Image credit: Instagram


It’s no doubt that Instagram Influencer marketing can produce a high ROI for businesses and everyday it becomes more popular, influencer selection becomes even more pivotal to a campaign’s success. However there has been some complains about businesses getting poor results from instagram influencers they have worked with, maybe this businesses didn't check out the authenticity and credibility of the influencers they worked with.

For your business to get a high return of investment (ROI) through its influencer marketing then you must make sure that you’re working with a genuine instagram influencer to spread your business message.

There are unscrupulous people online who like the reputation and perks of being considered an instagram influencer, without actually doing the work needed to reach that status. All they do is setup their account and buy followers, views, likes and comments but forgetting that such accounts will never gain engagements. You must have come across some instagram accounts that has about a thousand likes or views without comments ( well that’s one ) .


We’re in a time were some people think that for you to become a social media influencer then you must have over a million followers on all your accounts, So they try to take a shortcut to their dream of becoming one and pay to buy followers as much as they can afford and that’s why some businesses have fallen prey on some of them. A lot of businesses have this mindset of; they can only work with influencers that have over a million followers without actually asking these followers to show them their previous algorithm data.



As a business owner always know that anybody can buy followers, likes, views and comments. The problem with buying followers is that it gives you a very unbalanced account. You have thousands of followers, but little engagement. The only person you influence is yourself, and it is not that hard for anyone analyzing your account to spot what you have done.




HOW CAN I SPOT A FAKE INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER?


There are two methods in which you can use to spot a fake instagram influencer; one is something that you can do on your own which we call DIY but might not give you a deep insight(s) about such account that you’re spotting and the other one is actually automatic which is faster, saves you time and can give you a full insight(s) about the account. But you have nothing to worry about, below is a well detailed DIY steps to follow but if you encounter any difficulty kindly chat with us via our Whatsapp bot (we respond immediately). But what makes an Instagram influencer fake? How can you say somebody isn’t a genuine instagram influencer?

So let’s say you’ve found an influencer you want to work with on instagram, here are some of the things to look out for before committing to work with such influencer.



1.  UNUSUAL IG  ACCOUNT
Genuine instagram accounts tend to have similar patterns when it comes to numbers of followers, and levels of engagement. Although everybody operates their accounts differently, and some “newbies” don’t run their accounts like seasoned Instagrammers, but you can still easily spot the fake ones.
For instance, they may like and follow thousands of people, but don’t have many following them in return. Perhaps they don’t make many if any, posts themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a bot, but it does suggest that will be of little value as a follower. They definitely don’t influence anybody or any accounts.
An ordinary Instagrammer may have a rate closer to 1:1, but nobody (apart from perhaps a complete “newbie”) should have substantially more accounts followed than followers.
Similarly, you should look at a potential influencer’s engagement rate. A quality influencer will have engagement (Views, likes and comments) of about 1.5-3% of their followers, e.g., if an instagram influencer has over 100,000 followers, you should see 1,500 – 3,000 likes and comments (combined) on an average post. An engagement rate of 1 percent is okay for many influencers, depending on their niche. If an “influencer’s” engagement rate for his/her posts is regularly well below than this, you should be suspicious, however.
Don’t think higher is necessarily better, however. An engagement rate of 10 percent plus could be suspicious. If you see engagement rates that high, the influencer could be using artificial engagement bot, although such as being part of an engagement group, some instagram influencers work together, commenting and liking each other’s posts to boost their statistics.


2. LESS ACTIVITY ON THE ACCOUNT
So after this influencer must have created the account, often they will create a bot that will enable them follow hundreds or thousands of people on the day of its creation. They may even share some contents on that account page on that day to make it look genuine. Once the bot must have followed sufficient people and once they get a certain amount of follow back, they will now gradually start to unfollow people so as to make the account look professional.
For example, if they bot followed over 50k accounts that are also fake( with less engagement, such accounts are merely foreigners accounts) and also get that same 50k follow back, they will gradually use that same bot to decrease those that they are following maybe to a certain level. So you could see something like this :( Followers 50k / Following 345)
Genuine Instagram influencers tend to have relatively steady growth in their follower numbers and this is sometimes based on their style of contents they post every day. The rate of increase may grow once they are recognized as an influencer on instagram, but they will not have a massive burst of followers in a short period of time (as most fake accounts do) because it really takes time and consistency.



3. FAKING PROFILE BIOS

Fake instagram influencers usually don’t put much effort into creating realistic-sounding bios. Sometimes they just leave the bio section with one or two lines, or they just fill in the minimum details. They sometimes even adjust the settings to make the profile hidden. This makes your investigation harder, as you can't see their details. You should ask yourself; however, how genuine is somebody who hides their bio details. Are they likely to make an engaging, dedicated follower?
Similarly, you should consider a lack of a profile picture to be a red flag, particularly in a visual medium like Instagram.
In some cases, they scam you by creating totally fake bios, often using somebody else’s picture. These are frequently just images picked up from stock photo sites or another person’s account. Also you get to find out that what they put on their bio absolutely has nothing to do with what they are posting.


4. IRRELEVANT AND CLUELESS COMMENTS
Some of the smarter bot accounts that this fake influencers use in creating comments make them appear genuine to the public. The problem is that these comments are generic and lack substance; there is no connection between the comment and the post. For instance, you might have seen one or two accounts that continually comments “good picture” or “good job.” And perhaps they post say otherwise.
While these comments are technically engagement, they have no value to a brand that is hoping for an influencer to persuade his / her followers that the brand’s product will be suitable for them.
Likewise, some accounts leave irrelevant spam comments, obviously trying to sell something. Sometimes these are poorly thought through and executed sales tactics. In other cases they are more sinister, encouraging you to leave contact information, so they steal your identity.



5. LESS OR NO ENGAGEMENT ON A POST

This might sound like it’s the last thing to consider in spotting a fake instagram influencer but the answer is no, there are other things to consider but with this 5 steps we believe that you’re up for a good start. You might have also come across some post on an account with over 50.5k followers that either has more views but with no comments or more likes but with no comments. Now that’s a sign of an account that’s been created with fake followers and such account(s) has less or no engagement.

Finally, we know you want to know about the other method of spotting a fake instagram influencer, this method is an automatic analytic auditing tool which we use in spotting fake  instagram accounts in no time not just instagram accounts only but also other social media platforms.


This auditing tool is very fast, saves you all the stress that you have to go through of the above listed 5 steps and it will give you a well detailed and arranged report of the account you are spotting. So as a business owner, if you find an instagram influencer that you want to work with but you want to make sure that such account is genuine you can either follow the above 5 steps or you chat us up via our chat bot below for assistance.

 

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