Choose Which Post or Reel an Automation Watches

Post is the first card in the automation editor, and it answers one question: which piece of content is this automation listening to?

Nothing else runs until this is set. A trigger with no post attached has nothing to watch.

The three choices

Open the dropdown on the right of the Post card:

• A specific post or reel — pick one piece of published content from the grid. The automation only ever fires on that post.
• Your next post or reel — arms the automation now and attaches it to the next thing you publish. Useful when the caption is written but the post isn’t live yet.
• All posts and reels — every post and reel on the account, including ones you publish later.

Pick a specific post and a grid of your published content appears underneath. Click a thumbnail to select it; the card header updates to 1 post selected, and the live preview on the right switches to that post so you can see what your audience will be commenting on.

A specific post or reel: click a thumbnail, and the header reads 1 post selected

Which one to use

A specific post is the right default. Most automations exist for one campaign — a giveaway, a launch, a lead magnet — and the DM you write only makes sense next to that post.

Your next post saves a step when you’re publishing on a schedule. Set the automation up in the morning, publish at 6pm, and the automation attaches itself.

All posts and reels is a standing net rather than a campaign. It suits one broad, evergreen automation — “comment anything and I’ll send you the link in bio” — and it does not suit keyword campaigns, because the same DM would go out on every post you publish for the rest of the year.

One post, one automation

Two live automations watching the same post both fire, and a commenter gets two DMs. If you want different keywords to send different DMs on one post, use multiple keywords in a single automation or build it in the Flow builder instead of publishing two.

Changing the post later

The selection is not locked once you publish. Reopen the automation, click the Post card, and choose different content — the trigger, replies and DM all stay as they were. This is the quick way to reuse a campaign that worked: point last month’s automation at this month’s post rather than rebuilding it.

Reels, image posts and carousels all work the same way. Stories do not appear here — those belong to a story automation, which is a separate type.