Choose a keyword people actually type
Pick a word that is easy to type, hard to mistype, and not the start of a common word. In inDM, capital letters do not matter and your keyword fires whenever a word in the comment starts with it, so ART also fires on artist and article. Aim for five letters or more, give it one automation, and say it out loud in the caption.
Before you start
- An automation you are about to build, or one that is live and underperforming
- The offer the keyword delivers. The word comes second, not first
- A professional Instagram account connected to a tool that runs on the official API
The steps
Start from the offer, not from the word
A keyword trigger is the visible half of an automation. It is what you say out loud in the caption: "comment PLAN and I will send it." So the word has one job, which is to name the thing the person is about to receive.
That means the offer has to exist and be specific before the word is worth choosing. "Comment INFO" asks someone to raise their hand for an unnamed thing. "Comment MACROS" tells them exactly what lands in their inbox.
Write the offer as a sentence first. I will send them the eight week strength plan. The keyword is then the shortest word in that sentence a stranger could type without scrolling back up.
Say it out loud, then spell it
The keyword gets typed by someone on a phone, at speed, often from a video where they heard it rather than read it. Two failure modes follow from that.
Words that sound clear but spell badly. RECIPE, RHYTHM, QUEUE and GAUGE are all mistyped often enough to lose people. So is any word with a doubled letter people forget, or a British and American spelling that differ.
Words that need context to hear. If you say it on camera and it could be two words, it will be typed as both.
Capitalisation is the one thing you do not need to worry about. Matching is case-insensitive, so LINK, link and Link all fire. Write it in caps in the caption because caps read as a button, not because the automation needs them.
The keyword usually gets said in the reel itself, so see Instagram reel hooks for opening lines that lead into it.
Check no common word starts with it
This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is the one that causes the strangest failures.
In inDM, your keyword fires whenever a word in the comment starts with it. Somebody does not have to type it on its own, so LINK catches "links please" as well as "link", which is what makes matching forgiving of how people really write. A keyword sitting in the middle or at the end of a word does not count: ART does not fire on start, party or heart. The risk is at the front of the word, and a three letter keyword still carries plenty of it:
- ART fires on artist, article, artwork and arts
- TIP fires on tips, tiptoe and tipping
- FIT fires on fitness, fits and fitting
- PLAN fires on planning, planner, plant and planet
- LINK fires on links, linked and linkedin
Read the first row again. "Love your artwork!" is a comment plenty of people leave, and on the keyword ART every one of them gets a DM they did not ask for. The product will not stop you: no minimum keyword length is enforced anywhere in the app.
A keyword of one or two letters is held to a stricter rule, because so many words begin with it: it has to be the whole word. ME fires on "me" and "ME!!", and never on "meet", "meme" or "home". And a keyword written in a script without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese or Thai, still fires anywhere in the comment, because there is no word edge to look for.
The check takes ten seconds. Type your keyword into any dictionary search as the start of a word, or say the ten most likely comments on the post out loud and listen for it.
Make it long enough to win a tie
Length does a second job that has nothing to do with accidents.
When one comment contains two of your keywords, inDM resolves the tie by length: the longest matching keyword wins. If an automation listens for both PLAN and PLANNER, a comment saying "planner please" matches both, and PLANNER takes it.
That is useful on purpose. A general keyword and a specific one can live on the same automation, with the specific one taking precedence whenever someone types it. What it punishes is the opposite arrangement, where a short generic word quietly absorbs traffic meant for something else.
Five letters or more is a reasonable floor. It is long enough to be deliberate, short enough to type on a phone, and long enough that it usually clears the start-of-a-common-word check in the step above.
Give it one automation, and know which one wins
A keyword is only unique if you keep it unique.
If two live automations on the same account could both match the same comment, inDM picks deterministically by age: the automation created first takes the event. The newer one does not error and does not warn. It simply never fires, which is why this shows up as "my new automation is broken" rather than as a conflict.
So treat a keyword as spent once it is live. Reusing one across two posts also destroys your own measurement, because each keyword is what ties a conversation back to the post that caused it. Two automations sharing a word means you can no longer tell which reel filled your inbox.
One keyword, one automation, one post. When a campaign ends, retire the word rather than repointing it.
What choosing well cannot fix
A good keyword raises the number of people who complete the ask. It does not do any of the following, and it is worth knowing which problem you have.
It cannot create demand. If the post has no comments, the keyword has nothing to match. Comment automation converts existing engagement rather than generating it.
It cannot reach someone who never comments. Automation replies to people who contacted you first. That is a platform rule, not a setting.
It cannot beat the reply window. Instagram allows one private reply to a comment, sent within 7 days of it, and the keyword has no effect on that clock.
Instagram will not measure it all the way to the click, so we do. You will see how many times the automation fired, how many DMs were delivered, and who became a contact. Instagram reports no event when someone taps the link, so inDM delivers it through its own redirect and turns the tap and the country it came from into a number you can read on the Growth plan. The full version of that answer is in Instagram DM link tracking.
And it cannot fix a keyword that already went out. Editing the word on a live automation does not retroactively match comments that used the old one.
Once the word is chosen, our Instagram caption templates give keyword lines to adapt for the caption.
One keyword per automation that reads as a button in the caption, spells cleanly on a phone, is not the start of a common word, and ties every conversation back to the post that produced it. Plus a written list of the words you have already spent, so the next automation does not collide with this one.
Questions, answered plainly
How do I choose a keyword for an Instagram DM automation?
Name the offer first, then pick the shortest word from that offer a stranger could type from memory. Aim for five letters or more, check that no common word starts with it, and give it to exactly one automation. Capitalisation does not matter for matching, though caps read as a button in a caption.
Does an Instagram DM keyword have to be capitalised?
No. Matching is case-insensitive, so LINK, link and Link all fire the same automation. Caps are a copywriting choice rather than a technical one. They make the word look like a button in the caption, which is why most creators use them.
What happens if a comment contains my keyword by accident?
The automation fires if any word in the comment starts with your keyword. In inDM it does not have to stand as a separate word, so a three letter keyword such as ART will match artist, article and artwork, though not start or heart. A keyword of one or two letters has to be the whole word. Longer and more distinctive words are the fix, and no minimum length is enforced by the app.
Can two automations use the same keyword?
They can be configured that way, but only one will ever fire. When two live automations on the same account could both match a comment, the one created first takes it and the newer one silently never runs. It also destroys per post measurement, because the keyword is what ties a conversation back to the post that caused it.
How long should an Instagram DM keyword be?
Five letters or more is a reasonable floor. Longer keywords are less likely to begin an ordinary word, and they win ties: when a comment matches two of your keywords, the longest match is the one that fires. The upper limit is practical rather than technical, since the word still has to be typed on a phone.