My Instagram mention monitoring kept breaking, so I automated it

Description and use

Automating Instagram mention monitoring with HikerAPI eliminated manual checks and improved reliability.

Problem

The author needed to notice Instagram tags or mentions for a small online store but manual checking was tedious and unreliable.

Outcome

The new workflow is easier to maintain and reliably captures new Instagram mentions.

Workflow

• Check for new Instagram activity
• Get the post/user data through an API
• Compare it against the items already processed
• Keep only the new items
• Send those items to the next step of the workflow

Evidence

I got tired of checking Instagram manually.

Source

The workflow I ended up with is basically: Check for new Instagram activity. Get the post/user data through an API. Compare it against the items I've already processed. Keep only the new stuff. Send those items to the next step of the workflow.

Source

I'm using HikerAPI for the Instagram API part. The useful thing for my case was simply having REST endpoints I could call from the automation instead of maintaining the scraping code myself.

Source