Three Ways To Check Whether Brand Influencers Have Fake Followers

Working with brand influencers is a great way for brands to expand their audiences, develop social evidence, and create user-generated content. However, brands need to scrutinize influencers carefully before starting to collaborate. One important thing that brands should pay attention to is fake fans.

Instagram influencers are powerful because they have a large number of followers and their followers trust their opinions. In this day and age, it is not uncommon to have thousands of followers.

It may surprise you that followers of this scale are so common, but brands should be aware that there are some ways to buy fake followers or get fake followers for free. Some of these Instagram users visit fake followers to increase their number of followers and appeal to people who are more influential than they actually are.

For those brands that work with influential brands, it is vital to check for fake followers when choosing an influential brand to work with your brand.

1. View their followers

Before contacting potential brand influencers, please check their accounts carefully to see if they have fake followers. It’s much easier than you think to find out when influencers are tracked by fake profiles. This is what you need to know:

Look for the following red flags:

Followers without photos or posts: If an influencer is followed by users who have not yet posted and/or lack profile pictures, it can usually be assumed that these followers are fake. Brands should also pay attention to influencers who have a large number of private accounts and "spam" usernames.

Irrelevant and/or spam comments: If an influencer has a large number of comments, it is easy to assume that its followers are active. Browse a few photos and scan comments. If the comment is obviously irrelevant or ambiguous, it is from a false follower.Follow/Follow the "fan purchase" service: If you check their followers and their followers, you may see one or two fan purchase accounts. These are huge red flags that influencers are gaining or buy Instagram followers.

2. Check follower engagement

If an account has thousands of followers, you can expect their participation rate to be proportional. Brands can solve this problem by comparing the number of followers, the number of likes, and the number of comments. There are many followers in the Instagram account, and the participation is very low, there may be a large number of fake followers. Calculate the participation rate of an account by dividing the total number of likes and comments by the total number of followers.

Use these numbers as a benchmark for checking follower engagement. Take the last 10 photos of the user, average the total number of comments and likes, divide by the number of followers, and multiply by 10 to get the average engagement. Even if the level of engagement is high, make sure you browse through their followers and comments to confirm that the account has not purchased these likes and comments from fake followers.

3. Use automated tools

If it’s not appropriate to search through followers and compare engagement rates manually, there are tools you can use to help determine whether influential followers are fake.

FollowerCheck scans personal data and determines the number of fake followers and real followers. The tool also lists the most suspicious followers. FollowerCheck is a free tool that provides a snapshot of account followers. It is very helpful even for legitimate accounts. If the legitimate account finds that several fake fans have locked their accounts, they can enter and block/delete these users. FollowerCheck works best on accounts with a large number of followers. Although the accuracy is not 100%, you can understand the breakdown of account followers in general.

Social Audit Pro is a paid service that provides follower analysis for Instagram accounts. The platform will conduct a comprehensive review of the followers of the personal files, including useful analysis. Depending on the size of the account, there are different payment levels-from $5 for an account with 5,000 followers to $20 for an account with 20,000 followers. Payment is a one-time fee, which is reasonable even for brands with a small budget.