Sharing this because I’ve had a few people ask how my “comment to get the link” posts actually work behind the scenes. It’s not magic, it’s just a Make.com scenario I’ve tweaked probably a dozen times until it stopped breaking. Here’s the version that’s actually working for me right now.
The goal is simple: someone comments a keyword on my post, they get a DM with whatever I promised (a guide, a price list, a waitlist link), and their info lands somewhere I can actually follow up with later. That last part is the piece a lot of people skip, and it’s the whole reason this is worth setting up in the first place — a DM that disappears into Instagram forever isn’t a lead, it’s just a nice interaction.
Here’s how I built it.
Step 1: Watch Comments trigger
Scenario starts with Instagram’s “Watch Comments” module. This fires every time someone comments on a post I’ve connected. Nothing fancy here, just make sure you’re watching the right post ID if you’re only running this on one specific post and not your whole feed.
Step 2: Filter for the keyword
Right after the trigger, I add a filter checking if the comment text contains my keyword. I learned the hard way to set this to case-insensitive, because people type “GUIDE,” “guide,” and “Guide!!” and if your filter only catches one version, you’re silently losing leads and won’t even notice.
Step 3: Send the private reply
This is the step that actually gets the DM into their inbox — the “Send Private Reply” module. This is what makes it feel automatic and instant instead of like you’re going through your comments one by one at midnight. I keep the reply short and casual, with the link or resource right there, no fluff.
Step 4: Push their info into a spreadsheet or CRM
This is the step I skipped in my very first version, and it cost me. Add a module after the reply fires that logs the commenter’s username, the keyword they used, and a timestamp into a Google Sheet (or your CRM if you’ve got one connected). Even a basic spreadsheet works. The point is having a record you can actually look at later instead of hoping you remember who commented what.
Step 5: Optional — route it into a follow-up sequence
If I want to nurture the lead a bit instead of just handing them a link and moving on, I’ll add a delay module and a second DM a day or two later. Nothing pushy, just a “hey, did that help, let me know if you have questions” type message. This step is optional but it’s the difference between a one-off DM and an actual relationship starting.
A couple of things that took me way too long to figure out:
Instagram’s messaging window is real. If someone doesn’t respond to that first automated reply, you generally can’t just message them again later without the right tag, so don’t build a plan that assumes you can always reach back out whenever you want.
Also, test with a second account before you trust this with real followers. My filter was broken for two days once because of a typo in the keyword, and I only caught it because I happened to comment on my own post to check something else.
Honestly, once I stopped trying to build one giant scenario for every keyword and every scenario at once, this got a lot easier to manage. I run a version of this through InstantDM now to handle the keyword logic on the Instagram side, and Make just picks up from there for the CRM and follow-up part — splitting the workload like that made the whole thing way less fragile than when I tried to cram everything into one Make scenario.
If anyone wants the actual blueprint I’m using, happy to share it in the comments, just let me know.