7 min read
| March 3, 2023
This article will explore why conducting a fake follower check is so important in influencer marketing. We will discuss how fake followers can negatively impact the success of your campaigns and highlight five key benefits of performing a fake follower check when you search for influencers for your campaigns.
Why Conducting a Fake Follower Check Is So Important
Conducting a fake follower check is an essential step in the influencer research stage. It helps you determine if an influencer’s audience is made up of real followers or if they have falsely inflated their profile by purchasing bots or fake profiles. This is important because these fake influencers can do a lot of damage, both to your campaigns and to your brand in general.
Whether you are using a traditional influencer marketing approach or using tactics like influencer whitelisting, a fake follower check is a must.
Here are five key benefits of performing a fake follower check.
Fake Influencers Can Negatively Impact Your ROI
A fake follower check can help you determine if an influencer is really as influential as they say they are, or if their profile is fake or falsely inflated.
For example, Influencity's Audience Quality Score feature takes into account a number of aspects, including engagement rates, follower activities, and how much of an influencer’s content piques the interest of their followers to determine how genuine and engaged an influencer’s audience is. If an influencer is fake or their audience isn’t very active, then the content you share through them will not generate ROI. In fact, according to recent studies, fake social media bots and fraudsters on Instagram are conning brands out of more than $200m a year. A fake follower check will help you find influencers who can deliver on their promise and preserve your investment.
Influencers With Fake Followers Can Damage your Reputation
If your target audience suspects that you are working with influencers with fake followers, then it can seriously damage your reputation and credibility. It could be seen as misrepresentation and the negative image could rub off on your own brand. Plus, even if you plead ignorance, it will make your brand seem unprofessional if you don’t ensure due diligence.
A fake follower check will help you find genuine influencers that can build successful campaigns. This is the best way to build a solid brand reputation and increase awareness organically.
Real Followers Engage with the Content that Influencers Create
As we mentioned above, real followers are far more likely to engage with your campaign, provided the content resonates with them. Not just because they are actual people, not bots, but also because organic audiences help to create authentic brands. Consumers buy into a brand or product if they believe that others are genuinely interested in it. That’s why online reviews and recommendations are so influential these days.
When you work with an influencer with a real and active audience, their followers will have an emotional connection with them and engage with their content. This is the key to building a successful campaign. In fact, transparency and authenticity have never been so important. The more authentic your influencer is, the more authentic their content will be, and the more real followers will engage with it.
Fake Followers Can Get You Blacklisted
Most social media platforms these days use algorithms to detect and remove fake accounts. Instagram, for example, knows the exact signs to look out for and the site regularly searches for fake accounts.
If you work with an influencer with fake followers or, even worse, buy fake followers to falsely inflate your own brand’s page, then there’s a high chance that you will get removed, suspended, and blacklisted from these sites. This will not only greatly reduce your online presence, but it can be incredibly damaging to your brand credibility and reputation. It’s really not worth the risk.
Fake Followers Can Result in Legal Issues
These days, influencers, marketers, and brands have a legal responsibility to be ethical. There are a number of regulations that have been put into place recently to protect consumer welfare and ensure transparency and disclosure in advertising. In the US, for example, these influencer marketing ethics are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has established clear guidelines that brands must follow relating to transparency, authenticity, and disclosure.
In order to comply with these guidelines, it’s important to work with real influencers with authentic audiences. This is precisely what a fake follower check verifies. That way, you can trust who you work with and protect your brand against claims of unethical marketing practices.
