Businesses and companies these days hire influencers as part of their marketing strategy and increase their brand awareness. However, choosing the right influencers can be daunting as you have to consider a lot of factors before finding the best one for your business.

What are Fake Influencers

Just like any other business, you have to watch out for fraud. Fake influencers are influencers who buy fake followers and engagements. Depending on the type of subscription or services they bought, these robots can like and comment on their posts and can make it look like they are authentic influencers.

Fake influencers, having no real influence, bring no results. Thus, it is very vital for brands and businesses to check the quality of the influencers they are going to hire, if not, then they are going to face the consequences of hiring fake influencers.

What are the Consequences of Hiring Fake Influencers

Tons of money and wasted time are vital for the growth of your business and brand so hiring or teaming up with fake influencers can lose you your vital resources.

Most of the time, fake influencers have no credibility at all, so when people know that you are in a collaboration with one, they will lose trust in your brand and tell the whole world to avoid you, and we do not want that to happen.  

How to Spot Fake Influencers

Now that you know what fake influencers are, let’s dive into further details on what tell-tale signs to look out for in spotting them so that you can avoid losing money, time, and effort.

Sketchy Engagements Between the Influencer and Their Followers

One of the most obvious signs to watch out for is the influencer’s followers-to-engagement ratio. You can clearly tell that an influencer has bought fake followers if they have hundreds or thousands of followers but only have small like counts. An example of this is when an influencer has 500K followers but only has 100-1k likes on their posts and has little to no comments at all.

You also watch out and analyze the quality of the comments in their comment sections. The use of emojis is normal but when most, if not all, of their comments, are composed of emojis that are sometimes in threes, then you just found yourself a fake influencer.

Another thing to worry about is if the comments all came from the same group of people or if their comments are not relevant to their posts. So for example, if the influencer posted some coffee and most of the comments are not related to coffee, then most likely the influence is a fake one.

Sudden Increase in Their Followers

You can use web tools such as Social Blade to give you a report about the influencer you are planning to hire. If you find a sudden increase or spike in their follower count, then that means they bought followers.

Check Who They Follow and Their Followers

Usually, an influencer follows 1-5% equal to the number of their followers. Unless we are talking about Beyonce (@beyonce), then it is unacceptable if they follow people less than those. If they follow more than 5% of people, then it might mean that they are part of engagement pods which is a scheme on Instagram that includes same-minded people to engage with each other’s posts.

Check the Quality and Quantity of Their Posts and Stories

Take a look at the number of their posts and see the quality of it and if they look like this, take your money and run away.

A real influencer will post high quality on a regular basis. The posts will look professional and will feature the owner consistently. Another thing to consider is that the feed will be curated to match the influencer’s niche. They will also include story highlights from their past stories.

Don’t Forget Their Video Views

If they have posted videos in their feeds, take a look at them, and if their video views are proportional to their follower count, then they are most likely to be real influencers. If it is not, then that is most likely a fake influencer.

What Should You Do Next

Now that you are able to discern a fraudulent influencer from a real one, the next step is to jot down and make a list of those influencers to save you time and resources in the future. Doing so significantly reduces the amount of time you take to research and pick influencers.

Is this your first time hiring influencers? Share your thoughts about fake influencers in the comments below.