaac! What is your question precisely?
Hey, thanks for the article, it was very useful. Can you please answer, what chatbot would you recommend for a small store on Instagram? Smmbot, manychat, maybe other
I would recommend to use ManyChat.
Is this mandate to have account with 10k followers to integrate chatbot. What if its an new account and need to have chat automation. It this possible?
Hey Dinesh! Yes, you can now use Instagram chat automation with every business account, regardless of the number of followers you have 🙂
Excellent tutorial! Thank you.
Glad that you liked it, Derek!
Hello, is there a chatbot where I can send an automatic welcome message to the profile that starts following our Instagram account?
Unfortunately, this is not possible because Instagram doesn’t allow this.
Manychat customer support doesn’t respond. I created workflows but after trial is over credit card payment is not going through. Does not even let me try another credit card. Created tickets but no avail. Is there a faster way to reach manychat support.
Are you using an credit card from India? For some reason, ManyChat doesn’t accept these. I recommend trying out a different card of ask a friend abroad to use their card (if this is the case).