Automated bots are programs designed to like, share, and follow other accounts. Their main goal is to boost and increase influencer metrics to give the account the appearance of authenticity. However, the engagement these bots provide is not real .
Fake influencers with purchased followers
An Instagram profile with 100,000 followers, but with about one or two likes per post, is an example of a fake influencer profile. There are companies that provide fake followers, likes, and comments in exchange for a small amount of money. Accounts that use purchased followers never have a good engagement rate . This means that people do not engage with such accounts. Brands that market through these types of fake profiles are likely to be unable to ensure your ROInor increase their sales figures.
Fake pod-based influencers
Pods are groups of real people who give each other likes, shares and follows, to inflate each other’s statistics and turn them into those of a top profile. Generally, they join a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter group.WhatsApp. There they help each other grow their accounts without actually knowing each other or engaging with the content. Hashtags like #likeforlike or #followforfollow are examples of the type estonia phone number list of hashtags group members use to find each other.
As you can see, it is essential for brands to work with real influencers if they are looking to drive business and sales success through influencer marketing.
Fake influencer vs. real influencer metrics
In an investigation carried out for the magazine Migration Letters ,It was concluded that the main metrics to review to detect fake influencers are the following: engagement rates, reach, impressions, conversion rates and ROI (return on investment). However, the researchers were using affiliate marketing to drive sales through influencers emphatic in the need to carry out a holistic review of quantitative and qualitative metrics to determine if we are actually interacting with fake influencers.
Let’s reviewSome of the metricsthat we should be careful about when we want to avoid contact with fake influencers. To avoid falling prey to influencer fraud, we should be careful about the following:
1. Rapid increase in followers
A real influencer needs to take their time and invest their resources to grow their social media presence and community. The truth is, this can often take several years. A viral piece of content or a sudden spike in popularity can boost the speed at which their following grows, but this is not the norm.
Most people spend a lot of time growing their online presence. Building relationships with followers and truly becoming an influencer takes a lot of work. Fake influencers don’t need to build relationships or grow their accounts organically.
Accounts that have been created recently but boast a high number of followers are almost always fake. Although the audience may continue to grow over time, it is easy to identify if this is false growth. It will still be faster than that of a real influencer, who needs time to establish themselves and build their community organically.
2. Engagement and impressions versus number of followers
A true influencer builds his relationships throughInteraction with your audience. This is evidenced by “likes” , comments, tags, actions such as sharing or saving a post, etc. Of course, not all followers react or interact with each post. However, the relationship between the number of followers and participation or Interaction on the profile account reflects its authenticity. A whatsapp number person with 1,000 followers on their Instagram account can easily expect more than 50 interactions per post.
On the other hand, fake followers who barely interact with the accounts they follow are usually bots. In fact, the interactions they leave are usually of two types:
- Bots do not engage. Rather, they leave suspicious comments with unrelated ads. They can drive traffic to suspicious pages, viruses, or sites that are risky for the user’s devices.
- Pod groups leave generic comments . These comments will say things like “nice”, “good”, “Iike” or other non-relevant phrases. Most of the time they will be comments in English and not talking about the post itself.
3. Audience demographics
Brands collaborate with certain influencers to reach their target audience. If a company wants to sell streetwear to teenagers, then they will want to fake influencers target an influencer who can resonate with their content to that age group. For most influencers, this isn’t a problem, as their followers will reflect their own demographics and interests.
Fake followers are instantly visible and quickly give away a fake influencer . There is no consistency between the type of people following the account and the content of the account . An example of a fake influencer who has used bots or pods to increase their followers would be an 18-year-old content creator who lives in the United States, but has thousands of followers from France and Russia, most of them without photographs that indicate an approximation of their age.
4. Specific indications of the social network
Some signs are understood in the context of the social network being used. In the case of Instagram, it is advisable to check the photos, videos, stories or other visual elements. A fake account will not invest in quality photo shoots,will maintain an aesthetic feednor will they use the right hashtags. Using stock images or Google images are telltale signs of influencer fraud on Instagram.
In the case of YouTube, the signals are seen through the view count , the ratio of likes to dislikes, as well as the comments left. A video with a high number of views, but with few or no comments, is probably a fraud. This applies to several social media platforms, from Facebook to X to TikTok.