- That of fake influencers is being a very profitable setup for cybercriminals, who take advantage of the great ignorance of brands and marketing specialists to deceive them.
- The mistake of most is to dwell on nothing more than the participation rates of these supposed celebrities when, in reality, there are many other elements that should be analyzed
Internet fraud is the order of the day, due to the anonymity that web systems somehow promote. Now, you will probably find it surprising to find out that fake influencers exist, to the point that more than half of marketing experts, or directly brands, have suffered attempts to deceive them. Faced with such a scenario, and since it is also a phenomenon in full growth, it is essential to know how to detect influencer fraud before it is too late for the interests of your online business..
Of course, we cannot say that this problem is linear, since many of the main platforms work to eliminate the risk of their users falling into traps , but their success is only momentary.
We have a good example of this on Instagram, which managed to control fraud attempts by removing the number of likes or likes from posts. But it wasn't long before the scammers found a solution..
Therefore, in the first instance we could conclude that although participation rates are a fundamental factor whenever we have to choose influencers for our projects, it is important that we have enough time to analyze the aspects that could be alerting us to an influencer case. fraudulent. Also remember that these situations do not only occur on Instagram, but also on TikTok and YouTube.
What are the types of influencer fraud?
Influencer fraud is a complex issue involving many different and complementary behaviors. But in general we will always find the same symptoms , such as comments in different languages, comments that have nothing to do with the publication, content without a common thread, etc..
In truth, we could say that this is not so difficult to detect, but that the problem is another, even deeper. For the most part, marketers are aware that they need to find influencers who produce high-quality content for respected brands. And that they are completely legitimate .
The biggest drawback is that there are not a few influencers who believe that quantity is better than quality. So they put all their efforts into trying to maximize their numbers in volume, even at the cost of their quality. They tend to buy likes or comments, and complicate the task for those who think of them for a campaign .
How to identify fake Instagram influencers?
check their posts
This does not need much explanation, since you will be looking for quality content, and that will require the influencer. You can look at their publications, always aware that they have been made recently, thus avoiding a certain disconnection with that number of users that they claim to have, pending their latest content .
look at their comments
The comments continue to be great allies when it comes to noticing influencer fraud, since it will suffice to see that there are strange account names, many of them in other languages, which indicates a very sure fraud .
See your likes
On Instagram we can no longer access the likes of posts. But there are tools that allow us to observe this data if we want to, which is ideal for comparing your likes with respect to your followers. An account with 10,000 followers hardly has 30,000 likes naturally in a post .
Influencer marketing platforms, an interesting option
An alternative that has gained ground in recent days are the influencer marketing platforms , precisely in charge of analyzing how advisable it is to work with certain celebrities on the Internet . We mention this because, beyond fraud, it is suggested to continue working with this type of collaborator.
There are platforms whose professionals review the profiles of influencers from around the world, applying some filters to rule out those that are not worth it, proposing to the firms those that do perform well.
To catch influencer fraud early, they stop at engagement rates, of course. But they don't stay with them, but they review the growth rates of followers and the comments and proportions of likes. Putting all these details together, such platforms can make your day-to-day life simpler for your collaborations.
conclusions
At this point, you may still think that the idea of being scammed by a fraudulent influencer is far away. Let us tell you, it's not that bad, because the marketing industry is forecast to lose millions this year on just such a concept. Although very far from the more than 16,000 million dollars that collaborations between brands and celebrities will generate. Therefore, you can do good business. It is a matter of being very careful about it.
Our recommendation is that you opt for very influential people. Maybe not among so many followers, but with a very good reach to those who are aware of their publications, and check how committed they are to your products or services. There are also influencer marketing platforms to make things a little easier for you.
