One of the most frequently asked questions when considering influencer marketing campaigns is “How do I avoid fake influences?” Fake influencers are also on the rise as influencer marketing is a growing field.
There are a few ways you can spot accounts that may be buying likes, followers, comments or shares to help you gain brand deals. These are just a few of the tips you’ll find.
What to watch out for when you use Instagram
Although we would generally recommend using an influencer marketing platform to find social media influencers and look at their authenticity through the data provided for you, there are a few ways to find this yourself. While it can be time-consuming to get multiple influencers at once, there are some things you should pay attention to:
Posts
First, look at the frequency and number of posts made by the account. Instagram influencers may have a lot of followers, but few posts. This is sometimes true for newer accounts. However, if you notice a lot of posts or a long time between posts, this could indicate that there are bought followers.
Comment
Comments can indicate if a profile has fake followers. Here are some things to consider. You should check if there are no comments on the post, or if they have very few comments compared to those with many likes and followers. It is also important to notice the type of comments and the origins of these comments. Commentaries from accounts that have no content or are in another language than the one being commented on could indicate that they were purchased or used by bots.
Likes
Look at likes not only from the most recent posts but also older posts. This could be displayed through varying numbers of likes across posts if likes are purchased by a profile. If a profile has fewer followers than a large number of likes, it could indicate that the followers were bought.
Use an influencer marketing platform for help
While the above points are easily accessible to anyone who wants to verify the authenticity of an influencer’s content, we recommend using a faster and more reliable method. You can use an influencer marketing platform such as Heepsy to analyze data about Instagram influencers or YouTube influencers. Here are some key points.
Engagement
You can view the engagement rate for an influencer’s profile with Heepsy. This shows how much interaction they have with followers. High engagement is desirable as it shows that the influencer has a connection with their followers. This usually means that they trust their opinions and content.
Low engagement could indicate bought followers, but suspiciously high engagement may signify bought comments or likes. The average engagement level for accounts with this many followers is used to calculate the average. This means that 500K followers are more difficult than 5K. The average is then displayed.
Follower growth
It will also allow you to track the growth rate of your followers over time. This will show the change in followers over time, from month to month. Although it may seem great that the influencer has gained many followers in recent months, the best growth rate is achieved through steady increases.
It can take time to create quality content and build a loyal following base. So, a sudden increase in followers might be suspicious. It is important to examine recent content to determine if sudden growth is real.
Audience insights
You can learn more about an influencer’s audience with Heepsy’s audience insight. You can see their age, gender, location, interests, and more. Our data also shows you a percentage of suspicious followers based upon their behaviour. This is important when considering authenticity. These people could be real, but they may have been acquired through a follow/unfollow strategy, or both.
Score for overall quality
Heepsy can help you do more, but we offer an overview of the overall quality score. This score takes into consideration the influencer’s following growth rate, engagement rates, authenticity metrics, comments and likes ratios, and audience insights to determine the overall quality of the profile. This information can help you identify the influencer’s general quality and whether they could be of assistance in your marketing goals.
Conclusion
Do not be discouraged by fake influencers. There are many others who are dedicated to creating great content for their followers.
Influencers are a great way to help your brand reach its goals. We encourage you to visit Heepsy to find more useful tips such as the 8 top tools for influencer marketing. You can!
