Instagram and its 12 million active users in France fuels indulgence. The network has the particularity of bringing together countless influencers. Some of them are creative people, doing actual work, in full transparency, while others use artificial techniques to boost their audience. Artificially inflated accounts worry brands that want to engage in influence marketing. However, there are ways to detect fake Instagram influencers. Let’s go over them.
Why are there so many dubious practices on Instagram?
Becoming an influencer sounds like the dream: you just need to take a few good pictures in perfect settings to become an influential person. Partnerships with brands would then ensure comfortable income without much work. On Instagram like elsewhere, these are stereotypes, because, in reality, very few influencers manage to live off of their activity. Leading a community is above all a passion. If an influencer manages to monetize his audience, good for them.
How to define the influence range of an instagram influencer?
An instagram influencer’s audience is of course important to define its real influence range, but it isn’t limited to that. The engagement rate is even more interesting to watch. It has to be consistent with the number of subscribers. To check its consistency, there’s a very simple way to calculate the engagement rate: dividing the number of likes by the number of subscribers. On average, there’s an engagement rate of 5% to 15%. Artificially inflated Instagram accounts get much lower engagement rates, under 2%. This first very simple calculation allows you to get an initial idea on the reality of an audience. But, there’s other criteria.
How to detect fake influencers on Instagram?
Other criteria help detect false influencers and establish an “authenticity score”. This score is defined by the analysis of some essential points, and from a good dose of experience to curb these initial results. For example, a peak of subscribers may be a trick, but it can also be a natural phenomenon, related to the organization of an event.
- Analyzing the accounts a little closer makes it easy to detect the most obvious anomalies:
as we’ve already seen, an abnormally low engagement rate, lower than 2%, can reveal an artificially inflated audience, because false subscribers obviously do not like contents; - simple emoticons or onomatopoeia in the comments can reveal an artificial audience, generated by bots;
- an audience based in countries far from the instagram influencer’s influence zone can be obtained through a subscriber purchase.
Think about it, it’s rare that a French instagram influencer have a large audience in India or Russia … ;
- the abnormal evolution of the non-linear audience curve, with high audience peaks, may be the sign of false subscriber purchases;
- content that is constantly liked by the same subscribers can highlight an understanding between influencers to boost their audience.
What’s the impact of fake Instagram influencers for brands?
By forging partnerships with falsified Instagram accounts, brands pay for a fictitious influence zone, which will of course affect the return on investment of their influence campaigns. It’s highly important to start partnerships with influencers with a decent “authenticity score” obtained from a detailed analysis of their account data.
Bilbokid, specialist in parenting influence, bases its expertise on its pioneering experience in this sector. It guarantees brand partnerships with authentic instagram influencers, exercising their activity in full transparency.
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