How do you recognize fake followers? This is how you spot influencer fraud

Fake followers: brands that want to work with influencers should always check whether the average follower is actually human. But how do you really spot that? These are indications that a content creator has likely paid for their followers.

Recognizing fake followers

It is of course not much fun to have to confront an influencer with the fact that he or she appears to have fake followers, so you would do well to avoid that. Research before you start working with a creator can make a difference and it doesn’t have to take long. This way you will get much more out of the collaboration: or you will decide that this is not a collaboration where much can be gained from it.

How many likes?

If someone has 100,000 followers, it is strange if they only get 50 likes per photo. Or if there are no comments at all. On average, the geagement rate is between 1 and 5 percent. You calculate this rate by dividing likes + comments by the number of followers. Not everything is fully visible on certain social media, but you can often see from posts how sincere and, above all, how real the followers are.

Check the comments

We just said that it is strange if there are no comments, but even if there are comments, it does not always have to be positive. If you see a lot of comments without a profile photo (with the gray icon), or user names with all kinds of numbers in them, then you actually already know what time it is.

Followers vs following

This one is a bit tricky, and we certainly wouldn’t assume so, but if you have found other ‘evidence’ then this could be an extra sign that someone is faking things. If the number of followers on social media is very high, but so is the number of people who follow the person, then in many cases something is not quite right. Then there may have been a follow-for-follow tactic.

Location of the followers

Very nice if someone has a Spainish make-up account, but if the followers are all Pakistani, then something is wrong. Of course, nowadays you can watch videos in your own language thanks to AI and other gadgets, but this is often just geofraud. If you make Dutch videos, you will usually still be recommended mainly to Dutch people and you will also have more Dutch followers.