Being sold to on Instagram
Very few interactions on the platform feel genuine anymore.
I’m annoyed. Every single post from people I don’t actually know in real life has some form of automation where if you interact with the account, you get sent a message that’s a cold sell.
Some of the accounts are at least honest about it; the reels or posts have some opt in: “comment GUIDE and I’ll send you the free guide to do X.”
Lately I get these automated messages even when I don’t expect it: I leave a genuine comment on a reel or I vote in a fun little poll or I just follow an account without any further interaction.
One that actually prompted me to write this is I left a comment on a reel of a photographer who happened to have the exact same tripod that I got 25 years ago. It’s a good tripod! My aim with the comment was a genuine bid for connection, some sort of “hey, we have this in common!” A recognition of belonging to the same group / tribe. Instead I got an automated message.
Another one was a personal trainer who puts up polls around Bounty (the chocolate). He hates it. I love it. We, his followers, take the piss out of him for this. I called him out on the automated message, and he toldme it’s not sales if it’s free...
I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, the software he’s using to automate these costs money. I don’t know which one it is, I’m not using any of those, but according to this here list of 9, there is ample choice, and all of them cost actual dollars. Some have free tiers, so there’s that.
Shiva Verma
I will ignore the obvious conflict of interest in that article written by TailorTalk that tests 9 tools, one of which is TailorTalk, as that’s not the focus now.
Second, the whole point of any free content is to position yourself as an expert, as someone who’s given you value already, so that you become a warm lead from a cold lead. Once you’re a warm lead, it’s significantly easier to get you to part with money: you’ve got a small value, it was free, so now emotionally you feel like you owe this person, and one of your objections was handled: “what if it doesn’t work and I’d just waste my time and money?”
I’m entering a sales funnel. I don’t want to enter a sales funnel. I want to take the piss out of the PT for hating Bounty. That’s it.
What pisses me off is I guess the dishonesty around the “it’s not selling if it’s free” part.
Here are some other examples of IG auto-replies:
Yes, I understand that these are businesses or creators, and I also understand that they, being a business, need money to live, therefore need income.
Yes, I understand that Instagram itself makes the welcome message possible without using any third party tools, as above:
And yet it still sucks that I am but an exploitable bag of money they need to find the right combination of words for me to hand over my money.
“So why do you follow creators or businesses then!?”
An excellent question, my intrepid questioner. It is because I do not know they are a business or creator when I tap that Follow button. In my mind a lot of them are just cool people with cool hobbies like photography or whatever.
I hate being sold to. Although, let me revisit that.
I hate being sold to by people, or I guess accounts, who pretend they aren’t going to sell me stuff.
That is entirely subjective. I wish them all the success they need.
Photo by positive tourettes on Unsplash