Fake Influencers: How To Identify And Stay Clear of Them

Influencer Marketing has been on the uptrend in recent years. The influencer marketing industry is massive! According to a reportby Influencer Marketing Hub, Influencer Marketing has grown to a $13.8 billion industry in 2021. And this massive growth is attributed to the fact that businesses have seen high ROI returns from their investments in Influencer Marketing. There is no doubt that Influencer Marketing is here to stay for the next few years, even possible decades to come! Unfortunately, the booming demand for influencers has attracted many fake influencers who want a slice of the pie as well. Working with the wrong influencers can do more harm than good for your business because influencer marketing mistakes can cost your brand a lot of capital outlay with no positive returns. As mentioned in the CHEQ report, fake influencer activity cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach more than $1.5 billion in the next few years. That is why in this article, we will discuss and share some tips and techniques on how to identify these fake influencers, so that you know how to avoid them and stay clear of them!

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Get To Know The Fake Influencers

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To spot the fake influencers, we have got to think like them first. We need to understand how they manage to inflate their followers count. 

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Fake influencers often resort to buying their account followers, likes and comments to increase their account numbers artificially and instantly. Often, these “followers” that they bought are mainly bots accounts with no real human behind them. By artificially inflating their follower count, they portray a sense of fame and popularity, which gives them some bargaining power to ask for high remunerations for their collaborations with business brands.

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Did you know that according to statista.com, from 2017 up till 2021, Facebook actually had to delete around 1.8 billion fake accounts? These fake accounts are used for multiple purposes, many of which are for ill, malicious intent, some of which are created solely for the purpose of artificially following these fake influencers (usually in return for some form of payment made by the fake influencers).

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What this means for the Influencer Marketing sphere is that fake influencers are indeed a widespread phenomenon, which if left unchecked, may soil the name of Influencer Marketing, and even disrupt this whole industry! While we cannot eliminate the existence of fake influencers, just as we cannot totally eradicate all scams and crime in the world, what we can do is to educate ourselves and protect ourselves from getting misrepresented and cheated by fake influencers! 

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Top 3 Red Flags To Spot Fake Influencers

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Analyzing each potential influencer accounts is a very time consuming and tedious task. That is why we have identified the top 3 red flags that you can use to instantly spot potential fake influencers and quickly steer clear of them!

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▶Red Flag 1: Massive Followers, Little Engagement

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There are thousands of followers on the IG account but only a dozen likes on almost all the posts? That is already the very first and obvious sign that many of the account followers are not true fans and are probably accounts paid to inflate the follower count. There is also a good chance that most of these followers are bot accounts with no real human behind them. Unproportioned Followers:Likes ratio and Likes:Comments ratio can serve as glaring tell-tale signs that something fishy is going on. While there is not “textbook” answer that what these proportion should be to qualify the influencer as a “True” or a “Fake” one, a ballpark estimate of Followers:Likes ratio should be looking at the range of 5% - 15%, while Likes:Comments ratio should fall in the range of 1% - 5%. Of course, there are many other factors in play as well, such as the recency and activity level of the influencer. For e.g., the influencer may not have bought any fake followers, but had gone into a hiatus previously and have not engaged with his/her followers for a long time, hence resulting in low engagement rates for the recent posts. In this case, you will probably have to observe a little longer to see if the engagement level starts improving and make the assessment yourself if you want to make the investment to collaborate, or simply move on to the next better candidate.

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▶ Red Flag 2: Questionable Follower Profiles

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Besides checking the influencer’s account, you can check out his/her followers’ profiles as well! If you realize that many of the followers' profiles have almost no content or appear to be rather inactive, it can be another tell-tale sign that these are fake follower accounts, and a real chance that they are bot accounts. If there’s a high proportion of such follower profiles on the influencer’s account, you’ll probably want to steer clear of this “influencer”, because there is a good chance most of the followers are bought to artificially inflate the followers count.

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▶ Red Flag 3: No Credible Partnerships, No Reliable Collaborations 

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If you find that there are hardly any genuine collaborations with other people or brands on the influencer’s IG feed, there’s probably a reason why! Existing collaborations and partnerships with trusted brands and people can give an indication of the credibility and reliability of the influencer. We want to focus on working with influencers who already have a proven track record working with other brands, preferably also in the same niche as your business or in a niche that you understand. This will drastically reduce your chance of engaging a fake influencer. 

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STAYING CLEAR FROM FAKE INFLUENCERS 

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While the red flags that were mentioned in the previous section will be able to help you filter out most of the fake influencers, fake influencers are getting smarter and may have found ways to get around these red flags. That is why, it may still be worth putting in the due diligence to do a more in-depth analysis of the account and its content before confirming on the collaboration deals with your shortlisted Influencer Marketing candidate.

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▶ 1. Examine Engagement Quality

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Unfortunately, some numbers do lie. Even though some accounts show a healthy engagement rate, we still must scrutinize the quality of the engagement to determine the authenticity of the account’s engagement. One of the best ways to do this is to go in-depth by manually reading through every comment. If you see that most of the comments are very generic and of low engagement quality, such as just a simple emoji and a 1–2-word comment, there is a possibility that these comments are generated by bot accounts. If you see this, go ahead, and check for the profiles of those who commented, and see if there are any tell-tale signs that these commenters are fake profiles. Also, a key point is to check for consistency and reliability in the comments. If the comments are substantial, relevant, and naturally constructed (as how a normal human would); then the comments are likely from authentic online users. 

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▶ 2. Watch Out For Sudden Spike In Followers Count

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It is worth observing past activities on the influencer’s profile, specifically to look out for sudden spikes in the followers count.Instant spike sounds suspicious because it is another sign of paid followers or bot accounts. While in some legitimate cases, some of these sudden spikes may be due to a particular viral content that the influencer created, or perhaps due to the influencer’s participation in an offline event. If so, make sure that the spike in followers count corresponds to the evidence of that viral content or that said event. If the influencer is unable to justify that sudden spike, then it’s probably something for you to take note of and to think twice before collaborating. We want to work with influencers who are transparent and open with his/her stats and data.

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One of the best ways to study and learn about the influencer followers count trend is to see the Audience Analytics. Before deciding if you want to work with the influencer, always ask for a screenshot of his/her latest Instagram Audience Analytics. Most influencers who have worked with brands before should already know how to retrieve it for you. But for your information, here are the steps breakdown:

Follower Growth | Top Locations | Age Range | Gender | Most Active Times

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This is a very good method to study the followers count trend and allow you to corroborate the trend with the timing of the content posted on the profile. And always ask for the most recent screenshots, so that you know if the person is still as ‘influential” as who he/she says to be currently. If he/she is unable or unwilling to produce the screenshot, it’s probably because he/she doesn’t want you to see it. In this case, it is probably a good idea to steer clear of them then.

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▶ 3. Ask For Recent Posts Data Analytics

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Besides asking for their Audience Analytics, ask for the data of their most recent IG feed posts, IG Stories, IG Reels etc. as well. These data will allow us to assess the effectiveness of the influencer’s posts and shoutouts. They should always be able to provide such information whenever their clients ask for it. So, if you are trying to know more about them, you must ask for these screenshots and analyze the data to evaluate their previous performances. 

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Remember to ask for the most recent ones! Similarly, if they are unable or unwilling to provide these data, it’s probably wiser to steer clear of them!

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▶ 4. Consider Using Influencer Checker Tools!

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We understand that the process of analyzing shortlisted influencer candidates one by one is a very tedious, manual and time-consuming process. That is why, there are also many companies out there who have built influencer checker tools that help to fast track your influencer analysis and evaluation process. HypeAuditor, UpFluenceand Heepsyare some examples of these Influencer Checker Tools, just to name a few! While most of them are paid tools, consider it as an investment that can help you save time and effort and reduce your opportunity cost.

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​Conclusion

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The fact that more companies are investing money into running Influencer Marketing campaigns is evident that this is an effective marketing strategy that can fetch attractive ROI for them. Unfortunately, this also means that there is a rise in numbers of dishonest people who pose themselves as “legitimate influencers” so that they can also reap the fruits of this booming industry. While we cannot stop these fake influencers from disrupting and upsetting the market, we can educate ourselves and protect ourselves from falling prey to them. Working with fake influencers not only causes your own business to lose money, but it also helps the fake influencers to create the wrong impression that they are legitimate by using your collaboration as a starting point to convince other businesses into doing more collaborations with them. That is why it is important to do the due diligence and protect yourself and the whole industry against fake influences.

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