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Fake followers are a growing threat to influencer marketing. Bots can inflate follower counts and engagement rates, leaving brands with wasted budgets and failed campaigns.
In just a few clicks—and for as little as £100—anyone can buy thousands of followers, likes, or comments, creating a false sense of influence. This makes it crucial to vet influencers' before agreeing to a partnership.
Let’s explore how to safeguard your campaign through fake follower checks.
Fake followers are created and sold by companies that generate fake social media accounts. These accounts are programmed to perform actions, such as liking posts, following profiles, and leaving comments. There is no "real person" behind these accounts, and they are typically propelled by automated programs and referred to as “bots”.
Any individual can purchase these fake interactions. For example, I could pay for 15,000 followers or 1,000 likes on my latest post.
Purchasing fake followers allows the creator to inflate their popularity, selling real people and brands the illusion of success.
A quick Google search reveals the startling truth: fake followers are easy to buy and relatively cheap. Simply searching "buy fake followers" leads to a swarm of results from companies offering to prop up your profile. One of the top results is a Reddit post requesting, "Can you recommend where to buy Instagram followers?" with 80+ replies.
One of the companies recommended in the post offers 1,000 followers (set to any geographic location) for just £105. You can choose to have them delivered steadily over a month or at set intervals. This is a company with a 4* rating on an independent review site.
Companies selling followers are surprisingly open. That's because, despite being frowned upon, it is not illegal. However, it is against social media platforms' terms and conditions. Platforms punish influencers suspected of using fake followers by not promoting their content. But they do so with limited success.
Data from Statista suggests that 43% of Instagram influencers engaged in fraud in 2023 “to inflate their engagement and follower figures.” While many of these creators likely tried it and stopped, the data shows the undeniable normality of fake followers.
Brands seeking influencers to assist with their marketing must be careful. They must check whether the influencers they invest in are capable of reaching their target audience. Inflated follower counts waste any funds spent on influencer marketing, and brands will pay more to sponsor posts if an influencer has a large audience.
Picture the scenario: You hire an influencer with 300k followers. You check his profile, and he often receives 1k+ likes and hundreds of comments per post. You pay for a sponsored post, spending time creating a brief and contract, only for the content to receive 12 likes and two comments.
While this can happen for various reasons (such as content not resonating with the audience or poor deliverability), this is an inevitable consequence of influencers with followers. And it is indeed a waste. When done right, influencer marketing can provide excellent ROI and skyrocket brand awareness.
Yes, social media platforms are constantly improving their ability to check for fake followers. Yet, with every increase in follower detection, nefarious actors also improve their approaches.
Meta, the parent company of both Instagram and Facebook, stated on its website:
"We invest in artificial intelligence to improve our ability to detect violating content and keep people safe. Whether it's improving an existing system or introducing a new one, these investments help us automate decisions on content so we can respond faster and reduce mistakes."
While Instagram continues to make efforts to protect brands and influencers, it has over 2 million monthly users and is also fighting misinformation and hate speech. In these circumstances, catching all fake followers is near impossible.
The safest way to ensure your campaign reaches an authentic audience is to follow the best practices for identifying fake followers or use an audience analysis tool.
Identifying fake followers may seem difficult, but while not 100% reliable, the following signs give you a strong indication.
Look for consistency between the number of followers and the level of engagement through likes, comments, and shares. While influencers with larger follower counts tend to have lower engagement rates, very low engagement often can be a sign of fake followers.
Check for accounts with engagement rates much lower than the average. For Instagram influencers, the average is around 1.9%. The average is higher for smaller creators like nano-influencers (2.2%) and lower for mega-influencers. It also varies by industry.
Unfortunately, engagement rates don't provide the complete answer. After all, you can pay bots to like posts and leave comments. However, these actions can also give the game away. Bots often leave generic, non-specific comments such as "Nice post!" or "Great pic!" The comments are brief and lack meaningful interaction with the post's content.
Bots often have incomplete profiles. They may lack profile pictures, bio descriptions, or posts. Additionally, their usernames might seem randomly generated, including a string of numbers or generic phrases. While there are more advanced bots who post content, many followers with little content is a bad sign. They also tend to have few followers (sometimes even 0, but often only 5 or 6) but follow thousands of accounts.
When bots post on their accounts, they often exhibit unusual posting activities. They may post multiple times in a short period and then remain inactive for months. For example, one of the bot accounts we investigated had posted ten photos all on the same day six months ago and never posted again. In contrast, genuine accounts usually have a more consistent posting schedule.
Thankfully, checking whether an influencer has real followers doesn't have to be done manually. Tools can flag up inauthentic creators without the hassle of searching through a profile's followers.
Each tool takes a different approach. While some assess followers by engagement rate, others use more intricate metrics to provide a comprehensive overview of an influencer's authenticity. This may include analysing a creator's growth over time or posting habits.
There are many free tools available, so which is best?
Here is a comparison of some free tools that can help you verify the authenticity of an influencer's followers on Instagram.
Kolsquare is an influencer marketing platform that streamlines your influencer marketing end to end. It gives you the tools you need to find influencers who can produce the best results from campaigns. Part of that process is checking for fake followers.
Kolsquare evaluates influencers and provides a credibility score. This score indicates the overall health of an influencer's audience by checking for bots, inactive followers, and purchased likes and followers.
Kolsquare then assigns a score ranging from zero to 100, reflecting the authenticity and engagement quality of the influencer's following. This comprehensive assessment helps marketers identify genuine influencers and make informed decisions for their campaigns.
You can see the Kolsquare Credibility Score on the free Chrome extension. It'll also tell you the influencer's audience demographics,
Conduct a free fake follower check on Instagram today with the Kolsquare Chrome Extension.
Modash offers a reliable tool for conducting fake follower checks. However, its tool is only available if you sign up for a free trial. All you need to do is enter an influencer’s Instagram username into the checker to receive detailed insights into the authenticity of their followers and their overall engagement metrics.
InBeat offers an effective tool for detecting fake followers on Instagram. Provide your email address, and it will tell you the number of fake or inactive followers an account has.
It analyses the average engagement rates, likes, and comments, cross-referencing this data with industry standards.
Collabstr is a valuable tool for checking the authenticity of an influencer's followers on Instagram. This platform provides a pie chart showing the percentage of authentic followers, offering a clear visual representation of follower quality. Collabstr analyses each follower's engagement metrics, including likes, comments, and posting habits, to identify and eliminate suspicious accounts.
Upfluence's Credibility Checker is a free tool that evaluates the authenticity of Instagram profiles by identifying patterns indicative of fake followers, such as low engagement rates relative to follower count and sudden spikes in followers.
People can buy bots to like social media content. These bots are automated, so one red flag is rapid likes and comments triggered immediately after a post is published. While popular influencers do receive quick engagement, an unnatural spike often suggests the use of engagement pods or automated services.
Using follower audit tools can also be helpful. Tools like Kolsquare analyse follower quality and engagement metrics, providing insights into follower authenticity by examining growth patterns and engagement rates.
Additionally, analysing the profiles of likers for completeness, activity, and the follower-to-following ratio can reveal fake accounts, which often have incomplete profiles, low activity, and an uneven follower-to-following ratio.
Lastly, examining engagement patterns over time can provide valuable insights. Genuine accounts show consistent engagement patterns, while sudden spikes or drops can indicate manipulative practice.
Identifying fake followers on TikTok is crucial for brands and influencers wanting their marketing efforts to reach a genuine audience. However, TikTok accounts tend to hide many details even when they are genuine. The platform is purely video content. Therefore, many people use the app for entertainment rather than to connect with friends and family. This results in unusual posting patterns and higher following-to-follower ratios.
Here's a guide to identifying fake followers on TikTok:
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.