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The Risk of Using Fake Influencers: How To Spot The Frauds

Influencer Marketing is an ever-evolving landscape, just when you get to grips with the do’s and don’ts when it comes to influencers, there’s always another thing to think about, and today we want to discuss fake Influencers and the risks of using them!

What is a fake influencer?

Let’s talk about what makes a fake influencer. It’s often hard to spot the fakes, as, at face value, they’re the same as everyone else! Usually, someone who posts great images and video content online, sharing their opinions and recommendations.

Ok, so what’s the problem? Well, their followers are usually paid-for, meaning it’s mostly fake accounts, engagement pods and bots. Meaning they don’t have a genuine audience to influence.

Any engagement that they have on their account has probably been bought too. Sometimes, in extreme cases, the ‘face’ of the account doesn’t exist – it might be a paid model or created using stock photos. There might be a group of people who are actually behind the account, creating this fraudulent image of an influencer.

As a brand, working with these types of influencers means you could be wasting your money. You might get some great content out of it, but if you’ve paid for that content on the basis it’s being shared with their 50,000 followers, then you’ve been ripped off. Because their audience isn’t real, it’s unlikely that you’ll generate any sales or brand awareness as a result.

For a larger brand, it can probably be chalked up to experience and learned from. But for a smaller brand or start-up, working with a fake influencer can quickly eat up your budget with zero results. It can be devastating when you’re just starting out. It also completely undermines the genuine influencers out there and means that a brand may not have the budget to work with them.

Working with fake influencers can also really damage your brand reputation and credibility in your industry and with other influencers. They may conclude that your brand is fake too.

How to Avoid Fake Influencers

Carrying out due diligence is a big part of influencer marketing. This is not only to check out that they’re real but also that they’re the right fit for your brand. Some tools can help you with this if you don’t feel confident doing the detective work alone!

Here’s how to work out if the influencers you’re looking to approach are genuine:

  • Weird follower-to-engagement ratios – if they have high follower numbers but really low engagement then that can be a giveaway. The exact same engagement rate on each post can indicate bought engagement. As can a sudden spike in engagement that comes in the form of spammy-looking comments and likes from bot accounts.
  • Engagement looks spammy – some big (genuine) influencers get spam comments just because of the size of their reach. But if every comment is spammy, generic or emoji-only then it’s a good indication that this engagement isn’t genuine.
  • Sudden jumps in followers – while going viral does happen and can hugely affect follower numbers, if there’s a massive, unrealistic spike for no real reason then they may well have bought followers.
  • Unusal audience demographics – this can be anything from location to age, but usually, it’s easy to spot a fake following when the locations of the audience are spread thinly over many locations. In some cases this may be down to an Influencer travelling and building up a fan base globally, however, if the top location is below 30% this should be a red flag.
  • Followers look fake – take a look at their followers, is it the type of audience you’d expect or are they low-quality accounts that look like bots and nothing like what you’ve seen on other similar influencer accounts?

How we can help

Working with a fake influencer can be damaging for your brand, reputation and budget. Take the time to do your research first to make sure that you’re going to get the results you’re looking for from your influencer campaign, or get in touch today for more tips on spotting the fakes!