Impressive
marketing tops the list when it comes to paid marketing channels. Today,
consumers generally like to do some research before making a purchase decision.
However, for most consumers, getting feedback from influencers is usually the
case. Their feedback or product reviews influence consumers' purchasing
decisions.
Therefore,
it is not surprising that brands are taking advantage of their influence to
reach their target audience and increase sales. But what if the base of
influence followers who partner with your brand is fake? More specifically,
what if the influencer is fake and all its followers are bought?
Brands
around the world have increased their investment in inspirational marketing. However,
the revenue from effective marketing is equal to or greater than any other paid
marketing channel. But partnerships with influencers are costly, especially if
they have a large following and are sought after in their industry. But if the
influence is fake, then all that money is lost, because the influencer does not
have the basis of a real and interesting follower.
Because
these inspiring people have no real followers, brands do not get anything out
of the money invested in them. Although, it's not just money. Effective
marketing campaigns require extensive planning, preparation, and dedication
from your social media teams. All of these resources are lost, which further
hinders your marketing plans.
In this
section, we are going to talk about some effective ways to identify those who
influence fake social media. Let's get into it
Impressive
Fraud Effect]
Suffering
from deceptive fraud can be devastating for brands, with the biggest impact
being on finances. While larger, more influential brands may be revived,
smaller and emerging businesses may not be so lucky. Small businesses have
limited resources and impressive fraud can shed their blood.
Also, money
is not the only thing that brands lose. The time spent by your social media
team could be better used to increase engagement, increase social media
presence, and increase conversions. Fake influencers do not offer real
engagement, because they have no real followers.
Partnerships
with influencers can also damage your brand's reputation. Consumers don't trust
fake influence, and if your target audience finds out before you do, they will
question your reputation.
How to
identify fake influence?
Now that you
know why persuasive fraud is a major concern, let's dive deeper and discuss
ways to identify counterfeit influencers.
Analyze
follower profiles.
The easiest
method to detect fake followers within a large follower pool is to examine the
profiles of followers. It is possible to begin by looking for followers'
profiles that don't have a profile picture or bio. The real users will
customize their profiles with relevant information including profile photos,
profile images, and the bio is unique. Profiles of followers that don't have
relevant information or even a minimal amount of pictures of the profile are
typically fake followers. If they are built on impressive followers then
they're likely fake. One thing to keep in mind is that fake accounts often
utilize images from other genuine profiles. If that is the scenario, you'll
have to use Google Image using their profile image to verify their identity.
Check
follower engagement rate.
The follower
engagement ratio is another important statistic that you can use to gauge the
influence of an influencer. Real influencers who have spent time and effort are
usually the basis of a busy follower. So, the first thing you need to check is
how busy the influencer is. If engagement is poor compared to the number of
listeners, it is advisable not to engage with them. Even if the influencer has
not deliberately bought followers, poor engagement statistics are not good for
starting a partnership.
Analyze
engagement criteria.
The quality
of engagement is also an effective way to identify counterfeiters. While some
buy only followers, others even buy engagements, although purchased engagement
is usually common. See only comments on inspirational posts. If most of the
comments include "nice", "looks good", or "great
image", then the audience is probably fake.
This is
still a way to identify potential problems even if the influencer buys the
engagement and the follower passes the engagement ratio test.
Check for
sudden spikes in follower growth.
Analyzing
the progress of followers of influencers can also help you identify fake
followers. As fake influencers buy fake followers, there will be a sudden
increase in the number of their followers which will increase tremendously.
Using third-party analytics tools, you can analyze the growth of followers of
influential people and identify such sudden growth. This will help you to
confirm whether the influencer has bought fake followers.
Find boot
and inactive accounts.
Over the
past decade, every social media platform has seen a massive increase in
automated boot accounts that increase the number of followers of users who pay
for them. These bots follow multiple accounts but do not have many followers
themselves. Therefore, you can use the follower ratio to identify automatic
boot accounts.
We can also
conclude that a large number of inactive accounts means fake followers is a clear
reason that the user/follower no longer uses the account or the social platform
itself. Another reason is that Twitter is updating its algorithm, which has led
to the omission of many boot accounts due to security updates.
Finish it
Impressive
fraud is a big concern for brands and marketers, but by analyzing the right
metrics, you can easily identify them. The most important thing you can do
after identifying them is to avoid associating with them. You can even create a
blacklist so you don't have to do it all over again.
Another
thing to remember is that it's not always feasible to manually evaluate
followers. Imagine searching through the
millions of accounts on social media.
This sounds like a long and tiring task, isn't it? In such instances, you
could employ a third-party mediator like FollowerAudit to spot fake followers.
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