How to find out if influencers have a fake following

Many people today aspire to become an influencer. They are the new-age celebrities. But sometimes brands tend to not recognise fake influencers. Genuine influencers always post authentic content, upload content on a consistent basis and create content according to the taste/preferences of their audience and hence they receive a great amount of fan following and a higher engagement rate. They engage with their audience through polls, live sessions or live streaming or giveaways, etc. The main focus of such influencers is to build an authentic audience and followers through organic content and engagement and create content that their followers are genuinely interested in.

The influencer community is a rising community, paving numerous opportunities for brands to put forth their product and service. But not every influencer we see is genuine as there are plenty of scam accounts. They also buy followers in order to attract brands and promotions.

Such fake influencers or scam accounts should be looked out for, even though they might have a higher following base. Influencers having more followers do not always help the brand to drive awareness or sales, sometimes it’s a futile exercise with zero to no returns.

Brands and influencer marketing agencies should keep their eyes and ears open when collaborating with influencers. The agencies must only tie up with influencers who are genuine and authentic and run authenticity checks before signing up with them.

The influencer marketing agencies must follow the checklist below in order to associate with genuine influencers:

1. Look out for the engagement v/s following ratio.
2. Select influencers who have a higher engagement rate.
3. Make sure that the followers engage in the content uploaded by the influencer by sifting through the comment section.
4. Look at the consistency graph in uploading genuine and authentic content.
5. Thoroughly go through content pieces uploaded by the influencer to make sure that their content matches with the brands’ ethos and objective and also suggest influencers who you feel will be able to churn out content that meets the needs/requirements of the brand.