Identify Fake Influencers and Find Authentic Ones
Did you know that over 8 billion pounds/dollars were spent on Instagram marketing in 2020? Aligning your business with influencers can increase your brand awareness and highlight your product in a creative way, this is why influencer collaborations and sponsorships have nearly taken over out-of-home adverts, the most prominent shift in a brand’s social media strategy in the last decade. Before signing any deals you need to make sure that the influencers your are working with are the real deal, a process we underwent for Instagram payment app, XPO. Contrary to popular agency opinion, we are against purchasing likes and followers, yet today it is easier and cheaper than you think. People can even buy them from vending machines. So how can you identify fake influencers and find authentic ones? Here are 4 simple way to check legitimacy.
Check Follower to Following Ratio
Before going through the influencer in question’s social media posts, check their follower to following ratio as this is the first sign of authenticity. Influencers tend to follow 1 to 5 percent of their following. Anything higher is most likely of growth hacks and foul play like: follow, like and comment bots. This grows the followers without any fans, loyalty and a personal brand.
Check Their Engagement to Follower Ratio
Another quick way to make sure you’re getting a good bang for your buck from influencer marketing is to check the engagement to follower ratio. Influencer marketing executives can do this by looking at how many likes and comments the Instagram influencer gets relative to their following. Check at least 10 of the influencers posts to see the average engagement, you would like to see 2 to 3 percent of engagement. As Instagram is always changing its algorithm, some of the influencers posts will not be shown on all the followers feed, so the numbers (likes, comments or views) are only guidelines. Do note that not all of the followers that see their posts will engage with them.
Pay attention to the comments as not all comments are created by the followers. Comments like “love this”, and “great post” can be a result of comment bots. Look for legitimate sentences, questions and feedback on that specific piece of content with answers from the influencer. Make sure to check a variety of their posts as the engagement rate can change due to the Instagram algorithm. By the influencer promoting their posts, in alignment with trends, the influencer can gain further exposure in the algorithm. When hiring influencers, we narrowed this down by making sure they replied to their top 20 comments. @LolaJagun, @WunmiBello and @Bailey_LDN were immaculate at this, see for yourselves!
Look At The Lifespan Of Their Account
The length of time that an influencer is active on Instagram is a good way to tell if the account is legit and if their followers are real. While viral success does happen, it takes most Instagram influencers years of (unfortunate) unpaid hard work to grow their dedicated, loyal following. If an account is really new and has a large following, chances are some of the followers are fake.
Check The Quality Of Their Content
Those that people ‘like’ on Instagram is often subjective. However, if you’re brand-side you should know good quality content when you see it. Once you find out the influencer’s account is authentic, drop us an email if you’d like support on research on current activity and past campaigns to double-check they’re the right option for you.