People follow influencers because they are either inspired by them, or they can relate to them at some level. The success of any influencer is based on the number of Followers they have. But, their authenticity can be challenged, if they have fake followers in their list.

A lot of brands and businesses collaborate with different influencers to gain more visibility, promote their products, and even to increase their followers. However, every business should be careful and should make sure that the influencer they want to collaborate with has an organic following.

Many influencers and businesses do buy Instagram followers UK, but if bought from authentic sites, the followers are actual people. Thus, their followers are organic.

How Can Influencers with Fake Followers Be Identified?

Fake followers are mostly bot accounts or people that are not real. These followers do not only give a bad impression to an average Instagram user, but they are also bad for any influencer who wants to grow and make a name for themselves on social media.

If you are an influencer, it is important that you do not fall prey to ads like buy 2000 YouTube subscribers.

You can identify an account with fake followers easily once you know your way around it. Let us have a look at how these accounts with fake followers can be identified.

Way #1: Accounts with a Very Low or a Very High Engagement

While for an average Instagram user, having a high engagement on an account may look like that the influencer is quite popular, it is not always the case.  If the influencer is not coming up with high-quality content and they are not regular in posting, then there is a high chance that their account is full of fake followers, mostly bots, who comment automatically as soon as they post something.

The same goes for the accounts having a very low engagement rate, but a huge number of followers.

Instagram is trying to stop this trend of getting fake followers, however, there are a lot of loopholes and many influencers end up buying them.

Way #2: The Influencer Has Followers from Unusual Locations

Yes, there are a lot of influencers from every part of the world who are famous worldwide. However, it is important to know that these influencers make content that either everyone can resonate with, or is something that is a worldwide phenomenon. But, if a particular influencer makes content specifically for the audience located in the UK, yet most of its followers are from African countries, then the specific account definitely has fake followers.

While having a small number of followers from an unusual demographic is okay, a large number does indicate that a lot of them are not real.

Way #3: The Number of Followers Doesn’t Make Sense

Many influencers think that their success is based on the number of followers that they have. And that is the reason often tends to use other ways increase fan following like buy 250 facebook followers or higher number. For them having more followers means that they get to collaborate with other brands easily. However, this is not a true notion in its entirety. 

The reasons why the number of followers on such accounts does not make sense is because:

• The fake followers – mostly bots – follow other random accounts.
• The bots may follow specific accounts based on specific hashtags, content, and even location.
• The bot follows only those accounts that are following it back.

If you come across an influence that has 10k followers and follows back almost the same number of accounts, then it means that most of the followers are fake.

This is because influencers with fake followers work on a 1:1 ratio. They are supposed to follow back all the fake followers, otherwise, they get unfollowed by all the bots.

There are influencers who do follow back a lot of accounts that follow them, but their follow-to-follow ratio is mostly 3:1 or 4:1.

Micro-influencers having fake accounts following them are easier to identify. Authentic micro-influencer take time to grow their followers. So if you see a particular influencer suddenly having growth in the accounts that follow them, then there is a high chance that they have bought them.

Way #4: Simply Scroll Down the Followers List of Your Influencer

The thing about these fake follower accounts is that you can easily identify them by scrolling down the follower list of your influencer. These followers either have inactive accounts with just a profile picture and no content on their pages, or they have used Instagram profile downloader to download content from other social media accounts.

These accounts also have usernames that scream fake.

Most of these accounts have the word “follow” inside the usernames. There are random numbers and even letters present in their usernames. These accounts do not have any profile pictures, do not post anything and their bio is also empty.

A quick scan like this can easily help you in identifying fake accounts. Sometimes authentic influencers also have some random bots following them, but it is not because they have purchased them. These bots can infiltrate authentic accounts to make themselves look real.

It Is Important For Your Business to Identify Accounts with Fake Followers?

Absolutely, yes! It is very important to know with whom you are collaborating, whether the influencer has organic followers on socials or not, and how they have earned credibility or trustworthiness.

Reason #1: Your Authenticity is Compromised

Associating with spam accounts can damage your credibility as a business. You can also fall prey to scams and even phishing and your business account can get jeopardized.

Reason #2: You Will Not Receive Any ROI Through Collaboration

Collaboration with accounts having fake followers will not generate any revenue for your business. You will not even end up having any new followers as the collaboration will not be seen by real people. You will also lose your marketing money and all the effort will get wasted as well.

Reason #3: Authentic Influencers Might Refuse to Collaborate with You

As much as influencers love to collaborate with good businesses, they will avoid collaborating with one that has a history of collaborating with influencers having a fishy reputation. 

This is why it is vital to do your homework before you decide to collaborate with any influencer. 

Takeaways: Checking Your Collaborations with Influencers Followers are Real is a Must

To sum it all, we can easily say that it is extremely important to check engagement metrics of your influencer. We have justified the reasons and ways to check social followers of influencers. However, if you have anything to discuss related to this topic, please feel free to use the comment section below.

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