How to tell if someone has fake followers? Influencer marketing is incredible at producing results for a brand – take a look at this article to find out how exactly they can almost always lead to brand growth.
As this concept becomes more popular, the sheer magnitude of ‘Influencers’ out there simply means that brands must be able to distinguish between authentic and fake followers on their profiles.
At the end of the day, the role of an Influencer is to influence, and if they are unable to do so without doing the correct work to gain credibility, how good will they be for your business?
It’s crucial for brands to carefully vet their Influencers before initiating any sort of affiliation or collaboration.
Many seem to believe that your success within the industry these days is often tangible and equated by the number of followers you have. However, that’s not exactly how social media works…
What makes a fake follower? And how can brands distinguish this when looking to reach out to someone? Here are some of the tell-tale signs.
How to manually check for fake followers on an account
If your business is looking to source an Influencer that has a genuine connection to their audience, the first thing you will have to evaluate is there level of engagement.
In fact, it can go either way – you could have a profile with very low or very high engagement and this could indicate a fake account.
At first glance, the account may have a large number of ‘followers’, but upon assessing via the number of likes and comments that they receive on their posts, you can determine whether or not these are real people.
A little pro tip, a formula to actually configure their engagement percentage is number of engagements/number of followers x 100. Should the result be extremely low (under 1%), this could indicate Influencers are buying likes and/or comments in order to artificially boost engagement levels.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, should the account have extremely high levels of engagement above 10% is also highly suspicious.
Looking at their follower-to-following ratio
Another easy way to spot bot accounts in someone’s following list is to simply assess their followers to following ratio.
Typically, Influencers & celebs will have a much higher level of followers, in comparison to the number of accounts they follow back.
Spam accounts & comments
Another tool to assess whether or not an Influencer has genuine accounts following or interacting with them, is to look at the context of comments left under a post.
Comments that seem out of place or tend to have no relevant context to what’s been shown on the post are most likely a bot account.
Additionally, comments that tend to repeat phrases or display a bunch of misplaced emoji’s are also indicative of bot accounts.
Whilst these comments technically count as ‘engagement’, they provide zero substance and value to a brand who is looking for an Influencer to endorse their brand or product.
Hidden or empty profiles
A lot of the time, fake accounts which are either computer-made bots or actual ‘catfish’ accounts will put very, very little effort in trying to make these accounts appear realistic.
In fact, it is almost painfully obvious from the blank bio, stock image profile picture and lack of followers, and these should most definitely be seen as red flags to brands.
Online metrics to determine fake followers
Fortunately, there are various automated tools online to scan a profile, in order to give a better picture on how authentic someone’s profile audience is.
IG Audit is an example of a free, easy-to-use tool that can help to detect several fake followers on an account.
All you have to do is enter the account name you’re looking into, and the sites algorithm will depict the percentage of genuine followers. Accounts on Instagram that are able to attain over 70% can arguably be classed under the field of an ‘Influencer’ (of course this is just one of many factors).
If you’re looking to spend a little cash to investigate and verify real followers, Social Audit Pro is highly popular. It has various prices for different levels, depending on the numbers of followers on an account. It is especially great because it breaks down ‘good’, ‘suspicious’, and ‘dormant’ followers on the account you search and the site regularly updates and improves it’s algorithm.
Less about numbers, more about keeping it real
As the industry has been slowly steering away from predominantly focusing on just metrics to evaluate someone’s ‘successes’, the concept of determining the power of someone’s influence has become much more important to businesses.
Manually checking or using an automated online tool is a clear way to fathom out if they paved their way by paying for accounts. Although in some instances, a number of legitimate accounts might have spam account followers. Your brand should be attentive and weary of any suspicious interactions, as it can be detrimental to your brand image.