Hey everyone,
I want to share something I spent way too many evenings on, in case it saves someone else the time.
The goal
Every time someone followed our Instagram account, I wanted them to get a short, friendly welcome DM. Nothing spammy. Just "hey, thanks for the follow, here's what we do, ask me anything."
A new follower is the moment they're most interested. By the time I checked my followers manually, days had passed and the moment was gone.
What I tried in Zapier
My first thought was: easy, this is a two-step Zap. Trigger on "New Follower," action "Send DM."
Then I opened the Instagram for Business integration and found out:
- There's no "New Follower" trigger. You can trigger on new media or tagged media, but not on follows.
- Meta's API doesn't expose a feed of new followers, so no app or webhook can give Zapier that event.
- You can't send a DM to someone who hasn't messaged you first through the official messaging API. So even with a trigger, the action step wouldn't work.
I tried workarounds. I scheduled a Zap to compare follower counts (that tells you how many, not who). I looked at scraping services and RSS-style hacks. They were all fragile, and some of them clearly broke Instagram's rules. I didn't want to risk the account.
What I ended up doing
Since I couldn't find a clean way to do it, I helped build one. Full disclosure: I'm part of the team behind FollowToDM (followtodm.com).
It runs as a Chrome extension instead of going through the API. You connect your Instagram, write a message template with personalization, and every new follower gets a welcome DM. Setup takes about 30 seconds. There's a free plan (15 DMs/month) if you want to test it on your own account.
The takeaway for Zapier folks
If you're trying to build a "new follower → DM" Zap, don't spend hours on it the way I did. The Instagram API just doesn't support that flow right now. If anyone has found a Zapier-native way to do it, I'd love to hear it. I'm curious whether I missed something.
What are you all automating on Instagram these days?
