Part 3 · Operate
People who replied
Somebody who replied to your post raised their hand. Answering them is the only path these networks allow, and it is the good one.
01What it is
Reads comments on your own Instagram posts and replies to your own Bluesky and Mastodon posts, keeps the few worth answering, and drafts a reply you can change or replace before it goes. On Instagram it drafts a private reply too. Nothing is sent until you press Send.
02Why it exists
A person who comments has told you they are interested, in public, unprompted. They are warmer than any cold contact and they cost nothing to find.
Instagram permits one private message per comment, precisely because that person engaged first. It permits nothing at all to anybody who has not. Every tool in this category implies it can message your followers or people who used a hashtag; none of them can, and the ones that appear to are scraping.
That constraint is the product’s position rather than a gap in it. A reply to a question is welcome. A message to a stranger is what gets an account restricted.
03How to use it
- 01Connect Instagram, Bluesky or Mastodon under Posts, then Accounts. Instagram needs a Professional account; through Facebook Login it also needs a linked Facebook Page.
- 02Open Posts, then Replies, or the card on Today. Replies are read once a day on their own, and whenever you press Check for replies.
- 03Work the queue. Most replies are noise and never reach it.
- 04Press Draft a reply, or Write my own. Change the words in the box as you like; what is in the box is what goes, after the same checks a draft gets.
- 05On Instagram, use the private reply where the answer is only useful to that person. Bluesky and Mastodon replies are answered in the thread only.
04What good looks like
- You give it
- Somebody on their third comment in a month asks what it costs, four hours ago.
- You get
- It ranks near the top: buying intent, fresh, and repeat engagement weighted heavily. Two drafts appear, both short and in the register of a comment thread.
- Why
- Repeat engagement is the strongest signal here and the one every other tool ignores, because it needs history a single API call does not return.
Derived from the rules in the code
05What weak looks like, and what it costs
- You give it
- A draft that opens "I saw your company website and thought this would fit".
- You get
- Refused before you see it.
- Why
- A private reply referencing research they never shared is unsettling and gets reported, and a report costs the account rather than the message.
Derived from the rules in the code