Workflow + Board + Background Browser
Instagram outreach,on a schedule
Instagram audience outreach is a workflow that ships with Plexon, switched off. Give it a list of audiences, hashtags plus a few seed accounts, and it works through a different one each weekday, a few people at a time: it follows them, likes a post or two, and later messages the ones who followed back and reads what they write. A reply that looks like a lead gets an answer written from facts you gave it, or waits for you on a board. It does this in a hidden browser window on your own signed-in account, and it stays under limits Plexon set below what Instagram users report as safe.
Related features
Set the audiences and the texts once
The workflow arrives switched off. Right-click it in Workflows and choose Settings. Every run reads these values, and a field you leave empty uses its default.
- Who to reach: one audience per line, a set of hashtags plus a few seed accounts. Each day uses the next one. Five ship: founders and solopreneurs, small-business owners, clinic and studio owners, marketers, AI-tool creators
- A campaign name, so two campaigns are counted apart
- Follows per day, 20 by default, and per hour, 5 by default
- Posts to like per person: 0, 1 or 2 of their recent posts, right after the follow
- A message for people who follow back, written for each person from their bio and latest post, or one text with their first name filled in. 10 first messages a day by default
- Answer leads in the thread, on by default, 10 answers a day, from the facts you wrote and nothing else
- When to hand a lead to you: prices, discounts, calls, demos, partnerships and anything personal ship as the default
What one run does
It runs at 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00 and 18:00 on weekdays, in your own time zone. Each run checks the allowance before anything else. When nothing is left and nothing is due, it posts a note saying why and ends there, without using AI.
- Starts at a random minute within the next half hour, so runs never land on the hour
- About every 8 hours, opens your followers once and matches them against the people it followed. Each match is a follow-back, and it messages up to 5 of them
- In the same pass, reads up to 20 conversations in the inbox and sorts the replies into leads, peers, asks and spam
- A lead gets one short answer in the thread, in its own language, from your facts. Or, with answering off, the answer is drafted onto the board for you
- Works through the audience of the day: claims a follow, clicks Follow, proves the button now reads Following, likes the posts you allowed, then waits 30 to 90 seconds before the next person
- Skips anyone it has already followed or passed over
- Ends with one line: followed, liked, skipped, followed back, messaged, replied, answered, drafted, and follows left today
- Each run has its own AI spending cap
A board for the leads that are yours
The Instagram outreach board reads the same campaign record. It is where a lead the workflow must not answer waits for you, with the reply it would have sent.
- Your turn: every lead handed to you, what they asked, and the suggested answer. Press Sent once you have sent it from Instagram, or Leave alone to close the thread
- Conversations: every reply with the last thing each side said, and a Take over button that stops the agent answering that person for good
- Followed back, not yet messaged, and the whole campaign below
- One parameter, the campaign name. Keep it equal to the workflow's
A browser window nobody has to watch
The run opens its own browser window, hidden and kept out of the taskbar. It uses the same sign-in as the browser panel, so sign in to Instagram there once. While it works, a strip in the Workflows panel names the workflow, with Show and Stop.
- Show brings the window to the front, with the page it is on
- Stop cancels the run and closes the window at once
- The tray menu has the same two items while a run is using the window
- Closing the window hides it; the run carries on
- The window closes by itself when the step ends
Where it runs
On this computer the app has to be running, open or in the tray. A Plexon Nous box on your home network is the better home: the workflow runs on the box's own browser from your home address, and this computer can be closed.
- On a Nous box, sign in while the app is connected to the box; the sign-in stays there
- On Nous Cloud the runner's address is a data-center address in another country, which Instagram treats with suspicion. Set a Browser address first, the way the LinkedIn workflow needs one
- The record of who was followed and what was said stays in a file on the machine that runs it
The limits it keeps
Instagram publishes no limits and forbids automation outright. These ceilings are Plexon's own, set under what Instagram users report as safe for a settled account. Settings can lower any of them, and nothing raises one past its ceiling.
- At most 8 follows in any hour, 50 in any 24 hours and 250 in any 7 days, whatever the setting says
- At most 20 likes an hour and 120 a day
- At most 15 first messages in any 24 hours, and 30 answers in existing conversations
- A message goes only to someone who followed back. It never messages a stranger
- Every follow, like and message is recorded before the click, so two runs cannot touch the same person
It stops at the first sign of trouble
Nobody is at that window to answer a question, so the run never tries to get past a check. It stops and tells you what it saw.
- An Action Blocked or Try Again Later notice pauses the campaign for a day; We restrict certain activity pauses it for three
- A sign-in page, a checkpoint or a suspicious login prompt pauses the run on a Sign in to Instagram step and shows you the page the browser stopped on. Sign in and approve, and the same run carries on
- A seed account that does not exist or is private is passed over with a sentence in the report
- Pages outside instagram.com are refused, and so is any address that is not https
The risk, plainly
Instagram's terms do not allow automated tools on its site. Staying under the limits lowers the chance of a block. It does not remove it, and the account at risk is yours. Start with lower numbers than the defaults if you are unsure.
- Its instructions for Instagram's pages were written from the current layout; when Instagram moves a button, runs may skip people until they are updated
- An answer the agent sends is one it wrote from your facts. Read the facts you give it the way you would read a script for a new hire
- The record of who was followed and every message sent stays in a file on the machine that ran it
How It Stays Careful
Five Runs a Weekday
At 10, 12, 2, 4 and 6 in your own time zone, each starting at a random minute within half an hour.
Counted Before Every Click
Each follow, like and message is checked against the hour, the day and the week before it goes. A refused one never reaches Instagram.
Answers Only From Your Facts
A lead gets one short reply built from what you wrote, with no price, no promise and no link you did not give it. Prices, calls and demos come to you.
Hidden, One Click Away
The window stays out of sight and out of the taskbar. Show and Stop sit in the Workflows panel and the tray.
Stops at a Notice
An Action Blocked notice pauses the campaign for a day. A sign-in page or a checkpoint pauses the run and shows you the page it stopped on; sign in, approve, and it carries on.
Your Account, Your Machine
It drives the Instagram you signed in to, from your own computer or your own Nous box. The outreach record is a local file.
Connects to
Nothing here works alone. See the whole map for how the pieces fit together.
What feeds it
Embedded Browser requires this.
You sign in to Instagram once in the browser panel, and the hidden window the steps work in shares that sign-in.
Where it goes
This runs inside Dynamic Workflows.
Instagram audience outreach is a bundled workflow: a quota check, a random start, a sweep that messages the people who followed back and reads their replies, and a follow step for the audience of the day, with the audiences, the texts and the facts it may answer from in Settings.
This renders into Dashboards.
The Instagram outreach board lists the leads waiting for your answer with the reply the agent suggests, every open conversation with a Take over button, and the people who followed back but have not been messaged yet.