Working with influencers it is an excellent way for a brand to expand their own audience, develop awareness on social and create user generated content. However, brands should check carefully their influencers before starting a partnership. One important thing that brands should check are fake followers.
Instagram influencers are powerfull thank to their large number of followers and to the trust that followers have of their opinions. In our days, it is not uncommon having hundreds of thousands of followers.
It might surprise that this scale of following is so common, but brands should be aware that exist ways to buy fake followers or to gain followers for free. Some of these Instagram users access to fake followers to increase number of followers and attract more influencers than they actual are.
For those brands that work for influencers, checking fake followers it is essential when you choose an influencer to collaborate with your own brand.
- Discover their followers
Before contacting a potential brand influencer, check through their account to see if they have fake followers. It is easier to understand when your influencer is followed by fake profile, more than what you think. Here what you have to know:
Find these red flags:
- Followers without photos or post: if an influencer is followed by users that didn’t post and/or missed a profile image, generally you shSeguaci senza foto o post: se un influencer è seguito da utenti che non hanno pubblicato e / o mancano di un’immagine del profilo, in genere si può presumere che questi follower siano falsi. I marchi dovrebbero inoltre cercare influencer con il seguito di tonnellate di account privati e nomi utente “spam”.
- Commenti irrilevanti e / o spam: se un influencer ha un sacco di commenti, è facile presumere che i loro follower siano attivi. Guarda alcune foto e scansiona i commenti. Se i commenti sono chiaramente irrilevanti o privi di senso, provengono da follower falsi.
- Seguito / Seguito dai servizi di “fan-buying”: se guardi i loro follower e chi stanno seguendo, potresti vedere uno o due account di acquisto di fan. Queste sono enormi bandiere rosse che l’influencer sta guadagnando falsi follower su Instagram.
- Check engagement followers
If an account have thousand of followers, their involvement rates can be expected to be proportional. Brands can understand that, confronting number of followers with number of likes and number of comments. Instagram account with a lot of followers and very low engagement rates probably have a group of fake followers. Calculates engagement rates for an account by dividing the total number of likes and comments by the total number of followers.
Use these numbers as a benchmark to check follower engagement. Take the user’s last 10 photos and average the total number of comments and likes, then divide by the number of followers and multiply by 10 to get the average engagement rate. Even if the engagement has been verified, be sure to check the followers and comments to confirm that the account has not acquired fake follower likes and comments.
- Use automatic tool
If researching followers and comparing engagement rates manually is not the way to go, there are some tools available to determine whether an influencer’s followers are fake.
FollowerCheck scans a profile and determines the number of fake versus real followers. The tool also indicates the most suspicious followers. FollowerCheck is a free tool that provides a snapshot of an account’s followers. It can also be useful for legitimate accounts. If a legitimate account realises that several fake followers have latched onto their account, they can log in and block/remove those users. FollowerCheck works best on accounts with a larger number of followers and is not 100 per cent accurate, but can give an overview of an account’s follower breakdown.
Social Audit Pro is a paid service that provides follower analysis for Instagram accounts. The platform performs a comprehensive audit of a profile’s followers that includes useful analysis. There are different payment levels depending on how big an account is – ranging from $5 per account with 5,000 followers to $20 per account with 20,000 followers. Payments are one-off and are reasonable even for brands with limited budgets.
Conclusion
Many Instagram users have found that filling their content with paid accounts can help them earn money as influencers. However, this clearly undermines their authenticity and influence. Manually checking followers for spam accounts and comments is a quick way to find out if comments and likes come from real or fake followers. Some legitimate accounts may be followed by spam accounts or fan buying services, but if a potential influencer has a massive amount of fake followers, brands should pass on this partnership.
Now why not reading an article on how to effectively and safely increase your followers?
