Using bots to automate engagement on social media is a controversial topic. Understanding the pros and cons is important to know whether bots are for you.

Disclaimer: I would strongly advise against using automated engagement tools. But I believe you should be aware of what they can do, because it is helpful to know what is out there and for specific use cases they might be useful.

If you have ever tried to build up an account on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube or Pinterest, you know how tough it is to gain followers.

You probably know that you can buy 1000s of followers for a few bucks on shady forums. But by now everyone must know that followers are not the metric you want to be going after.

You want engagement. Because what good are 1 million followers, if none of them see your content. Because that’s what happens when your followers don’t engage with you.

At some point, the algorithm of the social media platform of your choice just does not show your content to them anymore.

Great example: Youtuber RayWilliamJohnson. Almost 10 million subscribers on Youtube.

Viewer count on last video (at the time of writing this article): 24k. That’s incredibly low considering his massive following. If the algorithm would show all of his subscribers his regular videos, you can be sure that he would have a lot more engagement.

But the less people click, the less new content is shown to them – it becomes a death spiral.

Nonetheless, getting subscribers is tedious. Even with good engagement you may struggle. So one way of speeding up the process is automation.

BE AWARE: this is a very risky road. The social media platforms are not exactly fans of automation and will penalize you if they notice.

That being said, as a savvy marketer you should know that automation options exist.

One of the many options out there is Jarvee. Basically, what it and all its competitors can do is schedule your social media posts, and automate your engagement.

They describe their bot as a fast way to get more traffic, followers, and business leads.

Meaning: you spam comments, likes and follow random accounts in the hope that someone will follow you back and start engaging with your content.

You define your target audience, and your bot crawls through accounts that might be interested in you, interacting with them in a pre-defined, hopefully natural-seeming way. In an ideal world, the bot does what you’d do yourself to earn Instagram engagement if you only had the time.

This can definitely work, but your content actually has to be good.

I cannot express this enough. If you use an automation tool, chances are you are on the brink of being flagged as spam by annoyed users. You need to convince skeptical users that you are not spamming, you are producing high quality content.

If your content is not on point, two things could happen, neither one of them good:

1) You can quickly be flagged as spam. Especially if you’re only promoting deals.

2) You might get some followers, but you will get low engagement. If your engagement to follower ratio is low, the algorithm will give your new content less reach and you’re immediately in the death spiral. By then its over, even if you manage not to get flagged as spam.

I would recommend testing out tools like these on an account which you have no problems losing. Because you need to get a feel for how far you can go before the social media platform whips out the ban hammer. Especially Instagram has been cracking down on automation heavily recently.