Overview
What Is In This Guide
Why comment-to-DM is the one automation actually worth running
How to connect Claude to Blotato (web, desktop, and Claude Code)
The exact prompt, given away in full, that builds the whole flow in one paste
The check-in prompt that tells you whether it fired and who got stuck
The email-capture upgrade, and the one thing that silently loses every email
The 8 gotchas that break these flows, straight from the docs nobody reads
Before Anything Else
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ZACH30 DM automations are included on every paid Blotato plan. If you already pay for Blotato to schedule your posts, this costs you nothing extra.
Section 1
The One Automation Worth Running
There is a lot in content you should not automate. Your scripts, your angles, your face, your delivery. Hand any of that to AI and people can feel it immediately.
Comment-to-DM is the opposite. It is pure logistics. Someone raises their hand under your post asking for the thing you already made, and your only job is to hand it to them before they lose interest. There is no craft in that step. There is only speed.
Right now most people are doing one of two things. Either they are manually DMing every single person who comments, which eats hours and quietly falls apart the first time a post does well. Or they are not doing it at all, because they looked at a second monthly subscription and decided it was not worth it.
Both of those are solvable with a prompt.
What ManyChat actually costs, since everyone quotes a different number
It starts at $14 a month, and it is priced per contact, so it climbs as the thing works. The better your posts do, the more you pay to answer them. That math is fine if you are an enterprise running real support out of your DMs. It is a strange deal if you just want to send people a link. Blotato includes DM automations on every paid plan, so the tool you already use to schedule handles this too, at no extra cost.
Section 2
Connect Claude to Blotato
You do this once. After it is connected, Claude can create, edit, activate, and check on every automation you run, without you ever opening Blotato.
You need a paid Blotato subscription and at least one connected social account before this will work.
Claude web, desktop, or Cowork
In the left sidebar, click Customize, then Connectors.
Click the + button, then Add custom connector.
Name: Blotato
URL: https://mcp.blotato.com/mcp
Press Connect and approve access. You have to be logged into Blotato in the same browser or the connection will not complete.
Claude Code, if you live in the terminal
claude mcp add \ --transport http \ Blotato https://mcp.blotato.com/mcp
Then run /mcp, pick Blotato, authenticate, and restart the session.
Confirm it worked
Ask Claude this. If it lists your accounts back, you are connected.
Section 3
What The Flow Actually Does
Before you paste a prompt, know what you are building. Four steps, and Blotato always runs them in this exact order.
Someone comments your keyword
They type your keyword under your reel. Blotato is watching that post and matches it. Case does not matter, so GROW, Grow, and grow would all fire the same flow.
The follow gate goes out first
Instead of the link, they get your gate message asking them to follow. The real DM is held back until they do. This is the part that turns comments into followers instead of just traffic.
They follow, the DM lands
The second they tap the button confirming they followed, your actual message goes out with the link button attached. No delay, no manual send, no you sitting there at 11pm copy-pasting a URL 400 times.
Optional: the email gate and the webhook
If you turned them on, Blotato asks for an email before the DM, then calls your endpoint after it sends. Fixed order, always: follow gate, email gate, your message, webhook.
Section 4
The 3 Prompts
All three, in full, nothing held back. The first one is the only one you need to get running. The other two are what keep it running.
Each has a copy button. Change the keyword and the link, paste, go.
Build the whole automation in one paste
This is the one from the video, written out as a template. Fill in the four values at the top, paste the whole thing into Claude the second your post goes live, and it handles the rest. It checks which account it is attaching to, shows you the exact flow before it builds anything, waits for your go, then creates it and turns it on.
Copy-paste prompt
Set up a comment-to-DM automation on my Instagram using Blotato. FILL THESE IN BEFORE YOU PASTE: - KEYWORD: [one word, all caps, the word you tell people to comment] Example: GUIDE - LINK: [the URL you're sending them to] Example: https://yoursite.com/free-guide - THE FREE THING: [what you're sending, in one short phrase] Example: the 10-minute cold email teardown - WHICH POST: [the reel I just published, or: every post] BUILD IT LIKE THIS: - Name: "KEYWORD - comment to DM" - Trigger: comment-received, keyword KEYWORD - Follow gate: ON. Message: "Yes! Follow me first and I'll send it straight over. Tap the button below once you're following (or just reply "done" if you don't see a button)." - Follow gate button label: "I'm following" - DM message: "Here it is, THE FREE THING. Tap below and it's yours." - One link button: label "Send it over", URL = LINK - Make it live immediately BEFORE YOU CREATE IT: 1. Call blotato_list_accounts and tell me which Instagram account you're about to attach this to. 2. Show me the exact automation you're about to create: name, trigger, keyword, follow gate message, button label, DM text, link button, and whether it's active. 3. Wait for me to say go. Do not create it before I confirm. AFTER YOU CREATE IT: 4. Confirm it's active and give me the automation ID. 5. Remind me that my own comments will never trigger it, so I have to test from a second Instagram account. RULES YOU MUST FOLLOW: - The DM message has to be under 640 characters. - Max 3 link buttons, and every button label has to be 20 characters or fewer. - Use a link button OR a plain-text URL in the message, never both. If a message carries both, the URL stops being clickable on desktop and those readers end up with no working link at all. - The follow gate is Instagram only. If I ever ask you to put one on Facebook, tell me it will be rejected. - If my keyword is a word that lives inside a longer word people actually type, warn me before you build it.
Here is mine, filled in
Exactly what I put at the top of that template for the video you just watched. Yours will look the same with your own words in it.
Find out if it actually fired
The "did it work" prompt. It pulls the analytics and the run logs and translates them into plain English, including the part most people misread: a pile of triggered runs with almost no completions usually is not a bug, it is people abandoning the follow gate.
Copy-paste prompt
Check on my Blotato DM automation. FILL THIS IN: - WHICH ONE: [the automation name, or the keyword it runs on] Example: GUIDE - comment to DM DO THIS: 1. List my DM automations and find it. If you can't match the name, list them all and ask me which one. 2. Tell me whether it's actually active, or still sitting as an inactive draft. 3. Pull its analytics: triggered, completed, failed. 4. Pull the most recent runs and the logs for the latest one. THEN TELL ME IN PLAIN ENGLISH: - Is it live right now? - Has it fired at all, and how many times? - How many people actually got the DM, versus how many got stuck at the follow gate and never came back? - If anything failed, what was the reason and what's the exact fix? CONTEXT YOU NEED: Anyone who never answers a gate leaves the run open for 1 hour, then it ends as expired. Expired runs count as triggered but never as completed or failed. So if triggered is high and completed is low, tell me how many were expired gates before you tell me something is broken.
Turn DMs into an email list
The upgrade. Adds an email gate before the DM and a webhook after it, so every person who comments becomes a real subscriber in your CRM instead of a DM you will never look at again. Read the last paragraph of this prompt carefully, it is the part that loses people their emails.
Copy-paste prompt
Upgrade my existing Blotato DM automation so it captures email addresses.
FILL THESE IN:
- WHICH ONE: [the automation name, or the keyword it runs on]
Example: GUIDE - comment to DM
- MY WEBHOOK URL: [your endpoint: Zapier, Make, n8n, or your own]
Example: https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/123456/abcdef
ADD TO IT:
- Email gate, placed before the DM. Message: "One thing first, what's the best email to send this to? I'll send it right after."
- Webhook that fires once the DM has been sent. Method: POST. URL: MY WEBHOOK URL.
KEEP EVERYTHING ELSE EXACTLY AS IT IS. Same keyword, same follow gate, same DM, same button.
BEFORE YOU SAVE:
Show me the full updated automation and wait for me to confirm.
AFTER YOU SAVE:
Confirm it's still active.
THE PART THAT MATTERS:
Blotato only hands me the captured email through the webhook body, as {"email": "their@email.com"}. It does not appear in the Blotato inbox and it does not appear in the Messages API. If the webhook isn't set up and working, the email is collected and then gone. So before we go live, tell me plainly whether my webhook URL is publicly reachable, and warn me that private, loopback, and link-local addresses get rejected.
Also tell me the order Blotato runs these in, so I know what the person on the other end actually sees.
Section 5
8 Things That Break These Flows
This is the part nobody puts in a video, because every one of these took someone an afternoon to figure out. Read it once now and you will skip all eight.
Your own comments never trigger it
You will test it on your own post, see nothing happen, and assume it is broken. It is not. Blotato ignores comments from the account that owns the automation. Test from a second Instagram account.
Buttons only exist in the Instagram mobile app
Someone reading your DM on instagram.com in a desktop browser sees your message text with no button under it. Instagram decides this, no setting changes it. Most of your audience is on mobile, so keep the button, but know that desktop readers see nothing to tap.
Never use a button and a plain-text URL together
This is the one that quietly ruins the flow. A message carrying both leaves the URL unclickable on desktop, so those readers end up with no working link at all. Pick one. Button for a mobile audience, plain URL in the message text for a desktop-heavy one.
Keywords match whole words only
GROW matches grow. GROW does not match growth. Pick a keyword nobody uses inside a normal sentence, and never pick one that lives inside a longer word people actually type.
The follow gate is Instagram only
Facebook automations reject it outright. If you are running the same flow on a Facebook Page, drop the follow gate or the whole thing fails to save.
Your account has to own the post
Comment triggers do not run on posts where you are only tagged as a collaborator. If you co-authored the reel, the automation has to be built from the account that originally published it.
Reconnect an older Instagram account
If you connected Instagram to Blotato before messaging, comments, and follow gating shipped, your account is missing the permissions these flows need. Disconnect and reconnect it once and the problem disappears.
Gates expire after an hour
Someone who comments and then never answers the follow gate leaves the run open for one hour, then it ends as expired. Expired runs count as triggered and as neither completed nor failed. That gap is normal, not a failure.
The Honest Part
Who Actually Needs ManyChat
For about 95% of people who want a comment-to-DM flow, Blotato gets the job done. Keyword in, follow gate, link out, email captured. That is the whole thing, and it is the thing almost everyone is paying ManyChat for.
ManyChat is not overpriced for what it is. It is priced for a different customer. Branching conversation trees, drip sequences, handing a live chat off to an actual human, support running across WhatsApp and SMS, a team of people working one inbox. If you are an enterprise doing that at scale, the price makes sense and you should pay it.
You are probably not that. If what you want is for the person who commented to get your link while you are asleep, you already own the tool that does it.
What it will not do is save a post nobody comments on. A perfect follow gate on a video with four comments sends four DMs. The reel still has to be good. This just means a good one stops dying in your notifications.
Post it, paste the prompt, let it run. That is the whole thing.
Try It Yourself
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