How can you spot fake social media influencers and followers?

When checking their engagement rate, you want to focus on three areas. - Check their overall engagement rate on their latest 10 posts at a minimum. - Check their engagement rate on the specific type of posts they’ll be sharing for your campaign (ie Reels, photo, carousel, etc.) - If they’ve already done influencer work in the past, check the engagement rate of those posts specifically. Using industry software to analyze the influencer is the most efficient method, but you can also request insights from the influencer, or simply analyze their profile on your own and do the math.

There are some surefire ways to identify these accounts, especially on Linkedin. And when you do, you should be a good Linkedin citizen and report them for suspicious activity or fraudulent accounts - together we win! Here are some common ways to identify fake accounts: 1) A profile picture that doesn't quite look like it belongs on a professional site 2) 0 followers 3) Names that don't really match the face 4) Claimed to attend Ivy League schools in the US but no job history or experience to be found anywhere - that's very unlikely. 5) Often based in foreign countries but supposedly working for US-based businesses. 6) Little to no activity and any that exists are pithy one-word comments. These are just a few flags to look for!

Ninja Tip: Best way to recognize if the Influencer is legit or not os this: Read the comments under their content! It’s very easy to get tons of FAKE Likes and views using bots, engagement groups and unfortunately many people use them. It’s a lot harder to get fake comments (though possible).

In the B2B space I recommend looking at 4 key components of ones social presence: 1. Relevance - are they genuinely knowledgeable and passionate in one area and share content/engage in conversations focused on it. 2. Resonance - how much the person gains traction and drives engagement around their focus topics 3. Reach - do not prioritize reach too much, and look out for those tagging large audiences to spike their performance. 4. Reference - how often is this person mentioned by others when there are conversations happening on the topics they focus on. The stronger their relevance and resonance the more reference they will have. IE people want them in the conversations because of their expertise and ability to move people to action.

While engagement rates may present a red flag, it won't always. What you really need to dive into is audience comments. Comment pods are being used again at high rates. Check comments to see if they are all influencers, the same people commenting on every single thing, emojis, comments that don't connect to the content, etc. Comments are one of the best ways to fish out inauthenticity. If a creator cannot drive legit conversation or engagement you don't want them anyhow. Engagement rate in general has lost a lot of value when so much of what we consume is video. People are only going to take so many actions; view, click on a link, like, comment, share. They're going to prioritize 1-3 of these.

It’s important to remember that all accounts typically will have a small percentage of fake followers. Sometimes bots “slip through the cracks”, particularly if the influencer has a larger following. Although some industry reports place the average as high as 25%, a good rule of thumb is to look for influencers with 10% - 15% or less. Also check the location of the influencer’s audience members to test quality. Are they primarily based in the country where the influencer (and your target market) resides? If not this is a tell-take sign of bought followers. L

Disagree with that! It’s true that when a platform is new, your follower growth is more predictable but afterwards it stagnates. Therefore you have spikes in your Follower growth, whenever you have something special such as ✔️Speaking at en event ✔️Your content goes viral ✔️You have a promotion

Growth rate is often times the biggest "tell" of phony activity. If you can identify any major spikes, especially over a very short period of time you may have uncovered someone buying bots. Before you completely count the influencer out, make sure to look at the time period of the spike and search for any viral videos, media mentions, etc. In rare cases people may get big jumps due to popularity or being on TV/in the news. There is one creator I'll never forget who has 700k+ followers and at one time purchased 50k followers that were delivered over 3 days. The exact growth amount was 50k and happened over a quick spurt of days. Bot companies disperse over a few days because they don't want to get flagged.

Content quality, or work experience section tells a lot about the account holder. A working history of positions held at companies with legitimate Linkedin pages could shine lights on untold information regarding its associated profile.

It’s important to not only review content for quality, but also to ensure that their tone and messaging aligns with your brand. Partnering with influencers who don’t align with your brand can alienate your target audience and spell disaster. We’ve seen this happen at scale with larger, corporate brands recently, but smaller brands are not immune to the backlash that can come from a brand partnership that doesn’t make sense for your primary target market.

Whenever I feel like someone wants to get to know me, I will stop and pay attention. Whenever it feels like someone wants to sell me their “thing” or they have a “thing” that will change my world, I ignore it. Sales is a human connection sport and Bot’s by their nature are incapable of human connection

This tip honestly isn't all that accurate. A "real" influencer doesn't always have original or creative content - maybe before TikTok but now so much content is based on trend and relatively copy and paste in format. Doesn't mean they aren't influential just means they may not be your most creative partners. Content is going to be one of the hardest tells when it comes to spotting a fake influencer. You want to pay closer attentions to what's happening in the comments and the engagements. You have some top creators with great content who have resorted to comment pods and buying followers because they are fighting to compete with other influencers who are up and coming, cheaper, etc.

It’s important to remember that followers and influence are not one in the same. Even if an account has a decent engagement rate, you’ll want to pay attention to who is engaging and why. For example, influencers in a niche industry like sports might have high engagement rates because fans of the team they play for support and follow them. Those fans, however, might not have anything to do with the audience you’re trying to target. The more niche your market, the more niche your influencer will need to be and the audience should match that.

Always check to see where their audience is located - if most of them are from other countries they may be bots. Tools like Tagger have authenticity checkers, but always do the legwork beyond a tool. Your human eye and education about the industry will see more than a tool can. Any weird demographic trends that don't fit the creator are a great way to tell.

Working with influencers is an investment and an expected return should be part of your strategy, as with any paid advertising. Use tools like HypeAuditor or Modash to get more accurate data and a full analysis of the influencer before you invest in a campaign with them, and set KPIs yourself to determine the success of the campaign rather than simply rely on the number impressions and views as the standard. Always remember that a big following doesn’t mean a person has influence and neither does one or two “viral” posts, so doing your due diligence is key to not getting burned on an influencer campaign.