How to Spot a Fake Influencer

Are you deciding to hire and work with influencers? Asking them to promote, give testimonies and post the photos and videos on their Instagram feed and story? It has been a trend to share your business and product through influencers and it’s pretty effective, as long as they are not fake.

Yes, you possibly haven’t noticed yet but there are quite a number of accounts that looks convincing on the surface but they are not really influencers.

The fact that it’s so easy to purchase followers, likes and comments has made many Instagram profile looks influencing. Though detecting this type of profile can be difficult for human and bots, but fortunately, there are a few tips you can follow to verify the authenticity of an influencer’s profile.

Make sure you check them carefully before making decision to hire and pay.

1. Ask for insights and analyze profile quality

You can go through their Instagram insights to get a clearer picture of how their profiles and feeds work. Check the impressions, reach, likes, comments and post saves.

But believe it or not? Some influencers do not want to provide their insights. They will tell various excuses but to show you. Just leave them if you find ones.

2. Check the spike in follower number

Make sure to analyze their increment of followers. Some fake influencers may have one or a few days of sudden jump of follower count. Match them with the post on that date and time to evaluate if the spike makes sense.

However, a sudden increase during a period of stagnation usually indicates that a purchase of fake followers could be made.

3. Check the comments

Read the comments on some posts. If they sounds generic and irrelevant to the post, they should be fake comments, either written manually or using software and bot.

Genuine comments are normally related to the post and sound specific.

4. Review the commenter’s profiles

Try visiting the commenters’ profile. Fake profile usually demonstrates:
Do not have post or just a few
The posts show generic, copied or reshared content
Do not have followers or just a few.

If many of the commenters reflect the above, then it’s big possibility that they are fake too.

5. Examine the engagement ratio

Use this formula:

Number of likes + comments
—————————- X 100
Number of followers

The higher the result, the bigger the trust that the community has in an influencer. It also demonstrates the impact an influencer can bring to the people.

6. Check the influencer’s profile on other social media paltforms

Usually, an influencer has multiple social media accounts such as in Facebook, Twitter or Tik Tok to give people different types of content. Check them out.

If an influencer only has a single social media profile (unless indicated), it could be a sign that he/she is not really an influencer.

Real influencers would actively engage with people and grow their followers through good communication and honest method. Consider the above tips before paying an influencers.

Share with us in the comment below if you have other tips to detect fake influencers.