2024/12/13
8 MIN READ
INFLUENCER MARKETING
INFLUENCER MARKETING
How to Find Fake Influencers: Must-Know Tools and Tips for Every Brand
How to Find Fake Influencers: Must-Know Tools and Tips for Every Brand
How to Find Fake Influencers: Must-Know Tools and Tips for Every Brand
Rashmi Singh
Rashmi Singh
Rashmi Singh
Rashmi Singh
Content Marketer @impulze.ai
Sections
Blog in Short ⏱️
Blog in Short ⏱️
A quick glance at the highlights—perfect for when you're short on time.
A quick glance at the highlights—perfect for when you're short on time.
Fake Influencers, Real Risks: Influencer marketing can build trust and drive results, but fake influencers can derail your campaigns. Learn how to spot red flags like sudden follower spikes and low engagement.
Tips to Detect Fakes: Disproportionate engagement ratios and growth patterns are key indicators, so using advanced tools can save you time and ensure better ROI.
Meet impulze.ai: This all-in-one influencer marketing platform makes vetting influencers effortless. Try its 14-day free trial and discover how to find fake influencers and find genuine ones for your campaigns.
Influencer marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to increase brand awareness and grow your customer base. Promoting your product or service with influencers helps build trust with your target audience.
But what if you find fake influencers and partner with them before realizing it?
Sure, many influencers are authentic. There is no doubt about that. But amidst all the good apples, there are bad ones, too: The Fake Ones.
As per experts, fake influencers are becoming a concerning issue that brands need to be cautious about. And how do you do that? Read this blog till the end to find.
We have shared tips and tactics to help you identify fake influencers from the rest. Let’s begin:
What or Who is a Fake Influencer?
A fake influencer is anyone who pretends to be popular or famous on social media, but they're not.
They might show they have many followers, but these followers aren't real people—they're often bought or created by computer programs.
Check the table below to understand the difference between a fake influencer and a genuine influencer:
How Do Fake Influencers Impact Your Campaign?
According to Statista, the influencer advertising market is forecasted to reach US$5.62bn in 2024 and grow at 9.23%, resulting in a market volume of US$8.74bn by 2029. Influencer marketing is here to stay in the US and globally.
And that shows how much is at stake if you spend even 1% of your influencer marketing budget on fake influencers. But it’s not just the money that gets wasted due to fake influencers. The impact is much bigger.
Here’s how your campaign and brand would get affected if you find fake influencers and collaborate with them:
1. Wasted Budget: Collaborating with influencers with fake followers means your marketing dollars are reaching bots or inactive accounts, not real consumers. This leads to low return on investment (ROI) and wasted resources.
2. Reduced Engagement: Since fake followers aren’t real people, they won’t engage with your content. This results in low engagement rates, which may hurt your brand's visibility and reputation.
3. Damage to Brand Credibility: If your audience or industry peers notice you’re working with influencers who don’t have genuine followers, it can hurt your brand’s credibility. It may signal to your customers that your brand doesn’t research thoroughly.
4. Poor Conversion Rates: When you find fake influencers, they may have high follower counts, but their influence is superficial. Without genuine influence over their audience, they won’t drive meaningful conversions, product sales, or brand awareness.
How to Find Fake Influencers?
Here are some ways to find fake followers for your next influencer marketing campaign:
1. Analyze the Follower Growth Rate
Analyzing the follower growth rate will help you find fake influencers. A sudden increase in follower count is worth noticing. If there is a spike in follower count in a single day, this means that they purchased followers.
Genuine Growth Vs. Bought Growth: How Do They Look?
Genuine Growth: It's like a hill that slowly goes up. Some days, you might get a few more followers because you posted something really good or got mentioned by someone famous. It's steady and makes sense. If you see their content is good, they might get more followers because of the content.
Bought Growth: It looks like a mountain suddenly popping up. One day, there are very few new followers and thousands of new ones appear the next day. It doesn't make sense. If they didn't post anything special or didn't get a shoutout from someone famous but suddenly have many new followers, it's suspicious and often bought.
If you use impulze.ai, you will get an extensive report of the influencer's followers. The following is an example report of an influencer: Jared VanderMeer.
2. Disproportionate Follower-to-Engagement Ratio
The ‘Disproportionate Follower-to-Engagement Ratio’ refers to a situation where influencers have many followers but receive a notably low level of engagement on their content.
For instance, if an Instagram account has 100,000 followers but only receives 50 likes and a couple of comments on their posts, the engagement is disproportionate to the follower count.
This could indicate that many of the account's followers are not genuine or inactive. It might also indicate that the posted content isn't resonating with the audience.
The ratio helps brands gauge an influencer's authenticity and effectiveness. An account with genuine growth and an engaged audience usually has a more balanced follower-to-engagement ratio.
If you use influencer marketing tools like impulze.ai, you will gain insights into influencers, including their engagement rate, likes-to-comment ratios, and more.
How To Use impulze.ai For Spotting Fake Influencers?
With impulze.ai by your side, you can filter out the influencers by niche, followers, engagement, and other key metrics. You don’t need to stalk every influencer on the social media platform to understand the average likes, comments, and views they are getting.
The credibility score shows how credible the influencer’s followers are, and you can see the influencer's most used hashtags.
Want to know the sponsored content created by the influencer? impulze.ai has you covered. By generating an analysis report, you can understand the type of content they create, their list of recent posts, and their sponsored content.
The report further includes all the crucial data you need to know about an influencer and authenticate them. Thisimpulze.aifake followers checks, age and gender splits among followers, follower growth over time, and more.
Try impulze.ai for a 14-day free trial and see how it can help you track down fake influencers and find the ones who best suit your campaign.
The Takeaway: Influencer Vetting Checklist [Free]
Handling an influencer marketing campaign is already challenging, so it's heartbreaking to find out that your efforts have gone in vain due to fake influencers. The best way to avoid such a mishap is to invest in time and tools to spot fake influencers.
While we have already shared a tool, here is a free influencer vetting checklist to help you determine if an influencer fits your campaign. The checklist covers essentials like audience demographics, engagement quality, brand alignment, content quality, and more.
Download it for free and save hours of effort!
Influencer marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to increase brand awareness and grow your customer base. Promoting your product or service with influencers helps build trust with your target audience.
But what if you find fake influencers and partner with them before realizing it?
Sure, many influencers are authentic. There is no doubt about that. But amidst all the good apples, there are bad ones, too: The Fake Ones.
As per experts, fake influencers are becoming a concerning issue that brands need to be cautious about. And how do you do that? Read this blog till the end to find.
We have shared tips and tactics to help you identify fake influencers from the rest. Let’s begin:
What or Who is a Fake Influencer?
A fake influencer is anyone who pretends to be popular or famous on social media, but they're not.
They might show they have many followers, but these followers aren't real people—they're often bought or created by computer programs.
Check the table below to understand the difference between a fake influencer and a genuine influencer:
How Do Fake Influencers Impact Your Campaign?
According to Statista, the influencer advertising market is forecasted to reach US$5.62bn in 2024 and grow at 9.23%, resulting in a market volume of US$8.74bn by 2029. Influencer marketing is here to stay in the US and globally.
And that shows how much is at stake if you spend even 1% of your influencer marketing budget on fake influencers. But it’s not just the money that gets wasted due to fake influencers. The impact is much bigger.
Here’s how your campaign and brand would get affected if you find fake influencers and collaborate with them:
1. Wasted Budget: Collaborating with influencers with fake followers means your marketing dollars are reaching bots or inactive accounts, not real consumers. This leads to low return on investment (ROI) and wasted resources.
2. Reduced Engagement: Since fake followers aren’t real people, they won’t engage with your content. This results in low engagement rates, which may hurt your brand's visibility and reputation.
3. Damage to Brand Credibility: If your audience or industry peers notice you’re working with influencers who don’t have genuine followers, it can hurt your brand’s credibility. It may signal to your customers that your brand doesn’t research thoroughly.
4. Poor Conversion Rates: When you find fake influencers, they may have high follower counts, but their influence is superficial. Without genuine influence over their audience, they won’t drive meaningful conversions, product sales, or brand awareness.
How to Find Fake Influencers?
Here are some ways to find fake followers for your next influencer marketing campaign:
1. Analyze the Follower Growth Rate
Analyzing the follower growth rate will help you find fake influencers. A sudden increase in follower count is worth noticing. If there is a spike in follower count in a single day, this means that they purchased followers.
Genuine Growth Vs. Bought Growth: How Do They Look?
Genuine Growth: It's like a hill that slowly goes up. Some days, you might get a few more followers because you posted something really good or got mentioned by someone famous. It's steady and makes sense. If you see their content is good, they might get more followers because of the content.
Bought Growth: It looks like a mountain suddenly popping up. One day, there are very few new followers and thousands of new ones appear the next day. It doesn't make sense. If they didn't post anything special or didn't get a shoutout from someone famous but suddenly have many new followers, it's suspicious and often bought.
If you use impulze.ai, you will get an extensive report of the influencer's followers. The following is an example report of an influencer: Jared VanderMeer.
2. Disproportionate Follower-to-Engagement Ratio
The ‘Disproportionate Follower-to-Engagement Ratio’ refers to a situation where influencers have many followers but receive a notably low level of engagement on their content.
For instance, if an Instagram account has 100,000 followers but only receives 50 likes and a couple of comments on their posts, the engagement is disproportionate to the follower count.
This could indicate that many of the account's followers are not genuine or inactive. It might also indicate that the posted content isn't resonating with the audience.
The ratio helps brands gauge an influencer's authenticity and effectiveness. An account with genuine growth and an engaged audience usually has a more balanced follower-to-engagement ratio.
If you use influencer marketing tools like impulze.ai, you will gain insights into influencers, including their engagement rate, likes-to-comment ratios, and more.
How To Use impulze.ai For Spotting Fake Influencers?
With impulze.ai by your side, you can filter out the influencers by niche, followers, engagement, and other key metrics. You don’t need to stalk every influencer on the social media platform to understand the average likes, comments, and views they are getting.
The credibility score shows how credible the influencer’s followers are, and you can see the influencer's most used hashtags.
Want to know the sponsored content created by the influencer? impulze.ai has you covered. By generating an analysis report, you can understand the type of content they create, their list of recent posts, and their sponsored content.
The report further includes all the crucial data you need to know about an influencer and authenticate them. Thisimpulze.aifake followers checks, age and gender splits among followers, follower growth over time, and more.
Try impulze.ai for a 14-day free trial and see how it can help you track down fake influencers and find the ones who best suit your campaign.
The Takeaway: Influencer Vetting Checklist [Free]
Handling an influencer marketing campaign is already challenging, so it's heartbreaking to find out that your efforts have gone in vain due to fake influencers. The best way to avoid such a mishap is to invest in time and tools to spot fake influencers.
While we have already shared a tool, here is a free influencer vetting checklist to help you determine if an influencer fits your campaign. The checklist covers essentials like audience demographics, engagement quality, brand alignment, content quality, and more.
Download it for free and save hours of effort!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you know if someone bought followers?
How do you know if someone bought followers?
How do you know if someone bought followers?
Is it illegal to buy fake followers?
Is it illegal to buy fake followers?
Is it illegal to buy fake followers?
Do celebrities have fake followers on Instagram?
Do celebrities have fake followers on Instagram?
Do celebrities have fake followers on Instagram?
What percentage of influencers are fake?
What percentage of influencers are fake?
What percentage of influencers are fake?
How to detect fake followers on Instagram?
How to detect fake followers on Instagram?
How to detect fake followers on Instagram?
Can you trust an influencer?
Can you trust an influencer?
Can you trust an influencer?
Is it OK to have fake followers?
Is it OK to have fake followers?
Is it OK to have fake followers?
Author Bio
Author Bio
Rashmi Singh
Rashmi Singh
Rashmi Singh is a writer and strategist with more than 7 years of experience. When not writing, she is either spending time with her friends or planning her next trip. You can learn more about her here.
Rashmi Singh is a writer and strategist with more than 7 years of experience. When not writing, she is either spending time with her friends or planning her next trip. You can learn more about her here.
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Find, analyze, and contact influencers from a database of over 250 million profiles.
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Find, analyze, and contact influencers from a database of over 250 million profiles.
14-Day Free Trial. No Credit-Card Needed
Join over 15000+ SocialiQ users who have installed this free Chrome extension to search, analyze, save, and contact influencers directly on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
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Join over 15000+ SocialiQ users who have installed this free Chrome extension to search, analyze, save, and contact influencers directly on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
20K+ Active Users
May be Later
Join over 15000+ SocialiQ users who have installed this free Chrome extension to search, analyze, save, and contact influencers directly on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
20K+ Active Users
May be Later