How keywords work in CommenSense (and how to choose good ones)

Where does CommenSense use keywords?

In two places, and both match the same way:

• Automations, in the Keywords field on the Basics step. A comment that contains one of them triggers the automation's reply or DM. You can add up to 15 per automation.
• Comment moderation, in the Your keywords rule. A comment that contains one of them is hidden. See how to hide comments automatically.

How exactly does a keyword match?

CommenSense lowercases the comment and each keyword, then checks whether the keyword appears in the comment. That gives four rules:

1. Capital letters don't matter. Guide matches "guide", "GUIDE" and "Guide please".
2. It matches inside longer words. guide also matches "guides" and "guidebook".
3. Everything else must be exact. Spelling, spaces, punctuation and accents all count. price? won't match a comment that says "price" without the question mark, and café won't match "cafe".
4. A phrase must appear as written. free guide matches "send the free guide", but not "free PDF guide".

Emoji work as keywords too, since they're just characters. 🔥 matches any comment containing that emoji.

What are some examples?

How do I choose good keywords?

• Prefer longer, unusual words. If your caption says "comment GUIDE", guide works well. Avoid two- or three-letter keywords unless the automation is harmless when it fires by mistake.
• Add the variations people actually type. Common misspellings, plurals that don't contain the singular, and the same word in other languages your audience uses, for example price, cost and kitna for a Hindi-speaking audience.
• Use a phrase to be stricter. send link fires far less often than link.
• For hiding, be careful with short words. A short keyword in Your keywords can hide perfectly normal comments. You can't undo a hide from CommenSense, only in the Instagram app.
• Ask for one clear word. "Comment GUIDE" gets more consistent comments than "comment anything about the guide".

What if I want every comment to trigger the automation?

Switch on Run on every comment (Run on every story reply for story automations) on the Basics step. The automation then ignores keywords and runs on every comment that has text. Your keywords are kept, so switching it off brings them back.

Which automation wins when several keywords match?

Only one automation of each type runs on a comment. An automation for that one post wins over an All posts automation, and inside each of those a keyword match wins over an automation set to run on every comment. If two are still tied, the one you edited most recently wins.

So if you have an All posts automation for price and a one-post automation for guide, a comment saying "guide price?" on that post triggers only the one-post automation.

What do keywords never match?

• Comments with no text, like a lone GIF or sticker. Automations never run on them. (For hiding them, use the Comments without text rule.)
• Replies inside a comment thread, for both automations and hide rules.
• Comments from your own account.

If a keyword should have matched and nothing happened, work through why an automation didn't reply or send a DM.