How To Automatically Reply to Instagram Story Replies

In this tutorial, I will explain how to set up a default reply to Instagram Story replies.

Basically, we will create a Instagram Story Bot.

I will show you:

• What platform you should use
• How to connect it to your Instagram account
• And how to set up an automatic reply when anyone replies to your Instagram Story

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Create a free Manychat Account

The first step is to create your free Manychat account. Manychat is one of the best chat platforms for Instagram. I’ve used them for the last 5 years for almost all my clients, because it’s:

1. Easy to use, even if you have no experience with chat automation, you can get started right away.
2. Meta-approved, so you can use them without the risk of getting banned.
3. Cheap, they offer a free plan, and the Pro plan starts at only $15/month.

So you can just click on the button below to create your Manychat account (and get my 100% discount code):

Create Free Manychat Account

Click on Get started free in the right upper corner:

And select Instagram and log in with your Instagram account:

I have another tutorial that explains each step for connecting your Instagram account to Manychat. I recommend reviewing it to ensure the connection is correct:

 

Step 2: Set up Instagram Story Reply trigger in Manychat

Now that we’ve successfully connected our Instagram account to ManyChat, we can start by creating our auto reply to Instagram stories.

In ManyChat, go to Automation and click on New Flow:

Then, select Start from scratch at the right bottom:

And here we can type in the name of the flow, we will call it “Instagram Stories Reply”:

Now, ManyChat automatically creates a flow for us that consists of a starting step and an Instagram message.

First, we will change the starting step. The starting step is a trigger that starts the flow in ManyChat. And in this case, this will be when someone replies to your Instagram story.

So, just click on Add Trigger under the Starting Step:

And then you can select “Instagram” and choose the Instagram Story Reply:

This will automatically open up the trigger where you can determine the settings of the Instagram Story Reply.

If you want to only reply to specific stories, you need to set it to Specific Story and then click on Select Story:

This will open up a pop-up where you can select the stories that are currently running on your Instagram account:

However, for this tutorial, I am going to set it to All Stories.

Next, we need to determine to what words we want to reply. For example, users can get a free ebook when they message “ebook1”, we can set message is ebook1 and click on Save:

And that’s it! Now you automatically reply when somebody messages you “ebook1” after seeing your Instagram Story.

 

Step 3: Send Default Reply for Story Reply

Next, we need to determine the message we want to send to the user.

To do that, you can just click on the first message in the ManyChat flow, which opens a screen on the left:

Then, we can type in the message we want to send. And this message can consist of text and quick replies (buttons in ManyChat).

Let’s say we want to give away a free ebook to the people that messaged us, then we can type “Thank you for requesting the ebook! Click the button below to get it”:

Also, we need to add a quick reply. Because before we give away the free checklist, we want to get the email of the user.

So just click on Add Quick Reply, type in “Get the ebook”, setting the “When This Button is Pressed” to Instagram and click on Done:

Now when somebody clicks on the quick reply, another message will be sent to the user.

And in this message, we will ask for the email of the user. So click on the Message, delete the default text and select the User Input element:

Now, you can type in “Allright, to what email can I send the ebook?” and set the Reply Type to Email:

Because we set the Reply Type to Email, ManyChat automatically checks if the user filled in a valid email.

Also, you need to scroll down and remove the text under “Skip button text”:

This will make sure users cannot skip the question 🙂

The last step we need to do is give the ebook to the user. So we can just drag an arrow from Next step, letting it go and click on Instagram:

And thank them for requesting the ebook + provide a button that will go to the checklist once they click on it:

And that’s it, now you should have a flow that looks like this:

The last step. is to click on Publish in the top-right corner and you’re all set!

NOTE: After clicking on Publish, don’t forget to Activate your Instagram Comments trigger at the beginning of the flow:

What if it’s not working?

Although you set up everything correctly, sometimes the automatic reply for Instagram Stories is not sending anything.

And if that’s happening to you, just go to Settings in ManyChat, select Instagram and click on Refresh permissions:

This will solve your problem almost anytime.

 

Here’s Your Next Step

And that’s how you set up a default reply for Instagram Story Replies.

But if you want to drive even more results for your business, you should auto DM anyone who comments on your posts.

Check out this tutorial to learn how you can do that:

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Default Reply for Story Reply?

A default reply for an Instagram Story Reply is an automatic message you send when anyone replies to your Instagram story.

By using tools like Manychat, you can automatically reply to Instagram Story replies in 3 simple steps:

1. Create a Free Manychat account
2. Set up Instagram Story Reply trigger
3. Send Default Reply for Story Reply