How to stay real in the world full of fakeness? Surprisingly, influencers who are not interested in going on a fake followers shopping spree are also at risk of being followed by them. How to avoid fake followers and why sometimes shortcuts to the top are not the best possible way?
What are fake followers?
Fake followers are fraudulent, automated accounts (usually bots) operating on social media platforms which have an ability to follow a big number of accounts and are created solely for the purpose of doing so. They create a fictitious traffic on one’s account and give an impression of big following and reach. But it must be noted that they could cause influencers more harm than good.
Trust, but verify
At indaHash we moderate thousands of accounts on a regular basis and only accept 10% of influencers who apply because safety and quality is very important to us. It’s pretty obvious that brands don’t want to waste their money and time on a campaign targeted for eyes that can’t actually see the posts because, hey! They don’t exist. So in order to be fair, apart from our actions, we believe it’s also the influencers’ responsibility to monitor their audience and earn on their passions honestly.
How to avoid fake followers?
In order to be a professional influencer you must have a public account. However, this also enables bots to follow you. You know what they say – there is no light without darkness. But there are ways to spot and get rid of them and indaHash is here to help!
Monitor your audience
Every now and then all of us get a notification of a new follower. It’s important to check who that actually is and try to differentiate a real person from a bot.
They usually:
- Have a complicated name (like ‘grrrr8jbl2001’)
- Are newly created
- Don’t have a profile picture
- Have a private account
- Have very few posts or none at all
- Have very few followers
- Are following a lot of accounts
Report fake followers
This step will not only help you but other influencers as well. When you report an account, the Instagram staff will review your report and it could resort in the fake user being banned.
- Go to their account
- Click three dots in a top right corner
- Click ‘Report’
- Choose ‘It’s Spam’
Click here to learn more.
Block fake followers
- Go to their account
- Click three dots in a top right corner
- Click ‘Block’ and confirm
Please note that it’s important to do this regularly. We know that there are a lot of you with thousands of followers and it seems like a insanely large amount of work. But once it’s done, it’s done and there is nothing but smooth sailing after.
Click here to learn more
Why you do not want to have fake followers?
The increasing trend of fraudulent activity in the form of purchasing fake followers comes from the misconception that the follower count is more important than the audience’s actual quality and authenticity. This is no longer a case, and influencers must understand that the number of followers is no longer an essential metric of their power.
Fake followers drastically decrease your engagement rate
Brands and advertisers alike have started to value engagement rate (followers’ actions like comments, likes and views) rather than the audience count because a good engagement rate means a genuine relationship with followers which has been built slowly in a natural way. Moreover, due to the growing number of influencers who resort to fraud, the number of followers may no longer be a credible certificate of influence.
Your reputation is at risk
Building trust is hard nowadays and since your account is public, everyone has access to your followers and can check your genuineness as an influencer almost instantly. If anyone discovers (brands, other influencers and your followers) that most of your audience isn’t authentic, they will view it as you trying to appear more popular than you actually are, and chances are that you’ll lose your real followers, not to mention brands who will be reluctant to collaborate with you.
No collaboration proposals
It’s not only clients that won’t collaborate with you directly, but you will also not be able to pass the verification processes of various influencer marketing platforms which enable you to cooperate with brands and earn on your social media. For example, at indaHash, we have created algorithms which validate influencers accounts and highlight those looking suspicious on a daily basis automatically. And FYI – we’re not the only company that uses supervising tools.
With all this being said, all influencers who want to monetize their social media accounts, will be asked more and more often to deliver data and proof that they can engage real users on their social media. So even if you don’t buy fakes BUT you don’t monitor your audience and delete fake followers regularly, you may get thrown into this big shameful bag of influencers who prefer to spend their earnings on fake followers instead of trips to Bahamas. Touché.
