Today, many entrepreneurs work with influencer marketing via Instagram (and other social media). But how real are these influencers actually? It turns out to be very easy to pretend to be an influencer on Instagram.

With some creativity it is fairly easy to mislead companies. But how do you recognize a fake influencer?

We give you some tips here.

Earlier this month, news came out that a YouTube, Byron Denton, did a social experiment on Instagram: He pretended to be rich. With smart tactics and good Photoshop skills, he was able to give his Instagram account a big boost.

we wanted to show here Buy Instagram Likes UK how easy it is to get followers on Instagram and become an 'influencer'. You naturally wonder how other influencers got their status, is it all sincere?

Besides editing photos and manipulating stories, there are even more ways to easily become a (fake) influencer. But let's first briefly discuss what influencer marketing is exactly.

Influencer marketing - How does it work again?

We have written an extensive article about what influencer marketing is exactly, but if you have not read it yet, we will give you a brief summary here:

An influencer is someone who has a large number of followers online. Influencers can promote products and services that they think will suit their target audience. This is a form of affiliate marketing where they receive a commission for the promotion. As a merchant you could therefore use this.

An influencer therefore creates content that is placed online on, for example, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, etc. Influencers are usually present on multiple platforms at the same time to maximize their reach.

An influencer builds a permanent 'community' that remains loyal to the influencer. They are interested in what that person does and in many cases want to look the same and use the same products. So they often have no doubts about the reliability of an influencer.

Many brands Buy Instagram Followers UK already use this form of marketing successfully and take advantage of it. If the influencer has a similar target group as you have for your company, you can reach a lot of new potential customers.

Fake influencers - Some examples

The example of Byron Denton is one of many that wants to show how easy it is to pretend you are living a rich and interesting life. Below is the video he made about it:

Another example is that of 6 students from the Home-school van Amsterdam. They also did an experiment on Instagram. They have used and posed a fictional name with striking outfits and healthy-looking smoothies.

They also wanted to show that what you see online is not real and that it is often made more beautiful. After 12 weeks of working with the account, they have more than 10,000 (!) Followers.

What both of these 'fake' influencers have in common is that they have spent a lot of time and attention to build up the account. The followers are also real, so they are actually people who are interested in this type of photo.

But there are even more ways to fake an influencer account without wasting a lot of time and attention.

How do you expose a fake influencer?

Look at the number of likes

A big difference in the number of 'likes' in the posts can be an indicator that the account is fake. If one post has 5,000 likes and the other suddenly has 25,000, this is striking (with the exception of exceptions).

If you see a big difference in likes, you should be asking yourself questions about the reliability of the influencer. But of course there are exceptions where it is possible that one photo has more likes than the other. For example, think of a giveaway that asks for likes for a popular product, then the likes will of course increase sharply.

If a photo has been posted with a known major influencer, the likes will probably also be higher than average.

The number of likes is something you should pay attention to, but it is not immediately decisive.

Where do the followers come from?

Take the time to analyze some of the profiles of the followers who liked or left a post. Did they post messages themselves? Are they also followed by others? If this seems normal, then it is probably a reliable account.

However, if the profile is completely empty, has no followers, no posts, or even no profile picture, then you can assume that the profile is not real. There is then a good chance that it is a bot that automatically responds to posts.

What is said in the comments?

If an influencer pays for more followers and comments, robots will respond to the posts. However, you can easily recognize these, because they are often short simple reactions. For example, a heart, 'I love it' or 'great picture' are very popular with the bots. Often these are English reactions, because the Instagram robot market is a big thing worldwide without changing the language.

In this case, you should also pay close attention. However, take a good look at the ratio of the comments. If there are clearly more long responses, then there is probably nothing to worry about.

Is it too good to be true?

The quality of the posts must of course be of good quality if you are considering working with the influencer. But it can also be too good to be true.

For example, if you see an interior influencer with very nice photos, but each photo shows a completely different room. In this case, the influencer may not use self-made photos, but post photos of others.

If you are not sure whether they are self-made photos, you should also look at the other points. It is possible that this is also a fake influencer.

Hype Auditor

Hype Auditor is a tool with which you can check whether an Instagram account has fake followers and comments. For around € 2 you have access to the analyzes of most accounts, this is ideal if you do not have enough time to do an analysis yourself.

Hype auditor gives you more information about the influencer's followers. Where do they come from? How old are they? Which languages ​​do they speak? This is interesting information for you, because it allows you to immediately see whether the influencer also matches your target group.

You can also find out whether the followers have been paid or not. If the influencer is Dutch and also posts in Dutch, but the followers are all from Italy, then something probably goes wrong.

This tool also shows if the person is buying followers and comments. So it indicates whether these are bots or real people.